Difficult customers are so often huge missed opportunities: here’s why and what you can do about it.

You want your people to be motivated, but it’s hard to achieve: these 3 tips may really help you.

You think you’re doing all the right things, but does your customer? This is how to find out.

Measurement systems are usually dull and boring: but here are some ideas to make them energising and motivational.

How do you attract customers without giving away your margin in commission or deals? Have a look at the example we love.

Do you struggle to get found by new customers? Maybe the simple tips in this blog & podcast could help you…

Are you finding it hard to get good people and keep them motivated? This one simple secret may be an answer to your prayers.

Is it harder to run a small business than you initially thought? And more stressful? Well the good news is that there ARE simple answers: read on to find out a bit more.

Are you struggling to get customers to notice you? Sticky Marketing may be a huge help.

Are you annoyed by customers leaving bad reviews unfairly? Are you fed up with the whole idea of online reviews?

Well read on ….

How motivated are your people to wow your customer whether you’re there or not?

Not sure? Here’s some advice …

Do you get bogged down in problems and don’t know where to start?

Have a look at this idea…

Are you spending too much on marketing, without great results?

Perhaps you’re looking at it the wrong way….

Are you struggling to understand your customer?

It’s a new market out there …

There is only one thing worse than not gathering feedback, and that is to gather feedback badly.

This week’s blog is about a podcast interview I had with Tammy Whalen-Blake.

Tammy runs a movement called ‘Go to yellow’: the idea behind this is that so many people are continually running around just to get things done every day, that their life starts to lose focus and they become what she calls ‘grey people’.

Instead, she suggests that perhaps it’s a good idea to try and ‘go to yellow’.

Here are 7 small, simple inch-by-inch steps that we can all take to be much more successful in our business & finances on a day-to-day basis.

Through a chance discussion on LinkedIn, I had the enormous privilege of speaking recently with Penny Downs, Head of Customer Service at Sysco Speciality Group.

Customers will be desperate to get out, and to start interacting with local and independent businesses. We’re all fed up with Amazon and the like, and we recognise the importance and joy of good independent businesses!

So, this restart gives these businesses a magical opportunity to get and keep hordes of new customers.

​This research is very detailed and has some really helpful points, but we need to be careful not to be misled by sexy tools and impressive sounding words!

The willingness to gather, listen and respond to feedback is the key to success! So why is it that so few businesses do it well?

So many big brands have become expert at marketing … to persuade us to do and buy things that we afterwards regret, because, over the long term, we’ve realized that we’ve been misled and sold some real horse manure … but that it was so well packaged, it looked irresistible at the time!

So why might you trust us? What’s our USP?

Kindness & Principles.

By mistake, I learnt the 4 principles of ‘Slow Selling’ and like all principle-centred material, I find that, if I stick to it, it gets great results, and when I deviate, I start to head into trouble.

I was recently recording some videos for the soon to be launched ‘Slow Sellers Association’, and we were covering the issue of after-sales and customer loyalty.

It strikes me from my experiences as a customer that this is an area where so many businesses fail miserably.

In fact, I think this is perhaps the biggest hidden cost and missed opportunity out there for most organisations.

A short time ago I was lucky enough to interview Lesley Anderson from Hedgerow Marketing on Skype.
We talked about marketing and selling, and how and why people get this so wrong: especially on LinkedIn … and how to get it right.

When you understand people’s personal stories and experiences, and how these have influenced what they believe and do, you can really understand the key principles, and learn ways you can apply these principles to your own personal situation.

Here are some simple actions that are easy to do, cost nothing, and over the long term, will have a massive impact on your happiness, motivation and, of course, success.

It’s easy for people like me to say to business owners: ‘You need to focus on making sure your customer experience is really good’ But

Ok, so 2020 is over at last, and we’re raring to go for 2021 …but what, no matter how good your start of the year

When I was running my own pub and hotel business many years ago, I worked literally 7 days a week from 7am to midnight (with

How many times have you taken some training, and 3 weeks later forgotten almost everything you learned, and failed to make any permanent changes to

When I start work with a new client, invariably I spend the first couple of days looking and listening within their business, to the owners,

My son is a chiropractor. Before he qualified as a chiropractor, I guess I felt the same way as most other people about my health:

Slow Selling isn’t the only ‘Slow’ movement. There are slow cities, slow food, slow relationships, slow sex and slow parenting, to mention just a few.

I was reading the obituaries a few days ago and chanced upon the review of Eddie Van Halen’s life. I knew nothing about Eddie Van

Here’s a once in a lifetime, never to be repeated offer! Click now!!!!! How often do we hear this? And how often is it the

I cannot take credit for the title of this blog: I am a great fan of a marketing genius called Russell Brunson, and he used

Many years ago, when my wife and I owned a busy pub and hotel on the edge of Dartmoor, we wanted to do it up,

When I was working for a small independent Brewer in Salisbury called Gibbs Mew, I remember one night going out for a drink with the

This week I spent a very enjoyable 15 minutes interviewing the co Author of ‘Slow Selling’, Brendan Donnelly. We spoke about: Business success and failure.

