Therefore depending on the size of business and the space available, it’s either a case of using out sourced document storage and management or finding somewhere on site, to put it all.

One good way to save money is to have a regular efficient destruction programme. Most accounts information needs to be kept between 6 and 7 years ( check with your accountant if you are unsure about any specific items ). Consequently when documents reach their shelf life you can get rid of them.

If you are using an offsite records management service, then inform them and have them disposed of, which saves you storage costs or in smaller businesses, it can just save and create a great deal of space.

If you need any further information about storage, management or disposal, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thanks for reading

1.) Preparation – Who might you want to try and engage with at the meeting or event you are attending. If there is an attendees list it may be worth scanning through this beforehand for people who may be useful to talk to. Don’t labour this or force a sales pitch on someone but if you do chat to someone in a related business and you get on then all the better.

2.) At the Meeting – I once heard someone say,  “Make sure you are in the room”. Don’t hide; just relax and go and find someone to talk to. You’ve made the effort to attend so at  least enjoy yourself. If the conversation is awkward move on till you find someone you have something in common with on a social or business level. If you only speak to one or two people but you get on well then see that as a decent outcome.

3.) Post Meeting work – If you have collected several business cards then update your database. It isn’t essential to have collected loads of cards as quality is better than quantity but make sure you use the information you gather for future contacts and marketing.

You also have to think about how you could help them and how in future they may be able to help you.

4.) Follow Up – This is essential in sales but also with networking. A quick call or personal (not generic) email just saying it was nice to meet you and that it would be good to catch up in the future.

5.) Homework – Look for others who have used the services of your new contacts and maybe try them out yourself so you can recommend them.

6.) Continued Contact – Use social media (Twitter, Linkedin, facebook) to stay in touch and if they are receptive arrange to meet up again at another event or even for a coffee to chat more face to face.

7.) Oportunuties to refer -Once  you have established the relationship further look for chances to refer your contacts. Maybe collaborate on a project if you are in a related business.

If you get on then keep the contact up and build trust so the bond becomes stronger. Then you have the confidence to create a stronger network.

This isn’t fully comprehensive but it’s a basic beginners guide to buliding your network.

Thanks for reading.

How much do you charge per hour for your time £15,£30, £50 or maybe much more. Even if you get your office junior or a student in holiday time to do this job there going to be paid about £6 an hour.

We charge £5.50 per sack which will conservatively fit 15 kilos of waste paper in.

Just fill up a bag with confidential items and do it up with with one of our security ties.

It’s then taken to our secure warehouse where the papers are shredded on site to specific standards.

So why waste your precious time and that of your staff. Just bag it and have us remove it at a time that is convenient to you. Once it has been shredded we issue you with a certificate of secure destruction.

If you want any more details, contact us we can provide a range of solutions including bins or pleasant looking cabinets that don’t clutter up your office space.

Theres no contract so if you don’t fill your bags or bins one month we won’t come back until they are full.

So there you go easy, well priced and convenient and confidential, let us know if you want to give it a try.

Thanks for reading

Obviously for SME’s, structured meetings are the main initial source of opportunity.

I would advise any company to go and network at some meetings and see which environment suits their particular business.

It’s then about meeting people and then expanding your network but also networking opportunities.

This can sound a bit strategic and robotic but as some of the best networking experts will point out the way to do this is, to interact with people you like and connect with on a personal level.

Then take the time to get to know them better and gradually build a group of people in businesses you can work with.

The work you can do away from this environment is to look for ways to help others.

As your network grows you will know more and more people with a variety of skills and providing services.

Then you can look for chances to help them out.

If someone you know is looking for a graphic designer for instance and you have met a really nice person who happens to be in that profession and you have also heard great things about the work they do or even better has already done some good work for you then go and refer them on.

It may be that you need some electrical work done and you get on with a recommended tradesman from a networking group you attend.

Why not try them out, if the service matches their personality you’ve got yourself a new reliable service provider and also someone you can and will refer to others.

Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities and just keep trying to help out fellow business people.

I can’t give any cast iron guarantees but I think the law of averages are that the more helpful and friendly you are in business the more you will recieve back in the long run and this is a long term process.

Opportunities to network can arise all the time. You don’t need to obsessive about it but keep your mind switched on.

You may be a member at a gym, sports club or society. If someone you chat to their mentions business and the need for a service see if you have a useful connection for them. That way everyone is a winner.

Conferences, seminars and courses are great ways to meet up with business people in your or possibly related industries.

I’ve had enquiries through Twitter not by posting sales messages usually but by interacting with business people on a social level. Then somewhere along the line getting into conversation about what we do.

Then there are your closest and easiest group to connect with who are your friends and family, who can be a great source of referalls. If they need a service then help them out through your network.

I think a great point to stress about networking is that if you step back, relax, chat to people who you seem to click with, whatever it is they do for a living and then go and look for chances to help them, then it’s enjoyable and also fruitful.

It’s about being nice, friendly and helping others.

If you think of it like that it doesn’t sound so bad does it.

Thanks for reading.

I’d like to share a couple of anecdotal stories of how networking has worked in different ways for me outside of the usual parameters.

A few years ago I attended a business link course in Bury St Edmunds. I got chatting to a guy who was in a family business that did catering supplies.

When I told him about our document management services he seemed interested in finding out some more details.

After a few months and some further discussions his company became a customer of ours.

This isn’t a great illustration of how networking generally works as it is usually a much longer process and is not normally such a direct sell but it highlights a different point which is if you are out there talking and meeting people then oppotunities do arise.

The second tale goes back about 18 months. I was at a charity event up North and one of my friends mentioned a person at a nearby table who I recognised by sight. When he told me the name of his company I became interested as I have had some dealings with them in the past.

I went and spoke to this guy a bit later and it turned out he had a contact at an Archive storage company up his way.

We exchanged details and the other Document storage firm helped me with some invaluable information and advice on implementing our new barcoding system.

Now if I had tried to contact this person in his office on a week day without a prior introduction I would have had no chance but because we both support the same football team and have a lot of mutual friends we can talk very comfortably and also discuss business.

This situation wasn’t contrived it just happened so if you keep switched on at all times lots of opportunities to help your business can pop out of nowhere.

So it just shows you don’t need to be a 24 hour A DAY 365 day a year salesman but if you meet enough people and chat, opportunities can present themselves when you least expect them.

Thanks for reading.

He mentioned he seen me pictured at a recent networking event and we got talking about the merits of networking.

He said it wasn’t something he would get involved with as he wouldn’t generally meet the type of client he deals with at a usual network meeting.

He said he had agreed with a solicitor he had spoken to regarding this, who had said attending meetings where the usual suspects from other local legal firms were hanging around, was just a waste of time.

Now I always emphasise that I’m a strong believer in network meetings but also networking in general. This is an important point you can network in various ways, it does not mean you are attending lots of meetings under the banner of networking groups.

As I pointed out to my friend he and his business partner have an incredible networking referral system going on. They generate huge quality business from this, which is one of the reasons he doesn’t really need to attend structured local meetings.

The point is some businesses have an effective referral scheme built in. Others have fantastic associations with other companies that generate recipricol work for each other.

I wrote my first blog after Lord Sugar had annoyed me with his comments on networking. But as I pointed out he will have a very strong contact structure built into his business through many years of his own style of networking. All business done through referrals is achieved through your network in my book.

The structured weekly/fortnightly meetings are sometimes derided by some and dreaded by others but if you don’t have that referall generation built into your business it could be that this environment may be essential to you creating this environment.

Social Media/networking helps and once you have established that contact base through Network meetings then staying in contact and helping out the people you get on with and can work alongside builds, strengthens and grows your essential connections.

What I am essentially trying to get accross is that if you have a constant stream of referalls and business then you already have a strong network. If you don’t, you need to find the best type of networking to suit you and your business to create this stream.

