How to present yourself well at job interviews

In my job I do a lot of interviewing, both for Learning Pool & for other organisations that ask me to help them out with this from time to time. It’s taken a lot of effort to find and assemble the 50 or so perfect (ish) people that form Learning Pool’s current #teamlovely.

There are no doubt thousands of books written on this topic but having been involved in two sets of interviews this week alone, these are my top tips for interview success. You will have loads more tips of your own & I hope you’ll share them with us in the comments section below.

· Do take a few deep breaths before you go into your interview & try to remain calm; we know you’re nervous but you have to be able to manage your interview nerves

· Don’t bring in a load of files & papers & copies of cvs to your interview – it’s distracting & makes you appear disorganised/forgetful/dishonest (as in you can’t remember stuff about your own career!)

· Don’t take notes or write stuff down – again – it’s distracting

· Instead, do really focus on what the panel are telling you or asking you; 30% of the people I interviewed this week (yep – you heard that right) asked for the question to be repeated when they were already half way through answering it.

· Do manage your time well. You will know in advance how long your interview is likely to be. Don’t ramble on for ages when answering what are clearly icebreaker questions designed to make you relax a bit or you’ll have no time left to get onto the stuff you want to tell them about yourself.

· Do really do your homework about the organisation & think about the job so that you can pre-empt the questions you might be asked – not to stalker level obviously, although if you have carried out research that’s that thorough, don’t tell the interview panel – it will scare them.

· Do be friendly & chatty but don’t be too over familiar or go too overboard in your enthusiasm for the organisation

· Do pre-prepare enough questions so that if some of them get covered off in the course of the interview you still have one or two left

· Don’t ask about money in the first interview stage unless either the panel brings it up or you’re there for a sales job

· Do think carefully about why you want the job & why you want to join that organisation as they will probably ask you – saying it’s because it’s close to the train station isn’t a good response.

I’ll leave you today with some of the weirdest interview behaviours we’ve witnessed lately:

· The guy that drank about 3 pints of water

· The girl that told us she would do ANYTHING to get the job – Paul’s face was a picture on that occasion

· The guy that turned up dressed head to toe in white, including a hat

· The girl that couldn’t stop crying – that was difficult to cope with

· The girl that didn’t appear to have read the job description at all – despite having submitted a detailed application form

· The guy who was so argumentative that we had to stop the interview & start over again

Looking forward to your stories, as always.

Sales Language – what you should & really shouldn’t say

Words are important & when you work in sales, you should think carefully about the language you use.

Everyone will remember the damage caused to his family business when Gerald Ratner referred to the products sold by Ratner’s jewellers as “total crap” & rather famously announced at an Institute of Directors gathering that their “earrings were cheaper than an M & S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long”. What was the outcome of this foolish outburst? £500m was wiped off the value of the firm, Ratner eventually resigned as CEO & the company rebranded itself in an attempt to sweep this incident under the carpet & away from the minds of British jewellery buyers.

Selling is a complex activity & there have been countless books written about the psychology of selling. This blog couldn’t be long enough to cover them all but I do want to draw your attention to the sales book we like and use at Learning Pool. It’s by a very practical man called Geoff King and it’s called “The Secrets of Selling; how to win in any sales situation”. We like it because it’s easy to read, it makes a lot of sense to us and it’s straightforward to act upon Geoff’s advice.

The book covers some cool stuff like how to deliver the ideal handshake (I know – in a book), how to tell if someone is lying (useful in all sorts of situations that one) and how to spot a false smile. It also deals with the 3 Twelves (I love this) – first impressions when you meet someone. Some of you have probably heard this before but they are:

the first 12 words you say (always give these some advance thought – don’t just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head when you meet someone for the first time – make sure you say something about them & not about you)
the first 12 footsteps you take (give the other person enough space, don’t crowd them)
the top 12 inches (your appearance from the shoulders up – the rest doesn’t really matter except for your shoes – they need to count. I think this is why some women wear those bright scarves around their necks – I can’t think of any other sane reason why).

