Hi!

After a successfully restful Easter break, it's time to put aside the chocolate eggs and start champing at the bit to get back to your businesses.

New term, new focus

… that's why we've invited Trese Rowe back again, after inspiring us about how to win more sales last year, this time to talk to you about ‘What do you do to help your clients to buy?'. Listen to her expertise, associate it within your sales processes, and then go out and put it into practice!

New term, membership due

… so if you're coming to the April meeting, just bring an extra £35 with you and you'll be able to get all the benefits of membership for another year. If you haven't been for a while, come along anyway and ask how membership to TBC can help you and your business; I'm sure the existing members will certainly be able to fill you in!

New term, new promotion

… by sponsoring this newsletter to help spread the word about your business. The cost is just £30 per issue to include an article, and we publish 24 issues a year, sending it to over 200 local businesses every time. If you'd like to know more, send an email to the newsletter team.

Therefore we look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 13 April, 6.30pm at The George in Wallingford. To book your place at the meeting, send us an email here.

Best wishes,

The Tuesday Business Club Team

What do you do to help your clients buy?

All of us who run small businesses are also salespeople, although we might not think so, like to sell or have a structured approach to it. Nevertheless, being able to give clients what they want, on your terms is an important component of running a successful business.

Understanding how prospects/clients buy is a vital to sales success and developing a growing business. During this session you will be introduced to the Buying Ladder. We'll discuss where your prospects/clients are on the Buying Ladder and how you can influence their way up it.

This session will be interactive and practical and audience responses will be used to keep the content relevant.

Having started her own business in 1996, Trese Rowe founded Amplia in 2001 and now works with a team of trusted partners and associates to support clients in achieving their goals. Having begun her career in HR in retailing, Trese has over 20 years' sales, management and training experience, gained in leading edge businesses such as Whitbread, Coca Cola and Walkers. Amplia's associates have experience and expertise in customer service, marketing, category management, HR and IT.

Is your marketing joined up?

Last week I ran a couple of workshops at a business event and we talked about all sorts of different marketing activities. We talked about the fact that whatever marketing you do, it should all be joined up, planned and on-going.

By the time I got to my desk the following day, numerous people who attended the event had tweeted about it, to say thank you for the advice we gave. We sent a special issue of our email newsletter to people who came to the event, giving them a link to a free Marketing Plan template on our website. (Click here if you'd like the Marketing Plan template.) Then we tweeted about the template, so anyone could download it. As a result, the number of people who visited our website last week shot up, as did the number of subscribers to our newsletter.

Since the event, we've blogged about it, and the posts have been automatically tweeted. Our latest tweet goes onto our website and our LinkedIn profile.

A couple of weeks ago we had a call from a potential client, who had been referred to us by someone I met in 2006 at a workshop I ran. She subscribed to my newsletter, Scribbles, and has been reading it for the last 4 years. I saw her again at another presentation in January this year.

Before last week's event, we listed it on our website to attract more delegates. Our potential client saw the listing on the site and asked to come along, to listen to the presentation and talk to us afterwards.

So that's a website, a blog, some tweets, a newsletter and some presentations! Lots of marketing, all giving the same message and all working towards the same end.

Is your marketing joined up?

Chantal Cornelius
Appletree