There is an inevitable pressure on price. In organisations with large sales forces, many disagreements stem from a perception that some “lazy sales people sell on price”. In smaller businesses, price is one of the weapons at our disposal. However, we must ensure that we avoid falling into the trap of giving too much away [...]

Talking to a networking contact recently, it became apparent that he was missing out on opportunities that would be easy to exploit using processes he had already developed and offering these as services to clients he already knew. This conversation, which will hopefully lead to a new service, got me thinking about core competence.

If you [...]

Scott over at Self Made Minds mentioned an article in which the author investigates a "lawn sign based business". Fascinated as I am by new businesses and new business ideas, I couldn’t resist taking a look at the article in question which is: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape. It’s a rather long post [...]

Have you ever wondered why car and electronics manufacturers are constantly changing their products? Are you starting to think that there might be some merit in refreshing your own offer? Have you ever been faced with indifference by that perfectly qualified prospect as soon as you started to outline your favourite products of services?
It always [...]

It never ceases to amaze me how often I can find modern marketing and business lessons in work that has been around for a long time. The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs is one of many fables attributed to Aesop, and one that can be found in many compilations of his works. It is [...]

A new survey by ProjectWord found that:

Nearly 40% of new companies do not have a marketing plan.
Around 50% of new businesses launch without any form of marketing or advertising budget.
1 in 3 new businesses don’t understand what marketing is or what role it plays for new companies.

Sadly I don’t find the results [...]

I walked past a high street based office today which had "By Appointment Only" in large letters on the door. Sure it might have seemed like a good idea to stop cold callers and door to door salesmen by having a "by appointment only" policy. The problem is:

Bad sales people will ignore it. After [...]

The freemium model for businesses isn’t new, it’s been around for a while and in it’s present form is particularly popular with many of the Web 2.0 businesses. As a techie and business geek it’s a term I’m used to, but talking to a colleague today I was reminded that there’s still an awful lot [...]

Whilst watching Dragons Den recently, I was reminded that in July I wrote about the power of Trust in business relationships. The Dragons were in one of their quests to get to the story behind the person to determine the degree to which they could trust the business being pitched and, as usual, the hapless [...]

Sadly advertising does not work for the majority of small businesses. So they give up believing that advertising is only something "big businesses" do, claiming that "advertising doesn’t work for my type of business". I think they’re wrong. I’ve run several businesses where other people already running a similar business told us that they had [...]