Archive for 2009

Is your business booming?

October 23rd, 2009 Linda Mattacks

We’ve said before that your business isn’t your life. Yet if it’s taking up a large part of your waking (and maybe even sleeping) time in this crazy economy, it ought to be contributing to you leading the best life you can.

If you wake up every day raring to go about your business that’s great – maybe you’d like to share some tips here!

If you’re more often dragging yourself out of bed, dreading the day ahead, ’shoving the reasons under the carpet’ won’t help. Here’s your chance to be honest with yourself and give them an airing:

False bravado won’t get a business through this recession and if what used to work doesn’t anymore it’s time to get creative!

  • What one, two or three things would you change about your business if you could?
  • What one, two or three things would bring back your enjoyment and help make your business soar?

Don’t worry for now about whether or how you think you could bring these about – that’s likely to stop you in your tracks – just concentrate on the ‘whats’ for now.

The ‘hows’ come later and are for us to work towards together – if you want to.

What we’re aiming for here are the biggest issues and blocks that are holding businesses back.

Once we’ve identified them we can set about systematically removing them.

Put your responses up here in the comments or, if you prefer, send me an email privately.

Is your business booming?
Posted in Business, Finance & Accounting, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales No Comments »

What’s in a name?

October 23rd, 2009 Linda Mattacks

Quite a lot, it would appear!

Our Selling For Business sales and marketing communications skills course is well established. Yet it has always been a Big Thing for the owners of micro and small businesses (that it’s aimed at helping) to take on board and commit to somebody in the company doing.

So we thought long and hard, talked to customers, business associates and fellow networkers to get their input.

As soon as one of them pointed out the fact that our training is always designed to be within the comfort zone of any delegate, it was as though a veil had lifted. The working title for that course was originally Comfort Zone Selling. We only changed it because we were transfixed back then (as was almost everyone doing any amount of their business via the Internet) with having a dot com address, which we couldn’t get. We still kept the comfort zone approach and our company name, CoZo, came directly from that

We also finally accepted that there are some people who will never be comfortable with the idea of selling, no matter how simple and pain-free we know we can make the activity.

What’s more, we now knew that those people could make huge leaps forward in their business profitability without ever overtly selling. People who take the Selling For Business course have told us they have done so even before they reached the modules on the more traditional sales communication skills.

As the result of practising what we preach, (listening to the market needs and wants and responding to them) admittedly somewhat belatedly, we now have two new courses:

Comfort Zone Soft Skills Training and Comfort Zone Selling

And guess what? People relate to them easily, see immediately what each is about and can choose which one is more relevant to their situation, their market and their needs.

Our company name now also makes a lot more sense…

If you’re having a problem with any obstacles that are making it difficult to gain acceptance from your market of something you know will help, don’t keep trying to push a snowball uphill, instead learn from our mistakes, talk to your market and sort it out sooner rather than later!

All the best

What’s in a name?
Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales, Telemarketing No Comments »

Just do it!

October 23rd, 2009 Linda Mattacks

… is a line that appears in our Build Firm Foundations course because we think Nike have got it right.

Yet it applies to anything in your life or business that you know isn’t right and needs fixing.

You’ll always be able to think of a thousand reasons (excuses) why it’s not quite the right time for you to improve your sales and marketing skills:

  • You’re too busy servicing (sometimes unprofitable) existing customers
  • You have more quotes to get out to potential customers
  • The payroll needs to be done
  • The VAT needs to be done

The list is potentially endless. Then you wonder, six months or a year down the line, why you’re in much the same position as you were, yet your competition, whom you believe in truth to be no better than you, is charging ahead.

Well maybe your competition just got smart and decided to invest a little time learning how to better position itself so that it demostrates its understanding of the target market’s problems and pains and has the best solutions for them.

Unlike my partner’s son’s line of business, this (and other areas of sales and marketing) isn’t rocket science. And you don’t need a high priced consultant to show you how to do it. Do you remember Portia Nelson?

You are the only impediment in your progress, not the demands of your customers, the quotes for potential customers, the payroll or the VAT man. If you’re not completely happy with your company’s performance isn’t it time you figured out how to fix it?

Once you start and see how it all fits neatly into place, you’ll wonder what on earth took you so long!

Just do it!
Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales, Telemarketing, Training Courses No Comments »
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