Looking for inspiration to help your small business develop and move in the right direction?  You might not have thought it at first, but television show ‘The Voice’ could be that inspiration and here we look at what you can learn from the show to help improve your small business. Offer something different…but not too different The basis of The Voice is it’s a talent show. [...]

As a small business owner, it’s highly likely you think of your small business as a baby. You’ve brought it into this world, cared for it, nurtured it and dedicated what seems like every waking hour of your life to it to ensure it develops. It’s because of this why, understandably, you can become very overprotective of it, something that becomes all that more apparent when you look [...]

A few weeks ago, I talked about customer complaints and how to deal with them, limiting the problems often associated with complaints from customers. Today, I want to provide an insight into how any small business can take advantage of a complaining customer, whether they’ve passed on a slightly negative comment while being served or they’ve raised a formal complaint after an experience [...]

Progression is almost always a stumbling block in one way or another for businesses, either because they don’t know exactly how to move to the next level or they believe it will happen naturally – something that although essentially true, very often requires a helping hand. One of the most difficult progression periods for many is the movement from being a one-person outfit to a small business [...]

As a small business owner, growing your business is extremely exciting and interesting, as generally speaking, the development of any business results in more sales, in turn resulting in a greater turnover. However, with business development comes the important factor of needing to employ people, something that while also exciting, can be extremely difficult to get right. As with all job vacancies, [...]

All small business owners have one thing in common – they are very protective over their business. Although this is great in some respects, it can mean that they view their business through rose tinted glasses, often not seeing when changes need to be made. And in some instances, it’s not just small changes that need to be made, with substantial ones often required, with these three points [...]

Take a look at the world’s must successful businesspeople and you’ll see that although they are very often in the limelight and regarded as the sole person responsible for the success of their organization(s), the truth is, more often than not, they have a dedicated team around them. Take British entrepreneur Lord Alan Sugar as an example.  Amassing a fortune of over £770m ($1.1 billion), [...]

To succeed in any given industry, every business needs to connect with their customers. For some businesses, this is relatively easy – businesses that have customer-facing staff, for example, will train and develop these members of staff to provide the best quality customer interaction and experience as possible. For those businesses where there are no customer-facing staff – such as those [...]

Launched in May 2003, LinkedIn has revolutionized the way we network, allowing for each and every one of its 80 million users to create their own professional network of friends and colleagues. And whilst this is LinkedIn’s most basic use, it has developed so extensively over the past seven years that it has become so much more than a place for you to link up with past and present colleagues, [...]

No matter whether you operate an internet based service from your bedroom or you have a small retail unit and employ two or three members of staff, there are two things that every small business needs to be able to develop and expand – time and money. The first, time, is something that you can create yourself.  By reorganizing your calendar and pencilling in a few hours each week to be able [...]