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How to do Business.

We offer ideas, tools and white papers, and training and consultancy to help you grow your business. Our products evolved from research into small business behaviour carried out for organisations like the EU Leonardo project, the UK DTI, HP and PCWorld. All supplemented by our own experience of 25 years running growth businesses in IT, Business Training, Internet trading and horticulture. You can read about our track record in Small Business Research

We're currently doing a research project on networking. If you would like to take part you can take the survey here - it will take about 5 minutes to complete as its mainly ticking boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Growing businesses need a strong vision and set of values that customers connect with supported by five key skill sets. We think these are

• How to develop and launch new products and services
• How to use information technology to improve delivery and promotion
• How to lead teams to deliver results
• How to develop a convincing story to promote the businesses we develop
• How to track how well you're doing

Innovation is a way of life for successful businesses. Successful business people know that they're in an everchanging landscape and they organise themselves to deal with it, whether they are a one man band consultancy or a high growth company achieving sustained 25% compound annual growth.

So we developed some programmes and materials to help companies innovate in marketing, people and technology.

Business Growth issues

Going for growth involves clear transitions.

Once you get your first staff and the business starts to work, you will expand, get premises and get some systems in place. This is the first transition - the dawn of formality. Once you get past about 5 people you have become a proper company - and will need advice on how to structure yourself to comply with the demands of customers, suppliers and government. You need just enough structure and that's hard to balance.

To get past 10 you need a small core team. It's very hard - only 1600 companies a year get through this barrier because it means changing the way you behave. The good news is that you will be set to grow to the next level once you pass it. We have products to help you understand and manage the team building dynamic you need to set in motion.

Then once you've got the business model proved you have to scale it. This involves integrating systems, people and marketing skills to drive the business forward to the point where you can either sell it or take it global.

Our programmes will help you with these transitions. while balancing the key attributes that make a business successful.

Our Business Growth Programmes

Workshops

Punch Above Your Weight - is designed to help you look bigger on-line. We’ll show you how to: discover the all important key-words that you need to develop your story and connect you with your customers in their language. We go on to show you how to

• use blogging and tagging to spread the word and magnify your impact
• maximise traffic to your site with a little judicious search engine optimisation
• create and embed audio and visual material to add punch to your story
• use on-line networking, profiles and affiliations to multiply your presence
• use RSS to tie together all your online presence so that information you’ve created in one place can be sent somewhere else.

We’ll use examples from some early adopters we interviewed to show how everyday businesses are using these techniques to Punch above their Weight.

The next workshops are at the Hurtwood Inn, Peaslake near Guildford on the 31st July and at the Hub, 5 Wormwood St , London, EC2M 1RQ on Tuesday 16th September. follow this link to book . It's £135 +VAT for a full day. Price includes materials and our e-book.

We're also running a morning only event at the Management School, Southampton University on 6th June. This one-off event is only £60+ VAT. You can book here.

Vision and Branding. All you need to know about developing a compelling brand. Run in Conjunction with Sussex Enterprise - next event is on 7th October with a further one on 22nd January. You can book here.

Strategic Marketing, Designed as an in-house workshop. Will help you develop your vision and brand by establishing what your story is and where you are going to tell it. On-line, in person and in writing. Also covers the fundamentals of developing your product portfolio.

Courses

1 Man Brand. Small Business Marketing Course that covers what's your story and telling it on line, face to face and in writing. Additional modules cover PR, exhibitions and workshops, copywriting and research and new product development.

Growing Your Business 3 module distance learning course covering Business development, IT development and Market Development. A primer for the growing business. Order here.

Books, white papers and e-books

Punch Above Your Weight The e-book of the course £15 + VAT

Business-Wise Words of Wisdom from 20 seasoned entrepreneurs to those starting out. We wrote the marketing chapter. You can buy it here.

Abandoned Heroes Report on how small businesses use IT to run more effectively £15 + VAT

Growing your Business. E-book of the course £15 + VAT

20 Business Stories (coming soon) Pre-orders £8 + VAT

Consultancy

Get Started

We offer get you started programmes in Ad-Words, Blogging, using social networks and other on line marketing genres. These take the form of a 3 day programme spread over a couple of months in which we will set up a campaign for you, train you in how to do it yourself and organise a professional handover.

Strategic Marketing .

Market Research and New Product Development

Mobile and Flexible working

Consultancy on these topics is available on a daily rate. Please telephone 0845 094 0407 to discuss what you need doing.

We've laid the site out so you can quickly find what you need. There are sections on Leadership and Marketing while IT and systems are covered under the First Business or Growing Business sections. Under "resources" you'll find lots of useful materials and books we recommend. Find out more about our workshops and distance learning programmes here.

 

Our founder, Dr Alan Rae is a chartered fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, an associate of the Market Research Society and an accredited workwise adviser. You can look at his Ecademy Profile and Testimonials or follow his ideas on the How to do Business Blog

We have 3 other sites that may interest you. One sells plants for presents. the other is about research and training programme development. 1 Man Brand offers a complete sales and marketing training programme for small businesses while Punch above Your Weight is about how to promote yourself on-line.