My favourite chapter is the first one and it covers what to actually say in sales meetings. It contains the following table of words not to use & what to say instead:

Don’t say ‘cost’ say ‘amount’
Don’t say ‘contract’ say ‘agreement’
Don’t say ‘pitch’ say ‘presentation’
Don’t say ‘buy’ say ‘authorise’
Don’t say ‘cheap’ say ‘value for money’
Don’t say ‘change’ say ‘improve’

An additional hint from me. Remember that your prospect is usually considering buying something from you to either remove some sort of business pain or to gain competitive advantage over someone else. They may be in this situation because of something they themselves have done or failed to do & the psychology around this may be delicate. For this reason don’t ever mention “problem” to them about the place they are in. It has very negative connotations. Instead call it a “situation”.

Bags of advice in Geoff’s book. I recommend you read it if you want to improve how you interact with people in sales situations – either buying or selling. Look forward to your comments/experiences/stories/any howlers that you’ve witnessed as always.

The Art of Leadership, Pittsburgh Steelers style

On Thursday this week, I was lucky enough to be invited to an event in Derry where the great Dan Rooney was talking about leadership. Dan Rooney is Chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers (his father Art Rooney founded the team in 1933) and current US Ambassador to Ireland. Last time I ran into him was in the White House in March – he was standing next to me. Anyway – this is what he had to say.

He started by remarking on how much he likes the Hewlett Packard story – which endeared him to me straight away. One of my favourite bits of the Jim Collins book, Good to Great, is the description of Level 5 leadership as demonstrated by Dave Packard & I just love the fact that his eulogy pamphlet described the great man as “Rancher, etc”.

As you would expect from someone with a lifelong immersion in competitive sports, Dan uses sports analogy to make all his points. He talked about the 3 levels of leadership in his own sports world as being:

1. The President as leader – the president’s role is similar to that of any business CEO. They are responsible for setting the scene, making sure everyone’s doing their job, actually getting the players…I can relate to that. I see recruitment as one of the most important things I do as a small business MD. Dan himself was President of the Steelers from 1975 until 2002 & it’s clear from the way he talks about the role that it was something he enjoyed very much.

2. The Head Coach as leader – the coach is responsible for all player related issues and for making sure the team is ready & able to play at their best on a Sunday. The coach deals with any people issues and keeps everyone focused on winning. The Steelers had only 3 coaches in 30 years. Their legendary head coach, Chuck Noll, was there for 23 years (1969 to 1991)and 4 Superbowl wins, more than any other head coach in NFL history. Impressive. Noll is known for his meticulous attention to detail which included going back to basics with new players to the extent that he would re-train them in basic fundamentals that they would already be familiar with.

3. The Player as leader – this one is interesting as it’s less obvious than the other two. Dan Rooney cited the example of the intelligent player in the locker room that knows what’s going on & is willing to do what it takes. He used the example of Steelers stalwart, (Mean) Joe Greene – leader and anchor of the “Steel Curtain” and one of the most dominant defensive players in the NFL during the 1970s. A player with an intense desire to win, no matter what that would take, and who would rally everyone else on the team.

Dan Rooney left us with a great quote about leadership – “when things are good, always be at the back; when things are bad, always be in the front” – a variation on Jim Collins observation about the window & the mirror I believe. Eloquent & to the point – rather like Ambassador Rooney himself.

What does the startup founder director want from team members?

Working in a small business is not for everyone. The working environment is transparent to a degree that many people find uncomfortable (your colleagues and manager, maybe even your directors are likely to be aware of your every move – which is great if you’re performing). New business is rarely turned away so the only way quality can be maintained and delivery deadlines met is by team members working longer hours; this happens a lot when your small business is growing. Your founder directors, although appreciative of everyone’s efforts, are always looking for “more”. Performance issues are likely to be addressed sooner rather than later and perhaps more bluntly than many people are used to or prepared for. The runway between joining as a newbie and being deemed to “fit in” may be viewed as too short by most. Also, the swift exit if your colleagues decide you aren’t going to work out is brutal.

Of course – there’s a lot of upside too. If there wasn’t, no-one would bother putting themselves through startup discomfort & pain. But that’s not the topic of today’s blog. Today is about what I as a founder director expect from team members as a minimum. Here’s my top 10:

1. Commitment to our customers, to the business and to our common goals. This covers everything from being on time for meetings, doing your prep, being reliable and a host of other stuff. Real life recent commitment examples from our own small business are being in the office on a bank holiday because a project review must take place, giving up a Sunday to travel to a company event – even though family plans had already been made, changing plans and flying to see a customer the next day because they needed you to.

