The latest news affecting small and medium sized (SME) businesses in the UK
Enterprise UK’s eagerly anticipated annual Make Your Mark with a Tenner campaign is doubling in size, offering twice as many students the opportunity to make money and make a difference with a £10 loan. Thanks to a grant of £250,000 from the Big Lottery Fund there will be more opportunities than ever this year for young people to flex their entrepreneurial muscles; making a profit and social impact.
Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group have been criticised by a committee of MPs for failing to lend enough businesses.
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….
There is growing speculation that should the Conservatives win the forthcoming general election they would increase Vat from 17.5 percent to 20 percent to cut the country’s record deficit.
Doug Richard, the ex-dragon and founder of the School for Startups, has written a manifesto for enterprise to be published this week. In it Mr Richard will say that present Government policies hinder innovation and stifle economic development, with his most damning suggestion is that the Government’s Business Link venture, which is supposed to support small and medium-sized enterprises, should be dismantled.
David Cameron has announced that a Conservative government, should his party win the forthcoming election later this year, will be pro-business and pro-entrepreneurs.
Speaking, this morning on the Andrew Marr show on BBC1, he outlined a number of plans to ensure that British business overcomes the current global recession and ensures that it becomes one of the best places to start, run and grow, a business in the world.
The freezing weather conditions and snow have forced millions of people to stay at home, with road and school closures preventing them from working. With the bad weather set to continue for another three weeks, insurer RSA predicts that a day of severe snow could cost the UK economy as much as £690million a day as businesses lose out to the weather.
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.
It is being widely rumoured that Lord Mandelson is to announce an extra bank holiday in the UK in 2012 to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee. Her Majesty will have her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 when the Queen will also be celebrating her 86th birthday.
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.
