After writing the title of this piece I thought what more can I say? That’s it isn’t it? Provide a better service than your competitors and you will win business. But maybe it’s worth thinking about this a bit deeper. No one actually sets out to deliberately provide a bad service and does it really [...]

Almost all businesses now days have to have a web site. Even if you don’t sell over the web, your customers will expect to be able to find you on it. If they know your name and it’s fairly unique then you are likely to be found. That’s good, you can give your customers contact [...]

I spent an enjoyable couple of days doing one-to-ones on business planning at a conference last week and the area that was most misunderstood was the need to define and understand your market. It sounds simple, everyone of course understands their market don’t they, it’s obvious. The market is whoever will buy from us. We [...]

Last night I attended the keynote event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), yes it’s this week, how could you miss it? Sitting in a packed conference centre of the British Library, I looked around at the alert eager faces of budding Entrepreneurs and thought this has to be the future for Britain. Tom Bewick, the [...]

Last week I talked about having a simple sales & marketing plan for your business. It doesn’t have to be particularly fancy, but you should have bounced ideas around with your team (find someone to do this with if a sole trader) and written it down. The act of documenting it is important, clears up [...]

Hands up those who have more sales than they can handle? It does happen, but for most small businesses it is a constant battle to get customers. You’ve got a good product or service; in fact you are probably very proud of the quality and cost effectiveness of your offering. But sales don’t seem to [...]