2. Passion about our company, customers, products and mission – this has to be real, it can’t be fake or people can tell. See my accompanying blog photo of Eddie Ryce from Learning Pool’s sales team if you don’t believe me (photo credits to Paul Clarke & Ruth Cassidy).

3. Honesty – about where you are, what you’re doing, why something failed, what you think about something.

4. Hard work and an eye on the prize – yeah – long hours sometimes but an outcomes focused approach where you can easily prioritise what’s important and make sure that’s done first. Linked to this I expect you to travel in your own time and to make sure all your follow ups and admin are done without anyone having to check or nag you.

5. Self-sufficiency. Not everyone has this on Day 1 but everyone needs to strive towards this. Spending time managing team members’ performance is an overhead I’d rather do without. You should make it easy for your line manager to manage you.

6. Self confidence but with it the ability to know when you need help and the confidence to ask for it.

7. Self-awareness – required to be a good team player. It should be obvious to you before it is to anyone else when you’re verging on asshole behaviour.

8. Enjoyment of the here and now. Everyone wants to and will move up – but try and enjoy what you’re doing to the full when you’re doing it.

9. Responsiveness – if I’m trying to get hold of you out of hours it’ll be for a good reason. If I can’t reach you despite having provided you with every device known to mankind (at your request usually) that’s annoying. Please note – being available in this way isn’t for everyone.

10. A desire to improve. Everyone should have this although in truth, some need it more than others. That’s life!

They’re my top 10. I’m sure there are loads more. Keep your comments coming. I love to receive and read them and so does everyone else.

10 Annoying Behaviours of the prima donna CEO

We’ve all seen it – the nightmare behaviours of the prima donna MD/CEO. These are my personal favourites & I can’t wait to hear yours – so please add them in at the comments section below:

1. Travelling in a different class to everyone else & expecting special treatment everywhere they go. I used to work for a CEO that travelled business class when our start up could hardly make payroll some months. Even worse – his PA was sworn to secrecy & if any team members happened to bump into him at the airport or getting on or off a plane, he used to pretend he’d been upgraded. Pathetic.

2. Being unable to as much as fart without the involvement of a long suffering PA. I followed up with a Northern Ireland executive that I’d met in Washington DC about a mutual opportunity we’d discussed when we were in the USA. He referred me to his PA to book a meeting with him. I’ve never been back to him since.

3. Going on & on about how brilliant they are & being the big “I am”. Linked to this is telling everyone constantly that they are the CEO. I used to work for a CEO in Belfast (some of you may know him, dear readers…) who at least once a day we would hear shouting from his office “But I am the CEO”…Boy how we used to roll around laughing at that.

4. Hideous uncalled for temper tantrums. One CEO I used to work for threw a chair at me one day – and I mean a proper typing chair with a solid metal base. Had I physically attacked him. No – I’d caught him in a bad moment & made some comment that he didn’t like & that was the result. I managed to dodge the chair for anyone who’s wondering.

5. Spending their investor/shareholder/VC money recklessly – how many times have we seen that? $50k on a domain name, $150k on a booth used twice a year at conferences, flashy company car, unused apartment in Palo Alto that no-one in the team but the CEO is allowed to use and so on…complete waste of money & no-one dare say anything.

6. Getting team members to do non job-related stuff for them. One MD I worked for used to come in late to work & ring in for someone in the office to come out & first of all wait in the car park queue & then park her car. If I ever get even slightly uppity, Paul says to me – “you’re getting more & more like X” – that puts me straight back into my reality box. Same MD used to take a taxi from central London to Heathrow airport because she “didn’t like using the tube”. Other examples of this might be asking members of your team to book personal travel for you or take your cleaning to the dry cleaners. CEOs – do it yourselves!

7. Dominating team brainstorming meetings with their own brilliance so that no-one else gets a look-in.

8. Always hogging the limelight instead of encouraging others to have a go & try taking a lead every now & then.

9. Leaving meetings when they’ve had their say – their time is clearly so valuable!

10. Having ridiculous amounts of the latest technology gadgetry – half of which they don’t even know how to use.

I’m sure there are loads & loads more so let’s get them all out there. This was an easy blog for me to write as I seem to have worked for more than my fair share of CEO assholes over the years (if you’re reading this John Thornton, you are not included in that pile!). Having said that, it was one of my main drivers for starting my own business as I thought to myself, this really can’t be too hard if that asshole can do it!