Breakfast meetings aren’t the right way for everyone but don’t discount them before you’ve tried.

But we all need to network and some people think they don’t network but they do. But the certainty is that if you lock yourself and your company away in your office and don’t build connections of some sort you won’t grow and thrive.

Thanks for reading.

I have just returned from holiday and as I have mentioned previously I had some poor experiences with the travel agents when we were booking and finalising details of our trip.

Once we got to our apartments however, the reps could not have been more helpful.

I’ve found in the past that you sometimes don’t see much of the reps around the place or that if you don’t book lots of trips through them they don’t really want to know. They also tend to want to provide scare stories of what may happen if you book similar trips at a cheaper price outside the umbrella of the holiday company.

Our rep did none of this and was always around with a friendly smile and helpful advice on restaurants and things to do in the area. Her and her 2 colleagues from the kids club paid loads of attention to our 2 kids and generally made us feel really welcome for the whole holiday.

So on this occasion this side of the customer service experience was absoulutely fantastic and enhanced our holiday experience. I think we just struck lucky with these 3 girls.

On the other hand on our flight home I felt let down again by our travel company.

I managed to injure myself on the second to last day of our holiday and was given a letter from the clinic I was treated at saying that it would be advisable to give me a seat with extra leg room so that I could put my foot up to prevent the risk of thrombosis developing.

The check in staff just responded by saying that all seats had been prebooked.

Then on the flight itself it was again just a shrug of the shoulders to say we can’t help.

5 girls had booked the front seats so apparently there was nothing they could do.

They had paid for the privilege, there actually were 6 seats but as there were no means to pay on board I couldn’t take the spare.

What came across to me was that it was all about money.

One girl was spralled across 2 seats so there would have been room but apparently my health was less important than my ability to pay.

The flight staff were not rude but they did not bend over backwards to help.

So this brings me to the link and follow up to my 2 recent blogs.

Customer service is a joined up process and lasts from start to finish of your experience and bigger companies especially seem to lose sight of this. On many occasions its just luck of the draw if you receive a part of the process that is good.

I’m going to write to them when I get chance but whether they connect my earlier complaint about their staff attitude I guess will be unlikely.

They actually rang about my first complaint as I was being wheeled off to the clinic but I’m not sure we will get to speak to the same person again.

This has reinforced my view that where possible I will avoid bigger companies, there’s too much chance involved in getting the right enjoyable or even satisfactory experience.

The moral is stick with the smaller firms wherever possible, as staff and management will care about you and their reputation

Thanks for reading.

Even though I have been frequenting meetings for about 5 years now, theres always a degree of nerves before walking into somewhere that may be full of strangers.

One thing I’ve learnt is to take a very relaxed approach to meeting people and if I only talk to a couple of people during the time we have then so be it as long as we get on and have something to talk about.

At this particular meeting I got chatting to a marketing manager who was attending his first networking meeting of any type, I believe.

I spoke to him mainly about his business and marketing strategies including obviously the value of networking.

I quite often get the impression that new networkers get itchy feet after a few minutes and think that they should be trying to talk to other attendeees who may be potential direct clients.

This way in their mind they have not wasted the time that they have taken out of their working day.

Now as more seasoned networkers, we know that hunting down potential clients for a quick kill isn’t how this process works but even if you point this out to a new networker it takes a while for most people to take the whole reasoning and ethos on board.

I remember thinking that I needed to speak to people in my clients sectors rather than just chatting and getting to know people who may in time refer you to their contacts or may just be able to help your business in other ways.

So my reason for writing this blog is to say, if you are a more experienced at networking  and you know someone whose going to be attending their first meeting soon, it would be really helpful for them to get some advice on how the process works and how they should approach it all with a relaxed and long term view.

If they go in looking for a short term sales opportunity then the whole experience could actually be a lot more enjoyable as well.

I’m not putting myself up as a networking guru or the most connected person in the world but I do have a few contacts in my database.

