The other day I got a call from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company.
SEO companies are all the rage at the moment. In a nutshell, they help you to get to the top of the search engine listings. Not the paid stuff, the natural listings.
I get at least one call per day from […]

One Minute Pause no 26
Today, marketing people and business owners come under fire from consumers for “new age” marketing and sales techniques that are deemed as too intrusive.
But I don’t think marketing or selling techniques have changed that much at all in the past 200 years or probably 2000 years.
Here’s a couple of examples:
PESTER POWER
One […]

This article was written as a feature for Marketing Week.

Steve Jobs can tell a great story - which helps him to create more understanding, and ultimately, sell computers and i-pods by the truckload. There’s a subtle dig at Mr Gates in there as well…

One Minute Pause no 23
A good argument at work, around a dinner table or at the pub seems to be a national past time.
But what strikes me is that winning an argument, and persuading the other party to come around to your way of thinking, are two completely different things.
During arguments people can get railroaded […]

One Minute Pause No 24
One balmy night in Melbourne I was one of 12,000 people who went along to see Dr John Gray give a presentation.
Gray, author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” had been held up at the airport.
Gray’s warm-up guy had run out of material 10 minutes ago, […]

One Minute Pause no 25
The concept of online grocery shopping is confusing to some of Sainsbury’s loyal consumer base.
Which is why uptake of the service has been slower than expected - easier to nip down and queue up for the weekly shopping.
So the clever bods at Sainsbury’s boiled down the concept of online […]

A good few years ago I cut my teeth in training working for a brilliant trainer who had a simple mantra:
“When training people, just help them to understand.”
He drew a road on a piece of paper. There was a big billboard down the end of the road with the word “understanding” written on it.
He […]

With the ever increasing competition in the hedge fund industry as well as recent concerns about stability and performance, the ability to present and sell your company well in the Alternative Investment Market has never been so important.
Feena Coleman, Director of AIM Presentation Skills specialist Natural Training looks at the three factors that will give […]

One Minute Pause no 22
One of the basic causes of nerves when standing up to present is the thought that one or two people in the audience are going to ask you a difficult question, or be in some way noisy or troublesome.
Prior to the presentation it is common to react by getting anxious that […]