Every cloud has a silver lining – oh yes it does

Last week, dear readers, I nearly killed my Mum.

Don’t worry – I haven’t started some peculiar matricide pursuit; it was an accident – but unforgivable never the less.

I took my family to Rome for a break & the temperature last Wednesday in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica was a scorchio 44 degrees C. Poor Mum collapsed with heat stroke inside St Peter’s & I eventually had to send for the doctor. All’s well that ends well & she’s fine since returning to Donegal where our Irish summer temperatures are a good 30 degrees lower. It didn’t half give me a scare & the stuff that went through my head in that hour & a half I’ve pushed away somewhere so I won’t have to think about it again.

The outcome was that Mum couldn’t go back out in that heat for the next few days – so my sister & I (that’s all of us in the photo) took it in turns to stay in our apartment with her. No internet, no books apart from Rome guides in English, no English speaking programmes on the tv – how on earth would we pass the time? Guess what – we resorted to conversation & I have to tell you it really wasn’t that bad.

I spent hours lying on the sofa listening to Mum telling me stories about things that happened in her lifetime & stuff she’d heard about when she was a child. Some of it I’d heard before but a lot of it was brand new. I heard about:

· the Donegal friend of my grandmother who’d gone to see someone off to America and got on the boat herself, taking her mother’s elastic sided boots that she’d borrowed with her – my grandmother had to go back & break the news to the girl’s mother (I remember the same woman returning to Donegal for the first time in all those years when she was an old person when I was a child)

· the day the soot fell down the chimney covering my sister who was in her cot beside the fire – moments before my grandmother was due to arrive to visit us in Yorkshire

· all the jobs my father did as a teenager between leaving school & moving to England

· the details of my parents wedding which had a guest list of 6 people plus the priest – my Mum is the only one of that group still alive

· an escaped prisoner that my grandmother had given sanctuary to whilst my grandfather was in hospital in the early 1960s

· stories from Mum’s working life as a clippie on the buses of South Yorkshire Transport between Doncaster & Barnsley in the 1950s

and loads of other interesting stuff. We covered a lot of ground & it was thoroughly enjoyable. So it’s true – every cloud has a silver lining & being offline for a few days really isn’t that bad. Tell me some of your silver lining stories please.

Team Building’s great…but what happens next?

On 1 August Learning Pool turned 5 years old. 5 years is a significant milestone for any company and certainly time to take stock and work out what happens next. We decided to spend 3 days together as a team in order to celebrate, have some informal time together (although Learning Pool is far from formal at the best of times) but also to revisit our plans and discuss our options as a group.

This photo of Paul & me with our team was taken on Derry’s new Peace Bridge last week – just before we split into 6 teams and scrambled all over the City on a fun treasure hunt. We’re very proud of our team. I doubt it’s possible to grow a sizeable team any quicker than 5 years, no matter how many management books you read or how impatient you are. It’s like growing a harmonious flower bed or baking good bread. There’s a method & stages to go through but at the end of the day, it takes a certain amount of time.

People have to form relationships & become comfortable with each other before they can perform well at anything. It’s difficult to do this when the organisation is growing fast as there are new people joining the team all the time & “upsetting” the dynamic. Everyone knows the Tuckman model of team formation and the 4 stages – forming, storming, norming, performing. It can be hard to get onto those later stages when there is a constant influx of new team members.

When I look at the photo, 18 people or about one third of our team have been with us less than 12 months; 16 have been with us for over 3 years and the remaining 23 have been at Learning Pool between one & three years. I often think about the Belbin exercise our team completed at our first team building event on Lusty Beg island in December 2008 when the company was just over 2 years old. We had no co-ordinators & no implementers. We had 2 completer finishers (fortunately!), one team worker, 2 plants and a solitary monitor-evaluator. The remaining 24 people were crammed onto the resource investigator & shaper spaces – 12 apiece. Things have changed since then, although some days I miss that early chaos.

My question to you all in this blog is how do other companies build on the success of team building days & keep the momentum going once your dispersed teams have dispersed again. How do you keep that energy & focus going once everyone has waved goodbye and gone back to their day jobs?

