Welcome to our Jammy Dodger Wall of Fame.

Every visitor to RPHQ is served either Fresh Lazy Sunday Coffee, Yorkshire Tea, or Green Tea, all accompanied with a plate of Jammy Dodgers. We then add them to our Jammy Dodger Wall of Fame. Pop in and get added.

Welcome to Our Jammy Dodger Wall of Fame

Subtle, simple but very effective.

Do you use every opportunity to sell to your clients?

Do you use EVERY opportunity to sell?

In this fabulous TED video, Simon Sinek how great leaders inspire action and build incredible companies like Apple Inc.

If you are a business owner, or in Sales or Marketing, you need to stop what you’re doing and devote the next 18mins 35secs of your life to this.

Take notes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Don’t Sell To People Who Want What You Have…

“When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.”

via Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs – NYTimes.com >>

Are You A Man Or A Muppet?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tell us whether you think Greg Smith is man or a muppet.

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Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs – NYTimes.com

It cost just $4500 dollars to make and went viral before the company was even launched. They got 6000 subscribers on day one and had 12,000 within three days.

Watch it and look out for the best slogan EVER, right at the very end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Are our razors good? No. They’re f***ing great.

If you’re a company using facebook take a look at what this will mean for you.

The Cover Photo

The first difference most people will notice with the new timeline format is the cover photo. This one of the most welcomed changes. The cover photo acts like a large billboard and presents a fantastic branding opportunity for you to include images of your products etc.

Before you go rushing into creating your cover photo it’s worth noting these guidelines provided by Facebook.

No Default Landing Tab & Other Tab Changes

One of the most controversial changes with the new layout is the lack of the default landing tab. This was a hugely popular feature that allowed you to build your following by requiring non-fans to “like” your Page and also allowed companies to promote special offers or contests. With the changes this options will no longer exist. Other changes to the tabs include that instead of up to 9 tabs being displayed down the right hand side of the page 3 tabs are displayed below the cover image beside a default “Photos” tab.

Presenting Milestones and Achievements

The new layout will allow you to present your businesses milestones and achievements which will help you to tell the story of your business. You can add important stories as text, image, audio or video to be shared back to the date the company was founded.

Pinning and Staring Content

Another positive feature is the ability to pin key posts to the top of your pages for up to 7 days. This will help make it much easier to highlight important posts such as your competitions for a longer period of time. By staring posts you can also give them more prominence in the layout by allowing them to take up two columns.

Private Messages Between Brands and Users

Another new feature to the brand pages is the ability for users and businesses to privately send messages to one another. This is an optional feature. The positives include that you can send more personal messages and that people may use this feature to take up complaints and issues rather than publicly posting them on the wall. For larger companies and brands it may present a potential issue in that they become inundated with private messages.

About Us

The about us section that used to be hidden away in the info now has much greater prominence. Make sure you make yours as interesting and relevant as possible.

New Admin Panel

The new admin panel allows you to see private messages from fans, and keeps your notifications about likes and comments in one place. Your insights are also integrated to make it easier to see who’s talking about your page and how may people conversations are reaching.

7 Things You NEED To Know About Facebook’s Changes To Business Pages

So on my Friday Big Shop at Asda, I visited the banana aisle as usual and saw that they’d already bagged up loads of bananas for you.

Now they’d really managed to really  fill these bags, and there seemed to be more bananas than I would have chosen myself, but I thought you know what, it saves me bagging them and we’ll eat them anyway.

So they’d managed to sell me more than I would have bought on my own by making it easier for me to buy.

Your Three Questions

1. What are your bananas?
2. How can you bag them up?
3. What’s the MOST you can fit in a bag?

Stop selling your bananas loose. Its time to fill the bag.

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Stop Selling Your Bananas Loose & Learn From Asda.

The chameleon (the name of which means ‘ground lion’ in Greek) is a lizard with many remarkable features. Chameleons are famous for being able to change their colour. However, ‘It is a popular misconception that the chameleon changes its colour to match that of the background.’¹ Rather, they have a basic pattern that provides camouflage, and the colour changes are due to heat, light, and can also reflect their mood! So what has this got to do with business, careers and life in general I hear you ask…Ok

It occurred to me recently that whilst I’m only 36 my working career has certainly been anything but dull and that I’ve actually become rather good at doing an impersonation of a chameleon.

No I’m not turning into some crazy loon with weird body piercings and tattoos like the famous lizard man. I’m talking more metaphorically….I see my career like that of the changing colours of a chameleon. Let me whizz you back and give you a quick rundown of my career and you might see where I’m coming from

Left school at 15 (I was a young one in the school year) and bagged myself a YTS as they were known back then working for House of Fraser. During my 3 years we were moved departments every few months which meant I experienced everything from counting thousands and thousands of pounds every day in the cash office to decorating literally hundreds of Christmas tree and creating stunning displays of perfumes at the bottom of the escalator.

From here I thought I’d turn my hand to shipping. I went to work in an office as an Import Export clerk. Now correct me if I’m wrong but not many people set out in life to be a shipping clerk. Do they?? I had a brilliant 2 years working with a great bunch of people. I was only 19 and the office tom foolery was brilliant.

The time came to go on a girly holiday to Malia, Crete. Having had such an amazing two weeks, myself and one of my good friends Jo decided we’d give up our jobs and head back out to work a season in the crazy resort of Malia.  Here I learnt some very very important lessons in life (I’ll leave that to your imagination) and in short I spent around 6 months working and partying hard. I’d had some of the best months of my life.

