Articles under ‘Business Development’

There is a saying that ‘Words are cheap’. When it comes to building trusted relationships with clients words can turn out to be very expensive.

One of the things that amazes me about small and medium sized businesses is how they struggle with lead generation from existing clients. This should be one of the easiest sales to make. There are three main reasons for this:

It may seem very tempting to buy into the view that there is a process for everything, but when it comes to relationships it’s not that simple. We are not machines and we do not respond well when treated like one.

When you are in the middle of winter, as we are at the moment in the UK, it seems like it will never end. Everything outside is bitterly cold and miserable. Yet just as night always follows day, spring always follows winter. There will be a time when the sun returns and things begin to [...]

‘How to Sell Thin Air’…..That was the title of the workshop I ran for Ecadamist Mark Underwood’s excellent Business NLP Group meeting last night. Its a club to show the business applications of NLP and was well attended by people who run their own business and people that work in companies in a non-sales [...]

A few days ago I was posed the question ‘Isn’t Social Media just a big waste of time? How do you get a return on investment for all the time and effort you need to put in?’ As someone who loves a Paradox, I decided to answer this question for him via Social Media!!!

Clients are often surprised at how quickly they manage to turn around their sales when we work together. Its all very simple really – I get them to specialise. So many small business owners make sales and marketing harder than necessary by following a flawed belief that if they cast their net wide they are [...]

I have been working with a lot of smaller businesses lately who were previously doing very well but their major source of income has gone from a flood, to a stream, and then down to a trickle. They are finding that what was previously selling well is now not getting much attention as their [...]

Starting up in business can be an exciting time but also a daunting time too and in the excitement of getting things going, people often overlook the obvious. Profitable sales are the lifeblood of any business and selling is a skill. Without sales there is no business and for most starting a new business there [...]

Sales is the lifeblood of any business and profitable sales is the starting point towards cash in the bank. No cash means No business. For many businesses in the recession sales provide them with their regular source of cash. Most business owners understand this intellectually and yet at some level many people who start a [...]