Blogging

I intend to write in this blog a bit more but I've decided that I'm also going to blog about stuff that is of interest to me & not just stuff about the company.

This is because (1) I don't think any reads my blog anyway, therefore its just an elongated method of talking to myself so I might as well find it interesting and (2) were anyone sad enough to be reading my blog, they might also find it interesting.

When I say 'interesting to me', I apologise in advance if my threshold of excitement is significantly lower than yours, the average human being with a fulfilling life!

I also promise no more blogs about blogging, because that is sad....

Beer

I get to work with some brilliant companies in this job but very few products as enticing as beer!

Luckily this week I began some work with local micro-brewer, Acorn Brewery (http://www.acorn-brewery.co.uk).

What is a straight forward product (beer) and a straight forward customer base (pubs) is still a very volatile market (pubs closing across the UK) and when some of your competition have marketing budgets running into the millions (think of your favourite mass produced tipple) things can be quiet difficult.

Acorn Brewery do have fantastic quality ales and some large pubs chains who sell several of their products. Here's hoping we can get Acorn's sales to the next level and stay relatively sober along the way....

BNI

After years of voicing a rather negative opinion about the networking group BNI, I have now been indoctrinated and joined the new group formed at Darrington!

I had attended a couple of BNI groups in the past as a guest and decided that I didn't want to join something so regimented and cultish, however, something kept coming to my attention. Some people I know in business, intelligent and interesting business people at that, all said that they did really well out of BNI.....

When I yielded to Martin Havenhand's (http://www.ccmsgroup.co.uk) to attend a new group being formed at Darrington I thought I knew what to expect. What I didn't expect was that the group were actually a good laugh and I realised that this was what BNI had always been missing for me. Business with a smile on its face!

As I've finally dusted off my signing pen and joined the group has now hit its 20 member launch requirement and we start in earnest next week.

I'm looking forward to my BNI adventure and to hopefully meet some fantastic new clients. If you want to come along for a visit at some point, give me a bell.... if 6:30 on a Friday morning is your thing of course...

Hello 2011

Well, I haven't blogged since January last year so I shall make a better effect to talk to myself throughout this year. Who knows, it could turn out to be rather therapeutic...

I hoped that 2010 would be the Year of Awesome as we grew the outsourcing side of SOUL and it didn't fair too badly at all. As well as my long serving and loyal puppy Richard, we were joined by James Exley, a man with 417 years of sales experience and Jon Landon a boy with 4 minutes of sales experience but someone who we are moulding into a more coherent and relatively useful adult....

2011 promises to be an even greater year than 2010 in the life of SOUL. We've suffered through our growing pains and now we're hearing helping some fantastic businesses improve and increase their sales (see our 'clients' page for links to some of the brilliant companies we've worked with).

So, I'll just take this opportunity to wish you all the best for 2011 and hope that your business does flourish in spite of the fact that we now have to hand deliver 96.4% of all revenue directly to George Osborne in cash!

Happy Selling!