Browsing all posts in "sales".
The No 1. Trait I want from my staff
Someone asked me today, “Alastair, what’s the number one trait you expect or want from your staff”. Hmm interesting – this made me think very hard. Some of the obvious ones sprang to mind immediately: Honesty Integrity Skilled Motivated Hard Working They all came close. Do you know what I ended up answering and on [...]
From a stable job to a start-up business
This week I spent some time interviewing friend and now supplier of my firms book-keeping services, Ben Didier about starting his own business earlier this year. Why did you choose to go it alone? I have always wanted my own business, ever since I was young. For me it was the plan from the start [...]
The Sale ain’t made ’til the bill is paid!
It’s funny, almost every one of us would celebrate making a sale – and so we should, it’s a big thing, but it’s not the whole deal and never forget that!!! Strong opening statement? It’s probably not strong enough… You only have a complete deal when you’ve made a sale, done the work and then [...]
5 traits successful business people have – do you have these?
Missed a week due to travel folks so firstly apologies for that – clearly my first trait should be the inability to keep an appointment with ones blog OK so there are probably hundreds of things you need to be successful in business but I’ve been day dreaming this last week and working out my [...]
Time for Reflection
As a small business owner it’s all to easy to get completely consumed by your business. I didn’t take a single holiday for at least the first five years, I worked through weekends and spent every hour I could in the office during the week just to keep things going. It’s what you do when [...]
5 Excellent Experiences
Not enough people write/talk about excellent experiences in my opinion. It seems its much easier to write negatively about poor quality & service than it is to praise people. This is such a shame – if you read and hear negative comments everywhere then its going to have a negative impact on your own attitude. [...]
It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you!
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited by thebestof to attend a seminar by legendary American sales trainer Jeffrey Gitomer in London. Not really sure what to expect, I booked my place purely on Nigel Botterill’s (CEO of thebestof) account of him. I have a great deal of respect for Nigel as a businessman [...]
All in a Name
Do you know what, sometimes I’m absolutely amazed at how on earth people spell my name! Ok, so Alastair can be spelt a number of ways, there is Alistair (probably the most common variation), then my spelling (Alastair), then, if you’re truly Scottish you’d spell with it a ‘D’ – Alasdair. Everyday, someone emails me [...]