Coming home after the season had ended was tough going; I came back to earth with a large bump. Oh and no job, so I got myself a some shift work (yuk wouldn’t do that again) as a waitress in a BP truck stop….lovely!! Not quite how I’d envisaged my career but never the less it was work and money.

Moving swiftly on after a couple of months I found myself back in shipping this time more hands on doing duties such as boarding ships, meeting the captain, arrange docking, loading and unloading of containers and at the age of 21 I was pretty much running a small shipping office for a German shipping company.

After a year or so I was getting bored, I wanted to move into sales. Get myself a company car, laptop, phone and all the extra’s that come with it. What I didn’t bank on was the extra’s being target driven pressure!

I went on to do quite well in logistics and sales although truth be known I hated it with a passion. Like I mentioned earlier I don’t know anyone who left school wanting to go work in shipping or logistics.

So what happened next?

A year or so before this I’d been studying professional stress management and loved all things “wellbeing”. At the time “stress in the workplace” was the word on the street. Companies were throwing money at the problem either hiding it or being proactive and dealing with it (I liked to work with the latter) so I set up a wellbeing company and went on for 6 years to deliver hundreds of stress management programmes and wellbeing workshops and events. All whilst juggling a new born baby.In November 2003 our first daughter Olivia Sophie was born along with my business Relaxing Alternatives Ltd.

And the next transformation for me came when the good old world economy started to take a battering and all these companies who’d invested in their staff wellbeing began making tough decisions to let those staff go and so came the cuts on the wellbeing spend….

I’d hit a crossroads, do I take the plunge and move over and work with the hubby and grow the IT business or do I keep flogging a (not quite a dead) but dying horse with Relaxing Alternatives. For a while I tried both but something had to give and so with the help of an amazing friend and brilliant coach Denise Chilton I decided to change my colour again and head in the IT direction.

AAArrrggghhh but what do I know about IT? well not a lot in the techie sense, however as I’m quite quickly learning the principals of running a small business (and maybe even a large one) are the same. Regardless of what field of expertise you’re in. So I became responsible for “lifting the profile, shouting loud and giving the company an identity”.

It is a roll I kind of invented myself to be honest and once I’d overcome the fear of “what will people think of me switching my colour again” I’ve actually grown love my role. I’m even getting a little bit good at turning techie jargon into something us non techie beings understand.

So who knows what colour I’ll become next (there are a few things bubbling may I add) but there is one thing for sure I’ve finally realised that actually its ok to change direction (colour) in life and in business, in fact its actually good fun.

Being a Chameleon in Business

In the 12 minute video, Shawn Achor, author of “The Happiness Advantage” explains how this thinking is backwards.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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“The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance” – Shawn Achor

There are so many networking events to choose from and they will all put a demand on your time. You have to figure out which networking events are worthy of your precious time and will give you the best return.

One-off networking events are little or no use, because they don’t allow you to develop a relationship. You need a regular networking event, either weekly, fortnightly or monthly, but which one do you choose?

How To Choose The Right Networking Group

Here is the criteria which we give to our clients to help them choose the right Networking Group:

• The Quality of the People – Choose a networking group which attracts decision makers and business leaders. If it’s filled with only salespeople then you know they’re mainly out for themselves in order to meet their quota.
• The Quality of the Businesses – You want a good mixture of high quality businesses because you have to be recommending their services to your contacts. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend anyone from Utilities Warehouse because it doesn’t fit in with the quality of service we provide.
• A Time that Suits You – 6 am is bearable in the summer, but in the winter it’s tough. Plus, I have a young family and mornings are hectic. You need to choose a group which meets at a time that suits you.
• The Right Frequency  – I personally think that weekly is too much as I have a business to run and the weeks seem to fly past. Fortnightly fits much better with me.
• Flexibility – Does it matter if you miss a week or will you be made to stand in the corner for doing so?
• What Is Expected of You? – Do you have to bring a referral every week or is it a bit more relaxed than that? If it’s every week, I guarantee that the referrals will be of low quality.
• How Much does It Cost? – As well as your time, there will be a physical cost. Is it paid monthly or annually and what guarantees to they make?
• Who is the member? – Is your business the member or are you?
• What Else Do You Get? – Getting referrals is OK, but how else will my business grow. What else am I getting for my huge investment of time?
• Exclusivity – Will you get exclusivity for your profession within that group?

For more help on networking, check out Our Ultimate Networking Guide >

Why We Choose The Fruit Tree

The Fruit Tree is the only networking group which meets all of our criteria:

• They meet each fortnight, just after work for a couple of hours and the quality of the people and businesses it attracts is exceptional.
• The organiser, Brian Butcher is a great guy and genuinely interested in helping small to medium sized businesses to succeed.
• You pay monthly and if after a year you haven’t had a return on your investment, you can have half your money back.
• They provide fantastic learn sessions where they invite experts in their respective fields to educate the group in a range of interesting and exciting areas.
• They’re really friendly and while everybody’s encouraged to contribute to the group positively, you don’t get beat with a big stick for not bringing a referral each time.

There are currently Fruit Tree groups in Doncaster and Sheffield but more will be opening throughout Yorkshire later on this year. Check them out at The Fruit Tree >

The Rocket Powered Sessions

This is what we cover in our sessions at the Fruit Tree. Come and watch us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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How To Choose The Right Networking Group & Why We Recommend The Fruit Tree