Blog
One of our compeitors finds out some shocking stats - read them here…
25th January, 2010
Here’s What our competitor’s Small Businesses Surevy Told Us.
During the period May to July 2009 our competitors - in a moment of rare Great Marketing - asked hundreds of small businesses to tell us about their marketing and sales abilities and budgets.
Here’s what they told us (see report) so we did something about it….. we took on a new member of the team.
Here’s What our competitor’s Small Businesses Surevy Told Us.
During the period May to July 2009 our competitor - in a moment of rare Great Marketing - asked hundreds of small businesses to tell them about their own marketing and sales abilities and budgets. We did something similar in 2009 with the local MMU.
Here’s what their customers told them:
An incredible 86% said the needed more marketing skills to grow their business
Similarly 83% said they needed more telephone sales skills to grow their business.
There’s more:
73% said they needed more face to face selling skills
61% had a sales budget under £250. Marketing budgets faired better, where 48% had a marketing budget of £250 or more.
48% said they had no sales plan
45% had a marketing plan that covered less than a few weeks ahead (in fact 31% had no marketing plan at all).
So they concluded that what small business had been waiting for was someone to show them how to use sales and marketing skills, tools and techniques so they could grow their businesses.
We thought - hmmm this is a great opportunity for some quality PR - as reporters love stats - so perhaps we will use it.
We also thought we should learn from this - it’s not just great workshops and masterclasses on marketing for small businesses that you want - its much more.
So we have taken on a great new guy - Barry Forrester – who has 15 years commercial and marketing experience including Marketing Director for GE Lighting where he worked with household names such as B&Q, Sainsbury, Homebase, and other large UK retailers and B2B wholesalers. Barry has 14 years senior marketing experience with GE (General Electric), the world’s most profitable company, and 4 years setting up small businesses, and coaching and mentoring on marketing, business strategy and entrepreneurship, for organisations such as the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, Salford university, Liverpool John Moores University, and Liverpool Hope University.
We are very proud to have him on the team – as a great marketeer.
