Columns, blogs and opinion from some of the UKs leading business opinion makers and entrepreneurs and small business owners
Employees. Always good to have them where you can see them right? To make sure they are in the door at 9am, working solidly and then out the door no earlier than 5pm? Ban Facebook from the office to make sure opportunities to skive are minimal and if we can give them clocking in/out cards, so much the better. After all, if the boss is sitting there watching their staff, productivity is almost guaranteed, isn’t it?
Getting paid is not always as easy as it should be and threatening to terminate the contract is usually a last resort. There are intermediate steps you can take as well as including some protective measures in your contract terms.
Conversations which took place in many businesses last year were all about survival, talking about how you got through it, how awful it was, and how you hoped for better fortunes next year.
The conversations happening this year could quite easily be no different…unless, that is, you do something differently.
In this article, leading Sales Expert Andy Preston explains 5 things you need to consider right now, to give yourself and your team the best chance of taking advantage of the upturn….
This article is the first of a series in which I will look at different contract terms and the sort of issues that you need to cover in your contract – or to think about in a contract you have been given to sign.
This winter there has been a lot of talk about ‘visibility’. For the purposes of this blog post, though, I’m not talking about whether you can see out of your windscreen when it has frosted over. The kind of visibility that has become a trendy subject is about being seen in the marketplace. We all know about information overload and how much competition there is for your customers’ attention, both online and offline. So being seen – in person, online, in the media – is essential. However it is dangerous to stop there.
When booking training for your organisation, what is it you are looking for? Competitive pricing, fulfilling a real need to boost staff skills, post course follow up, filling in the training requirements for your company? There are various reasons I’ve heard over the years from clients booking courses but it’s time to establish the real deal.
I nearly choked on my tea when I read a twitter link to a Daily Mail article about 64% of workers booking holidays online do so from their desks. How dare they even think it let alone actually do it. Apparently it is down to Monday Blues and in particular the Monday when everyone returns after the Christmas break.
Surely I am not the only person who finds it truly astonishing to think that employees, whilst supposedly working to earn the money to pay for their holidays, think it’s their right to do this without any recourse what so ever.
New year, new decade and so double the incentive to start 2010 with a clear vision and set of objectives for the next 12 months.
It seems that the competition between major airline operators is intensifying, perhaps as a result of losses sustained in the recession, and standards of comfort and convenience for customers are improving as a result.
As a new trading year approaches, it is going to be more important than ever for you and your business to be remembered by your customers for as long as possible. If you want to survive the coming months, remember that the key to REAL thought leadership is about how long you stay in people’s minds.
In my last article we explored the ways in which possible sales are being lost due to salespeople accepting the usual call me back after Christmas line. In this article, I will explore this further with my second tip on ways to avoid the Christmas objections.
From 28th December 2009, a new regulation affecting almost every small service business in the country, from accountants to gardeners, will come into force, but many don’t even know about it yet…
As businesses tighten their belt in a recession, the need for properly documented contracts is even more important than usual– it is well known that disputes increase when money is tight, and if you are doing business without proper contracts, you are at risk.
One reoccurring topic which always seems to crop up when speaking to business owners is ‘when is the right time to bite the bullet and take the business to the next level’? When do we stop the bootstrapping and say hello to investment? I am a firm believer that all businesses can (and in most cases, should be) boot-strapped from day one. This not only saves costs, it keeps your business lean and avoids the unnecessary ‘fat’ that one could be tempted to add if investment is gained early on.
