I am constantly amazed at how poorly many company switchboards handle incoming telephone calls. How your phone is answered and how that call is handled says so much about your business.

Just today whilst phoning clients and prospective clients I have had company names barked at me, been put on hold…

Its a really common thing. You work with a really great candidate, you place them into a great job.

Yippee.

You do all the good stuff – the congratulations lunch, the follow up calls, you make them non-active on the database and your job is done.

Right?

WRONG

Of course this person should then become a client and you should work to continue to build the relationship into a really great one for the future. A client for life, if you do it all…

We all know that it is important to spend time thinking about our businesses. You need to work on your business, as well as in your business, we are told.

This is not just good advice, it is vital advice.

But, I don’t have time

The problem is that we don’t…

We all use email, and we use it all day long. It’s both a great help and a great hinderance. Great for some tasks, massively overused for others. In many ways, it has changed the way that we work, and the speed at which we correspond.

The reality is that email is as much a part of our working lives as the…