Sales & Marketing Masterclass for Thame businesses

SWITCHED on business owners in the Thame area know that, despite ‘doom and gloom’ in the media, there are still ways to keep their businesses growing.

Nearly 60 of them met at the Barns Centre on Wednesday, March 25, to take part in a Sales and Marketing Masterclass presented by two of the area?s leading business trainers.

Cat Young of STW, a Thame-based web agency, and Trese Rowe of Amplia, a leading sales consultancy operating out of Streatley, shared their ideas to a packed room. Cat Young revealed her method for optimising websites to gain more leads and Trese Rowe explained how ?what customers are buying? is more important than what you?re selling.

The popularity of the event indicated that switched-on business owners are keen to keep their businesses growing in the face of the current financial climate and that there is life in the economy yet, especially for enterprising organisations.

For smaller businesses their means of survival will be to find quicker and cheaper ways to gain more business, and so they are turning to online marketing. As Cat explained, promoting your business online is flexible, quick, affordable and measurable and as more and more of us use the Internet to shop, businesses need to have a strong online presence to share in that growing market.

Improving your marketing is just the first step. As Trese explained, businesses must recognise that customers buy the outcome not the product or service. The end result could be increased profit, less wasted effort, a more relaxed lifestyle or less down time.

“We don?t buy products and services for their own sake,” explained Trese. “We buy what they can do for us. Good sales techniques help us identify what the potential customer really wants and then we can shape our offering to help them achieve this.”

Nicky Angell, who attended the event on behalf of Business Link, one of the sponsors, said: “I thought the seminar went really well today. There was a huge queue of people at the end waiting to sign up for more help!”

As the event was free to attend, STW asked for donations for their chosen charity, The Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. Not only did the local charity provide information to display, the event was honoured with a visit from Rio and her trainer Hannah.

It would be unfair to Cat Young and Trese Rowe to say that Rio was the star of the show, but she certainly was a crowd puller!