Over 2000 people trained so far with a customer satisfaction rating in excess of 90%
The guiding principle behind our training is one of: “I hear and I forget, I do and I understand” so we aim to make or courses participative, practical and enjoyable and ask our participants to rate us on these criteria.
Our courses are both public and in-company. The most popular format is the one day course but two of our courses are available in three day formats providing participants with the skills and the knowledge to immediately put the learning into practice.
“A very enlightening day – great involvement by all and a
very worthy input by the tutor at the right level.”
MARKETING your BUSINESS – an integrated suite of training courses
— ONE DAY COURSES —
Every Business is a Growth Business
High on the political agenda at the moment and a concern of every business is how to generate growth in a flat economy with constraints on resources. This one day course, aimed at smaller businesses, covers the complete range of strategies available to grow the business and includes both productivity and volume strategies. The core is, as ever, marketing but the emphasis is on growth and embraces both profit growth and sales growth. In addition to the usual course notes participants are provided with a ‘Route Card for Business Growth’ which they can use to apply the principles to their own business and ’25 Business Growth Strategies’ which show how the principles have been applied in real life.
Marketing your Business
A stripped down version of our three day course held both in-company and as a public course and lasting either one or five modules of 2.5 hours. It is exciting when the course is used to help the business produce a real life marketing plan using the training modules to guide its preparation.
Promoting your Business
Small businesses struggle with the sheer number of different promotional routes available to them and are disappointed when an investment in promotion does not produce the desired result. The accusing finger usually points at targeting, creativity and the message and this course addresses all three issues. Get these right and the investment will not be wasted, get it wrong and you join the ranks of those who know that half their spend on advertising is wasted but don’t know what to do about it.
Selling your Business
For many small businesses face-to-face selling is a huge challenge. It can go against the grain and even be considered demeaning. And yet without a sale you haven’t got a business. One of the aims of this course is to demystify the face-to-face element of selling. It looks at all aspects of the sales conversation using a common sense approach as well as dealing with some of the fundamental techniques such as body language, closing, handling objections and some basic negotiating techniques.
Zero Cost Marketing
The costs of marketing a business are constantly rising but it is important to keep these in check whilst keeping on top of the task. Many business people would be surprised to learn that most marketing tasks can be undertaken using free or at least low cost resources and even resources that you have already paid for without realising their full potential. This course points you towards resources which are both proven and give the maximum pay off to the smaller business.
— THREE DAY COURSES —
5-STEP Marketing Program
This is our flagship course aimed at helping the smaller business with its marketing. We have just completed a series of Capacity Building courses in Manchester, training the equivalent of Business Link to help businesses in that country prepare for accession to the EU. The focus on smaller businesses means that it steers away from expensive or impractical techniques in favour of more hands-on interventions. The program for the course covers the marketing audit, marketing objectives, marketing strategy, and marketing tactics and concludes with participants producing a marketing plan. Click the link for more details about this course.
Business Growth Programme
In development. Please email for details.
Modules for 5-STEP and Business Growth Programme
There is flexibility within the longer format courses to vary the content depending on the needs of participants. All the modules below are designed to be of 1.5 hours duration although the Digital Marketing module may well be extended depending on the need to include SEM, SEO, Analytics and Social Marketing.
Auditing your marketing activity
NPD and innovation
Segmentation and targeting Business growth route card Marketing strategy The marketing of services Social marketing Researching your markets Direct marketing Consultative selling skills Advertising & Promotion Zero cost marketing Digital marketing (inc SEO, SEM, Analytics and PPC) 25 Business growth strategies The sales pipeline Marketing products versus services
Some of the more well-known organisations we have trained for or trained in:
Public courses for:
Advanced Manufacturing Centre, Association of Accounting Technicians, Business Link, Chambers of Commerce, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Essex Business Centre, European Union, Manufacturing Advisory Service, Princes Trust, Professional Training Centre.