Archive for the ‘Market/Marketing Research’ Category

One for the ladies (apart from the freebie: that’s for all!)

August 5th, 2010 Linda Mattacks

The FREEBIE

The offer of a 15 minute telephone consultation on anything to do with growing your business – that’s open to all – guys and gals: All you do is pay whatever your telecom provider charges you.

What’s becoming abundantly clear is that I was by no means the only one to completely miss where my real value was when I set up in business for myself – see What do YOUR customers buy from you? for more of the story…

If you‘re not crystal clear about the value you offer and what it’s worth to your market, 15 minutes will give you a good start.

If you already have that clarity but you’re still not getting the rewards you believe you deserve, we’ll use the 15 minutes to brainstorm why that may be so and suggest what you can do to start putting it right.

On the other hand, if you’re already really happy with the way you earn your living, the lifestyle it affords you and the value you provide in return, then maybe you can share some of your tips with our visitors ;-) …

Now, as promised, One for the ladies:

womans_work
I recently found myself on Lesley Kershaw’s mailing list for her site WomansWork so I had a look and then we had a conversation about it.

The site lists networking clubs, resources, other useful sites and local businesses – all for women in business. And each month Lesley sends out a newsletter to subscribers letting them know about free training, grants and events in their area – she’s already covering 11 counties in England.

It’s a free service, so if you’re based in any of these 11 counties you might want to bookmark the site and/or sign up for the newsletter :-)

And please let me know about any other good sites you see…

One for the ladies (apart from the freebie: that’s for all!)
Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales, Share and Trade Skills - New 201- No Comments »

What do YOUR customers buy from you?

April 20th, 2010 Linda Mattacks

Do you really know the answer?

Do they buy

  • IT equipment & support?
  • Management consultancy?
  • Marketing services?
  • Accountancy service?
  • Legal advice?
  • Courier service?
  • Web design?
  • Web SEO?
  • Sales training?
  • Sales & marketing communications training?
  • Business coaching?
  • Widgets?
  • Plumbing?
  • Clothes?
  • Shoes?

If your customers are buying any of the above from you, you are providing a commodity; they’ll buy on price and convenience and will be wooed by the next temptress who comes along…

You might as well learn from my experience and save yourselves the aggro of having to go through it. It took a very good client who would put any new sales person through one of my courses to remove the veil from my eyes a couple of years ago:

“I could buy sales training from any number of sources.” (Boy! That hurt!)

“I couldn’t easily get elsewhere what you bring to my business…”

Round about the same time I explained what I did to a savvy business guy:

I provide blended learning, tailored sales & marketing communications courses primarily for small businesses where the in-house expertise was in the core offering (often technical) of the business rather than the ’soft’ skills that are also essential to grow the business.

He then swiftly burst my bubble and explained what I’d got wrong:
“Fabulous idea. Great service. Trouble is these people won’t value it at a price that’s worth your while: Wrong price. Wrong market.”

These people don’t want courses on how to sell ethically: That’s fine down the line when they’ve grown sufficiently to employ dedicated sales reps and/or telephone sales people: They’ll buy your courses or somebody else’s for them. What they want is help on how to make it easy for people to buy from them.”

And do you know what? Not only was he right, it was actually so much easier! They didn’t need to learn all those sales techniques I’d put together, with examples of how to use them, tailor them for their business and make them work.

Now we invest time getting the basics right and the rest, with a bit of effort, slot into place relatively easily.

My savvy business friend’s advice to me was FREE. So I’ll do the same for you:

Email me: desk (at) smallbusinesstraining (dot) co (dot) uk

Or pick up the phone (office hours, 9 – 5, Monday to Friday, excluding Bank Holidays) for a FREE 15 minute consultation on what your customers should be buying from you…

Linda Mattacks - Small Business Training

What do YOUR customers buy from you?
Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales Tags: 1 Comment »

Time to spring clean YOUR business?

March 23rd, 2010 Linda Mattacks

Don’t adjust your set!

Regular visitors will notice changes to the look and feel of this site over the coming days.

We took a long hard look at the theme and had to admit that what seemed really cool before quite frankly had become dated. And it didn’t allow us to easily add the exciting extras you want and we want to provide you :-( .

So, sleeves up and revamp time.

Most of the changes will go on offline behind the scenes until the changeover is ready. However, there may well be some components that need to alter first – as part of the Work In Progress… so it would be great if you cut us a bit of leeway!

2 more things:

  1. Are you 100% happy with the way your own business is represented on and offline? We all need all the advantages we can get in this economy…
  2. What specific business issues would you like to see covered here?

Let us know what you’d like to see featured over the coming weeks

We’re talking to owners of all different kinds of small businesses, asking what the main issues are right now.

Here’s your opportunity to flag up the ones facing your industry – and have a chance to get answers here – so go for it!

Time to spring clean YOUR business?
Posted in Business, Market/Marketing Research, Marketing, Sales Tags: No Comments »
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