The GRID business network in West Yorkshire has asked The NAKED Marketing Company to provide a free learning workshop to its members on 3 things you can do in 3 days to improve the bottom line.

During a 2-hour mini-Workshop, delegates will learn:

• How to control business costs
• How to make more money, increase profitability and grow a business
• How to Increase the number, frequency & value of sales

The event will be on Thursday October 5 starting at 1.00pm at GRID, Low Moor Business Park, Bradford.  It’s free to members and tenants of GRID.

For info on other Workshops and events from The NAKED Marketing Company, click here.  

For more info on 3 things you can do in 3 days to improve the bottom line, click here

“Mind your Own Business!” is the Workshop for any business owner/manager who wants to take their business – and themselves – to the “next level”

Renowned motivational speaker and clinical hypnotherapist Gary Blonder presents: Banish the doubt that’s stopping you from succeeding! + Award-winning business growth specialist Philip J Gwynne presents: How to “read the minds” of customers so that you can get more people to buy more from you

When:  Thursday, September 23 2010 3.30pm-7.30pm. Where:  GRID, Low Moor Business Park, off M606, Bradford South.

£40/place. Bring a friend, colleague or business associate @ £40 and GET YOUR OWN PLACE FOR FREE. Places must be reserved by September 20.

Unleash your inner sales star!

Get more people to buy more from you… WITHOUT NEEDING TO “SELL” TO THEM.

Thursday September 16 2010. 8.00am-12.00pm

NOW @ HALF PRICE!

This ½ day workshop is for: Business owners and managers who have to be the sales person, but who don’t have much knowledge, experience or training in how to sell.

If you’re a business owner or manager who needs to sustain and grow a successful business you probably have to be “the sales team” as well. But unless you come from a sales background… or have some knowledge, experience or training in sales… then “selling” is something you’ve probably never needed to do before. And – as you may have discovered – trying to sell can be demoralising, disappointing and downright hard work!

But what if there was another way… a better and easier way… a way to get more people to buy more from you… a way that showed you that you don’t need to learn “how to sell” because there’s a “sales star” inside of all of who is capable of attracting people to our goods or services and then persuading them to buy from us.

Unleash your inner sales star! covers:

• Anyone can be a “natural” salesperson. Given the right direction and encouragement.
• How to harness the  “natural” salesperson in yourself and your staff
• Make the most of every encounter with a customer or someone you want to be a customer
• How and why people buy stuff… and how to use that understanding to let them buy more stuff from you.

Thursday September 16 2010 @ The Gumption Business Centre, Bradford. Morning workshop 8.00am-12.00. How much: Usual cost £99* per delegate. *Now half price = Only £49 for “friends of Gumption Centre” Places must be reserved by September 10 

“Times are tough right now – I know I ought to be looking at things like marketing and promotion but I don’t really have the time or money.” How many people do you know who are so busy working for their business, they’re neglecting to work on their business?

• Jan D, Director, Commercial Recruitment and Consultancy: I’m sure there are business people who neglect working on their business and if they are not, then they shall probably suffer. The last two years have been extremely tough for a lot of businesses, recruitment very much included in that. However we are surviving and I am using my fantastic business contacts to continue with the marketing strategy that has been developed with their support and guidance and this gives me a focus and a structure for the coming year. So do use your business contacts and others to help you within your business, it may well encourage you to continue.
• Jonathan S, marketing: I think quite often, particularly when people have time on their hands, they waste too much time trying to do those jobs that are not playing to their talents. The leaders of small businesses in particular tend be either talented in terms of their passion for their ideas/product, finance or marketing but it’s rare to come across someone who is talented in all three. My advice would always be to focus on those areas of strength whilst seeking assistance and guidance where it may be helpful. Getting sound ideas from a third party is often a good starting point and equally running more developed ideas through a third party can also be very useful. I would stress that whilst folk like you (Philip) and I are happy to help we both have to put dinner on our tables, a quick chat at a GRID networking event should help to give some direction, but I’d hope people would find paying (a nominal amount) for some quality time of ours would be of even more use. Equally if anyone’s got any burning issues these on-line discussions throw up some interesting ideas too, so I’d also encourage others to start discussion circles too 

From time to time I get flurries of spam gibberish via my website contact us box. It doesn’t “get in” because of my spam filter. But should I delete it, or does that send a signal to the sender that there’s “someone home” so they’ll be encouraged to send some more?

YOU SAID:

• Benyamin F, direct marketing specialist: If you give them the impression that you received the message, they will keep sending you spam email. So for example if you click on a link in the message or load the images in HTML emails then yes the spammer will most likely be aware that you have checked the email at some stage. One benefit of my setup is that it allows me to see who simply opens an email I have sent so I assume there will be spammers out there that can do the same.
• Philip W • Deleting the spam is not going to alert anyone to your existence – so delete away! Emails that contain images will notify senders if you view the images in that email, hence why popular email packages such as Outlook have image downloads turned off by default. Since the spam you are receiving has come from your own website, this is very unlikely to be the case. The problem is likely to get worse for you unfortunately. There are a number of simple ways around this though that you may wish to try yourself or get the poeple that manage your website to implement. The easiest barrier to erect, is to have an additional field on the form in your website, that requires a specific word or phrase to be entered into it. Make sure as part of the form that you instruct the person completing it as to what to enter into that box. A programmer will then need to modify the script that takes the contents of your form and converts it to an email, to only do so if that element of the form contains the correct phrase. This will reduce the spam to zero instantly. If your site proves popular though, the spammers will modify their code to do this, and back comes all the spam. You would then need to consider more advanced methods such as “Captcha”, or having a script that only accepts a submission if enough time has been taken to complete the form (a spamming bot would complete the form much quicker than a real person – unfeasibly quickly).

*** A big THANK YOU to everyone who sent notes just saying “delete it”. I’m more reassured now that the senders  of spam cannot get back to me somehow…