Getting up this morning the valley was full of mist, and the hint of the start of Autumn was in the air. It was a

I recently was asked by a colleague to write a piece about ‘Slow Selling’ for Digital Agencies. It took some time, I was fairly pleased

They do say that adversity reveals the true character of a person or organisation, rather than hides it. And this can be seen in so

In my last blog, I shared some very painful memories of owning a business on the edge of bankruptcy 25 years ago – caused by

In my last blog, I mentioned that, many years ago, my wife and I had bought a large pub and B&B on the edge of

In our last blog, we outlined the power of referrals and gave you 4 steps to start setting up an effective referral system. We hope

I’m writing this blog because I’m in the middle of writing the ‘Slow Selling Guide to Referrals’ training for the Slow Sellers Association (which will

In our last blog (and podcast), we talked about ‘Where is my business going’ and we mentioned the need to be ‘flexible and innovative’: so

All the talk at the moment is of ‘how tough it is’ to keep in business and make a profit. But, if you think its

Its tough out there, especially at the moment. The only thing certain about plans is that they won’t work out exactly as planned. So, as

Over the weekend we were chatting with friends, and our friend, Andy, asked me: ‘What does Slow Selling’ do for businesses that they can’t get

In our last Blog we talked about ‘How to get people to do what you want’. Because, as a leader or manager in an independent

You’ve been there! You’ve asked someone to do something – they’ve agreed to do it … but it just hasn’t got done! Why is it

As a leader or manager in an Independent business, the buck usually stops with you. And that can be hard to deal with! Sometimes you

Everyone wants to win. If you’re a business owner, you want your business to grow, your people to be engaged and your profits to flourish.

‘Passion’ is a word often used in the context of customer attraction, sales and customer experience: passion will drive excellence and continual improvement, passion will

This is the last small idea on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much and will result in a significant benefit to you,

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

As promised, over the next 8 weeks, we’ll be sharing one small idea every week on small steps you can take, that don’t cost much

We’ve all now heard of Coronavirus: in fact, it seems that noone’s speaking of anything else at the moment. I’m sure by now that you

As a customer, we seem to be surrounded by people asking for feedback. Some do it quite well, but most do it fairly badly. And

Professional feedback systems In our last blog, we discussed that in this digital era, customers can leave their feedback anywhere, at any time. This transformation

In this digital era, customers can leave their feedback anywhere, at any time. This transformation has formed what is called The Feedback Economy, an economy

I read recently that engagement on Social Media is down almost 50% year on year. No surprises there: ever more people are shouting ever louder

Some people think they’re not in the ‘sales department’. Of course they are. They’re selling connection, communication or forward motion. They’re selling ways of thinking,

The HubSpot customer code is: SOLVE FOR THE CUSTOMER. We don’t want to satisfy them, we want to delight them. Our goal is to help

In today’s frantic marketplace it’s easy to miss the true winners.  So many organisations spend so much money advertising, hyping and interrupting across a multitude

Customer service isn’t an expensive, time-consuming obligation. It’s a strategic selling investment … if you want it to be. For example: Tesla saw that Ford

Most people have heard of the 80/20 rule, but it’s often much easier to understand it than to put it into practice. The key principle

Everyone is seeking to ‘attract customers’ … all day, in every sphere of life: we all want other people to be attracted and interested in

Everyone wants to ‘succeed’ and everyone wants to ‘win’… especially in sales! But ‘winning’ in sales 100% of the time is unrealistic … sometimes you

Every business owner or leader wants their team to be empowered: working enthusiastically and effectively and making decisions as if it were their own business.

Every business owner or leader needs to know what their customer really thinks of them. But it’s not easy to do it right and it’s

Every business owner or leader would like to grow a business … and the quicker the better. So this is a brief instruction on how

Organisations have generally noticed and started responding to the fact that customers are empowered, and don’t pay attention to their ‘official’ marketing. And one of

‘Passion’ is a word often used in the context of customer attraction, sales and customer experience: passion will drive excellence and continual improvement, passion will

All too often, when trying to promote goods and services, organisations are tempted to ‘sex up’ their promise: A ‘one time’ only offer This week

Three essential rules for effective customer feedback As a customer, we seem to be surrounded by people asking for feedback. Some do it quite well,

A short while ago I wrote an Article that had large and continual amounts of interest shown in it, so it struck me that it’d

It’s probably true to say that everyone would like to be able to charge more and everyone would like more customers… But isn’t it a

What do customers really want? Is this perhaps the ‘ultimate question’ for every sales person, manager and leader to know the answer to? Because, if

If you found this blog after a Google search, I expect you’re looking for an ‘amazing secret trick’ to get potential customers to pay more

It’s easy to know that it’s a good idea to slow down, but the real question is HOW to do it? The internet is awash

Further to my last blog ‘What is success?’, here are a few thoughts on the principles that make up ‘success’. I would suggest that the

In the perpetual race for survival and profit, every organisation basically has three choices: Stay as we are and hope for the best. Race to

We recently had some workmen repairing our roof. Whenever we have people working for us, we aim to ensure they are kept refreshed and cared

Ok: a bit of a crass question? But one that’s worth considering … and perhaps coming to a conclusion on? Otherwise: if we don’t know