Monthly Archives: January 2011

Uncomfortable market positioning

I believe we in business all need to know where our place is in the market, and indeed to work at our positioning. Continue reading

Posted in Business planning, Customer relations, marketing, Sales | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Southern Comfort is what I’m selling

Image via Wikipedia We are constantly assailed in the TV ad breaks by supermarkets essentially arguing and bickering with each other. “We are the cheapest on 500 products”, “we have these special deals on essential products”, “we will beat any … Continue reading

Posted in Customer relations, Customer service, marketing, Sales | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Verbal contracts and honour

Image via Wikipedia In terms of gathering in new clients, I cannot call myself a hard-nosed salesman, but I do sell on the value of my business offerings. Generally my approach is soft-selling, letting the prospect lead herself to make … Continue reading

Posted in Sales | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Measuring web influence?

Image via Wikipedia When some people talk about their personal relationships, we want to cry out “Too much information” but when on-line that’s what we get. It is so difficult to filter out the noise. We are constantly being urged … Continue reading

Posted in marketing, Sales, Social, Social media | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How can we hang on to a dream?

To have dreams in the sense of hopes and plans is something we all have and especially in business. We have objectives and targets and aspirations as to where we want to be in a year’s time, or five years or ten years. Continue reading

Posted in Business planning, management | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t make promises that you can’t keep

We must be careful not to over-promise. We all want to do our best but sometimes time scales cannot be met. Continue reading

Posted in Customer relations, Customer service, Sales | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Professional arrogance

Having recently been on the wrong end of a less-than-helpful experience dealing with a professional in another field, it made me think about the traps we can all fall into when dealing with our clients and customers. Keeping our eyes … Continue reading

Posted in Customer relations, Customer service, Referral networking | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Time wasting and fog

Image via Wikipedia I believe we should always be at least fine-tuning our business models and especially our marketing of course. Whether the New Year is the time for a good clear-out or the business should have a good spring-clean … Continue reading

Posted in Business planning, management, marketing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Guarding our precious reputations

When we speak in a public arena we must guard our words carefully. We must be careful what we say to our fellow networkers. We must be careful what we say to our colleagues. We must be careful what we say on-line. Continue reading

Posted in Customer relations, marketing, networking, Social media | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment