Advice on growing your small and medium sized business, SME, in the UK. Hiring and managing staff and finance plus marketing all on one website
There is a worrying tendency that has developed over the years for a level of ‘being promoted to the level of your incompetence’ to become ever more widespread. We’re taking a look at public and motivational speakers and wondering what qualifies us for the title.
Customer service is a crucial way to differentiate your business and increase its robustness to weather out the current economic uncertainties. Rather than just examining best practice, examine and learn from any examples of poor customer service you experience yourself to stimulate improvements in your own business.
As the new year has arrived many businesses will be taking a fresh look at their operating costs in light of the tough financial conditions that 2010 had to offer, and which show no immediate signs of improving.
Follow these tips to ensure that your business doesn’t get the ‘call me back after Christmas’ objections, and make sure that in January you can still get hold of them!
The office Christmas party season will be in full swing this week, with 65% of workers attending on average two work events over the next few days. However this revelry will cost UK business £620 million, due to hung-over Britons pulling a ‘Hangover Sickie’.
Websites are no longer simply the online ‘face’ of a business. Customers expect more from a company’s website than a home page. To use an analogy of buying a house, how many people make a purchase based on how attractive they find the outside of a building? Buyers want to be able to enter a home, have a good look around and get a feel of a house, before making a purchase decision
In one of the largest UK settlements to date, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has settled with a media hosting company following an investigation into its use of unlicensed software. The investigation was launched after the BSA was tipped-off by a former employee. The company paid in excess of £100,000 in damages, in addition to paying a significant amount to purchase legal copies of Microsoft and Adobe software.
New research has revealed that nearly two million of UK small businesses are set to move to international markets over the next year, with a third claiming overseas economies are increasingly more welcoming to small businesses than here in the UK.
Let me explain why so many business owners and salespeople get the ‘call me back after Christmas’ objections, only to find in January that they can’t get hold of the person ever again!
If you don’t actively manage your customer base, you’ll end up diluting your resources for growth. If you want your company to grow you need to decide what sort of clients you want – so how do you pin point those that are worth keeping?
Over half of UK small business owners will turn to their husband, wife or partner before anyone else for straight talking business advice, according to a national survey of small business owners published today. Spouses and partners were preferred to accountants, trade bodies or other local businesses and bank managers.
The winners of the 2010 NatWest everywoman Awards, which recognise the success of the UK’s most inspirational female business owners, have been announced at a glittering lunch in London at the eighth annual award ceremony. celebrates successful entrepreneurs who are playing their part in helping to pull the UK out of recession and acting as inspirational role models for the next generation of aspiring business women.
Stay-at-home mums, who feel under attack by a Government that is clawing back their Child Benefit, are restoring their financial independence by creating businesses at home according to entrepreneur Krista Waddell
The boss of a leading Derbyshire based manufacturing company has issued a rallying call for UK manufacturing firms to pull together to help boost output and prevent work going abroad.
You’ve got great plans for your business, fabulous ideas for new products or services, a marketing strategy that just can’t fail – and yet despite your best intentions you haven’t actioned any of them.
