Business Growth Power Pack

Put strategy versus tactics in a boxing ring and strategy gets a knockout every time. That was the thought that ran through my mind as I discussed this very subject with a potential client. And yet that isn’t obvious to an ambitious, or desperate, business owner. Many times a business owner wants to have a [...]

The junior apprentice teams reverted back to boys (Instinct) against girls (Revolution). The task? To choose a bottled water to brand and sell. And as is usual in the final the finalists got to choose the people who’d been fired in the previous rounds. The end result was that Revolution was composed of girls, except [...]

Tim gets to demonstrate his project management skills, or does he?

Junior Apprentices make a complete cake of selling cup cakes in Selfridges

Junior Apprentices create Slide Stuff and Flex n Store. Find out which gets the most orders and who gets fired and whether it’s fair…

Does anyone truthfully know the reason for the growth of Internet marketing? I remember in the early days web sites were very unsophisticated and shopping karts and Paypal and Google didn’t work like they do now. People seemed to have very little trust that the Internet would deliver the goods they chose and bought. There [...]

I’ve just heard from a friend that there is to be no funding for social media training. Interesting… Internet marketing has radically changed the way we all do business. Social media is one component of that. It’s the newest and it too has the ability to change the way you do business. And it’s not [...]

Rob Shoesmith’s iPhone app called ‘Problem Halved’ has sold over 3.7m copies at just a dollar each. Shoesmiths success is the inspiration behind the launch of a free course to teach 18-24 year olds, based in Manchester, how to create cutting-edge mobile phone applications. THE WHITE ROOM is launching the unique course to help budding [...]

Social Media Marketing or social marketing as it’s becoming better known has actually been around for quite a few years now. It’s not just Twitter or LinkedIn. Social marketing also covers blogging, which only really started in December 1997 and started to take off much later around 2003/2004. Similarly Twitter started in March 2006 and [...]

Social Media Marketing – the workshop to workout whether to do it, what to do and how.

Social media strikes fear into company executives hearts. It raises many fearful questions, some of which may be in your head right now… Questions like: Q1 How can we prevent employees spilling the beans about what happens inside our company? Q2 What about if our customers leave negative comments? Q3 Isn’t it a gift to [...]

Social media hype drips from the keyboard of many enthusiasts. Yes, it’s a way of developing a conversation, yes it’s a way of improving rapport and yes it’s possible to display your expertise. However, without making sales, or promoting sales the whole exercise with social media is pointless and a complete waste of time. Remember [...]

Manchester has an interesting funding arrangement at the moment. It’s called Creative Credits. Creative Credits aims to help Manchester SME businesses get creative input from other businesses registered on the Creative Credits gallery on their web site. The way it works is as follows: Creative Credits As A User Initially eligible users register on the [...]

Heraklietos a Greek philosopher, a native of Ephesus, Ionia and a staunch believer in change said: Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up [...]

Yes, those canny Apprentices completely fail to get the point of the task. Which is to value the 10 items and then sell them at better than the value where possible.

Wonder who should be in a proposal team? Wonder no more!

Social networking pioneers lament that too many use social networking for marketing or Search engine optimisation. Some I’ve seen say they believe that marketing is pushing out the relationships constructed through social media sites, before marketing was used. And yet good marketing is all about building relationships with the people you know are the right [...]

Social networking pioneers lament that too many use social networking for marketing or Search engine optimisation. Some I’ve seen say they believe that marketing is pushing out the relationships constructed through social media sites, before marketing was used. And yet good marketing is all about building relationships with the people you know are the right [...]

Your business, every business, faces issues at the moment because of the fear generated through the current economy. That fear has slowed demand and made some organisations delay orders to their suppliers and consumers put off their own purchases. We can all see it simply by watching the news every day. In fact now is [...]

Marketing myths get propagated around businesses. I’m going to pick on two and debunk them. If you want you can debunk your favourite marketing myths in the comments. "Referrals Are The Best Source Of Customers" It’s true that referrals are a great source of customers. And there’s no doubt that they are more loyal and [...]