Clearvoice Updates

We're getting busy!

As a bit of an update I thought I'd bring you up to speed with what we've been up to over the past few months.

As you can see, the Clearvoice web site has been updated (click here if you haven't seen it yet)

We've added the following:

• SMS Messaging
• Updated Publications Page
• Technology Performance Coaching programme (new section)

The programme is a culmination of twenty plus years work in the technology industry. Nothing like it exists and the feedback has been tremondous. Our marketing efforts are really paying off, so a big thank you to the company's that didn't delete the emails! If you'd like a brochure, click here to download a PDF.

I finnished the book Profit from Technology and have set up a separate web site at http://www.profitfromtechnology.co.uk/ and am about to set up a blog about the trials and tribulations of getting a book published as well as providing snippets of the book as a taster.

In January I had my first article published in Business Matters Magazine. It came as a bit of a surprise as I hadn't received any prior notification. Liz read the article first and piped up that someone appeard to have written a similar article, wow, it was my own.

I now have two more articles being published next month, one in The Venturer and one in a new publication called Customer Magazine

I'll keep you posted,

Bye for now.

Unfair Practices!

Businesses Beware!

I recently found out that one of our customers had their business telephone number registered to virtually every telecoms carrier company in the UK. This meant that if ever they wanted to change suppliers any competitor would have to obtain permission from the incumbent supplier before the customer could change.

Perhaps the existing supplier was afraid of losing business or perhaps they simply wanted to be notified of any competition "sniffing" around their customer or perhaps they simply wanted to frustrate the competition, forcing them to walk away.

Whichever the reason, it's not an honourable practice, its certainly uncompetitive and above all, it compromises the customers' business.

The bottom line is that you can still save money on cheaper carrier services, however, making sure your costs are as low as possible is challenging enough without unfair practices.

Yes, of course we can provide competitive costs....

Silver bullet, golden goose or just magic?

So what does it take to get a business firing on all cylinders? Should you consider coaching or is there an alternative to bearing your soul?

· Do you want more profit from your business?
· Do you want business to be easier and less stressful?
· Do you want customers to be happier?
· Do you want to build your organisation?
· Do you want to let someone else take on the burden?
· Do you want to take more holiday time?
· Do you want to work less hours?
· Do you want to choose when you want to work?
· Do you want to take time to plan your goals for the future?
· Do you want to determine your own destiny?

Business keeps changing; what with new techniques and guidelines so you can improve yourself, be happier, more focused and so on, but to the majority it just doesn't make sense. Success requires so much effort and in many cases, there's not enough reward.

I think there is a solution! If you would like to read the full article, please click here to download the PDF.

How it started

Thanks for taking the time to drop in.

I've always felt so passionate about Clearvoice and how it helps people and businesses that my enthusiasm started to rub off on other people and they kept asking me to write up a blog about our ideas, thoughts and happenings within this industry, especially how technology affects businesses and the impact this has on Marketing, Sales and Admin!

People buy people, you've heard it all before. But how about some content I hear you say, give us some information that a business can say "yep!, I'll give them a call becase they've got something to say". Instead, all everyone seems to do is go through the same motions of flogging kit or services the same old way as we all did in the mid 80's.

Back then I had been involved in the retail industry managing Photographic stores in the UK & Australia. My only experience of selling had been waiting for customers to walk in to in a shop and helping them choose a camera. The customers came to me, big sign, outside of shop "CAMERAS", not very difficult to determine what we did inside!

Marketing didn't really come in to it, apart from dressing the window, the only traffic we got was either the cars driving by of pedestrians. So the process was pretty simple, a daylight sign, a shop window and we sold cameras.

I then became involved in the sales and technology industry in the mid 80's. What a change; Door knocking (Cold Calling), telephoning (Cold Calling) and prospecting (Cold Calling). Instead of the business coming through the shop door, I now had to go out and find new business and sell direct, face to face. Of course I loved it, but there was something niggling me in the back of my mind about the approach we were trained to use.

As a Paper Throughput Specialist or Document Management Consultant (copier salesman to everyone else!) we were expected to get in front of buyers (business owners and managers) and sell photocopiers. Quite simple really, but in reality businesses only changed their copiers if there was a sensible reason to do so and the fundamental deciding factor was the affect on their business - financially.

Over the past twenty years, business technology has evolved at a staggering rate and to implement the most effective infrastructure now requires a significant amount of business intelligence (not necessarily available from IT Departments or technology vendors as they don't run businesses!). With this in mind, how on earth is a company supposed to decide on what equipment to use, let alone which supplier to work with. I'm pretty sure we can help.

If I come across some interesting news or information I'll post it on this blog, equally if I find out about unfair practices or bad deals, I'll post it. If they're any new developments, I'll post it and if I think you'll benefit from something, I'll post it. It might be short or quite detailed but either way, whatever gets posted over the next few weeks or months will help you get a pretty accurate feeling of how we approach business and whether or not you feel there would be a fit between our companies to work together.