Can Your Business Afford to Stand Still This Year?

If your business is standing still – always doing the same things, the same ways, for the same people – then you could be missing out on new opportunities and new business. Your competitors will be innovating – looking for different ways of making money – which means that you could be losing business to [...]

The 2011 Appletree Christmas Card Awards

Here’s what you’ve been waiting for! The 2011 Appletree Christmas Card Awards! I made a number of awards last year, for the best, worst, cleverest and most pointless Christmas card – click here to read that blog. Now I’m delighted to announce the winners of the competition for Christmas 2011. The winner of Best and [...]

Be a pest – Everest

A little while ago I wrote on this blog how impressed I was with the customer service we received last autumn when we bought new windows from Everest. The company has gone to great lengths to prove that their windows are in fact the best. Click here to read the original blog. Sadly their after [...]

Using customer excellence to grow your business

There are many ways in which you can grow your business and one of the most effective is by selling more of your existing services to your existing clients. To do this, you need a strong relationship with your clients and you need to develop customer excellence. In fact, at a networking lunch I went [...]

How well do you do the little things?

At a recent networking presentation, a wise man suggested that we should focus on doing the little things well. When you do, you’ll make a great impression and keep your clients really happy. So what are the little things? Here’s an example I’ve just experienced. Last week my car needed some work done on the [...]

Never be ashamed of making things easy

There is nothing more off-putting than being spouted at by a lot of jargon, especially if you’re not familiar with it. It can be very demoralizing to keep asking what ‘x’ means, and wearisome to retain the information and applying it to what you already know. Therefore if you produce a new product or service [...]

What gaps are in your communication strategy?

The fourth assignment for my CIM Professional Certificate in Marketing involves creating a communications audit on the organisation I have based my assignment upon. After I had fathomed exactly what was required, I started to enjoy analysing every aspect of communication the organisation did, including the ‘external’ stakeholders involved, such as the media and pressure [...]

Can you sell from the stage?

Can you sell your products and services from the stage? I’m not talking about the theatrical stage or suggesting that you become an actor. This is about selling what you do from giving presentations. For many years I’ve given presentations at networking groups. At the end, people tell me how much they enjoyed my talk, [...]

Online marketing may not be quick, but it’s effective

As the recession deepens (and all those BNI types who still testify that there isn’t a recession, wake up and smell the coffee), businesses are starting to appear a mite desperate. This is when marketing gets a raw deal, especially if the CEOs don’t really understand what marketing is all about. Looking around and reading [...]

The importance of good design

There is nothing more off-putting than going to a networking group, finding an interesting prospect, asking for their card and receiving something that is obviously from Alta Vista, when your initial concept was that they were a thoroughly professional outfit successfully doing business left, right and centre. How you present yourself shouldn’t only be limited [...]