I’ve sent this guy an email with all the local networking groups information and told him to let me know if he wants an invite to any of them.

So far he hasn’t responded at all, so maybe he was put off or just doesn’t quite get how it all works yet.

Even though he probably feels like he didn’t collect enough business cards that day, I could connect him up to various groups and contacts that could be beneficial to him in the long term.

So for your good deed as a networker, why not hand out some friendly advice to people new to it. On how to approach their journey and maybe take them along to their first meeting and show them how it’s done.

If they see it’s just about being at ease, chatting to people you get on with and seeing how you could help them out, then maybe they will have a good time and keep coming back for more.

That way they will also probably get a lot more in return in the long run.

Thanks for reading.

Having young children and with ashclouds etc still fresh in the mind I felt it was easier this time to go for one of the bigger firms, especially as their prices were the best available for the same package.

This type of company really need to look at their staff recruitment and training policies as well as their customer care and support mechanisms.

One member of staff was very unhelpful and rude to my wife(which is usually a very dangerous thing to do) on the one occasion she went into the shop. Generally not trying to  resolve a situation in a way that would have helped her.

Then when I went to collect the tickets, the same girl seemed distinctly irritated by the fact that I wanted to check some information and did not seem willing to help with anything that did not come easily to her.

There was a “Computer says no” attitude which I think is a problem with larger firms and makes them come across as being a lot less human.

The girl did not even wish us a good holiday which I would have thought would have been a standard courtesy.

When we got home we decided to email a complaint to customer service.

I found it difficult to find a relevant address. There was no section on the site labelled customer service (which says a lot I think!).

The only real advertised avenues were to use a phone line or an address to write to which gave me the distinct impression that they were making it tricky to actually put in complaints.

We eventually found an email which I hope gets through to somebody, lets wait and see.

Notes to large company are:

1.) Recruit staff who actually enjoy their job and can make people feel welcome and comfortable, especially when they are booking something that is supposed to be an enjoyable experience.

2.) Train & reinforce these views, so that staff constantly make people feel at ease and ready to book and importantly rebook with them. The funny thing is that the person was so poor at their job they never even asked if we wanted currency, car hire or insurance which would have brought in extra revenue for the company but maybe there was nothing in it for her.

3.) Provide an easy route for people to comment and complain directly to the company, so they take these issues on board and provide a better experience in future for the customers.

To me this is a classic case of big business losing sight of what the customer needs and how their staff are presenting their company on a day to day basis.

I’m not here to help big business but imagine how succesful they could be if they provided a great all round experience for their customers.

Still on the bright side that’s what smaller firms benefit from I suppose.

Thanks for reading

Every time we have taken the van in there,  there has been a problem or irritation caused generally by their incompetence.

On this occasion, I observed some behaviour that interested me. On the whole a lot of the staff seemed to be very friendly. I think they knew they had irritated me yet again and I was offered cups of tea and a nice smile.

But it made me think that customer service has to be the full package.

A friendly smile is very important and it means a lot to be made to be felt welcome and dealt with civilly. But this should be a standard anyway.

It can all quickly wear thin if the actual service behind this is poor.

This business continually let me down, the last straw being when I had made it clear that a light indicating that there was a problem with brakes had come on. I had said I was unaware with this was pads, discs or both but could they get the relevant parts in. I was told they would.

After they had undertaken the service we received a call to say both pads and discs needed replacing but they had to order discs. This lack of attention to detail infuriated me and it has now been taken elsewhere for the work.

Communication, good standards of care and general (hopefully way above average) competence as well as being friendly and polite(which should be a given anyway) are all required to meet your client needs.

If you tick all the boxes, then I can’t see too many reasons why your customers won’t keep coming back.

If any of these areas fall down then you are leaving the opportunity open for people to look elsewhere for the right experience.

We have now had the the work done at a smaller dealership, who are far more efficient and who actually listen to us.

Thanks for reading.