Sherry Coutu – entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, mentor & role model

It’s been a while since I’ve told you about someone interesting I’ve encountered in my travels so this blog is all about Sherry Coutu, award winning entrepreneur and a successful angel investor. She has the smarts (MSc with Distinction in Economics from the London School of Economics & an MBA from Harvard), the track record as a practising CEO (her first start up was acquired by Euromoney plc and her second was floated via an IPO in 2000 when Sherry was five months pregnant and it was later valued at $1 billion), a successful investment track record (she’s invested so far in over 35 companies, one of the most recent being Artfinder) and the network (she sits on the boards of LinkedIn and Zoopla.com as well as being an investor in two VC firms). Are you impressed yet? There’s a lot more. Sherry also has 3 young children and aims to spend one day per week putting something back via philanthropic pursuits (she’s on the board of Cancer Research UK, a trustee at NESTA, a non exec at Cambridge & Harvard universities and she works with NSPCC on a programme for disadvantaged teenagers). I suspect on the philanthropic front there’s probably a lot more. I know for a fact on the professional front there’s an awful lot more. Wired Magazine voted Sherry one of the 25 most influential people in the wired world in May 2011.

I hate to tell you this but Sherry Coutu is also very understated, very cool and very nice. I met her first a couple of months ago when Learning Pool was selected as one of the 9 SME finalists in the Cabinet Office’s Innovation Launchpad competition. Sherry has been the driving force behind this initiative which seeks to improve in a practical way government engagement with SMEs. I snapped the pic accompanying this blog when Sherry was delivering her presentation last Tuesday to the 120+ civil servants gathered at BIS. We’ve been lucky to have her input and insight into our Big Society School idea as part of the Launchpad process.

My favourite Sherry Coutu quotes that I’ve come across so far are “I think the most important question for any startup is “Is what they’re aiming for going to change the world somehow? Is it going to make it a better place?”” and about working in the technology space “it’s a great industry that we’re a part of … being able to peer into the future and to invest in things that are likely to change our world. … It’s a huge privilege”. In one video interview she tells how her father waved a bunch of fibre optic cable at her when she was 5 years old & told her it was going to change the world. Life is all about those moments, isn’t it?

I’ve always thought I was a decent enough plate spinner and until I met Sherry, I’d never been envious of another person’s career. I now realise I can surely do more. Sherry’s tutor at the LSE talked to her about considering becoming an entrepreneur…I turned down my place at the LSE when I was 17 because I didn’t feel ready to move to London. I wasn’t brave enough. I’ve wondered over the past few days about how different my life may have been if I’d grasped that particular nettle – but then I also got to thinking about all the good things I might have missed and I’ve concluded that life really is too short for regrets. It’s only in Kurt Vonnegut novels that we should visit those forks in the road & examine different outcomes.

I’ll leave you today with another great Sherry Coutu quote “As entrepreneurs you’re either seeking to disrupt something, or as a dominant market player, you’re seeking to retain your position. You know, you have to ask yourself, “Where’s the puck going to be in 25 years?” Yep – the gal’s still a Canadian! Sherry – it’s been a privilege to get to know you.

10 ways to punch well above your weight as a small business…

We all agree it’s great to be a small business but sometimes, especially if you’re just starting out, you might want people to think you’re bigger than you are.

Below are 10 ways you can do that. I’m sure there are many more – so I’ll be glad to see your comments. Also interested to hear if people think some of this is “wrong” to do as a small business…as in do you think it’s deceitful or just resourceful?

1. Be professional from Day 1 of trading. By that I mean have a logo & a brand, get business cards, have a decent website (not one of those dreadful one page affairs that tells you there’s more coming later), get collateral printed if that’s part of your sell…and always behave in a professional manner.

2. Work hard to keep your website content fresh and changing; write newsy articles and blogs and aim to have new “stuff” on your home page every day or every other day at least – if your website isn’t refreshed, people will stop coming back & you’ll lose momentum from your launch.

3. Use freelance resource if you don’t yet have a team in place, but present those people as part of your team & give them business cards, company email addresses etc. Don’t lie about this if you’re asked outright…most people will be sympathetic to what you’re trying to achieve.

4. Speak at conferences and events and be visible – a lot of people do this very well. You have to hustle a bit to get onto the event organisers’ radar but it’s no doubt worth the effort it takes.

5. Gather up a small advisory board & feature them on your website. Most people will be prepared to help you get started & won’t demand 30% of your company or £1,000 a day in return. A lot of luminaries like to dabble in interesting projects so make yours so & find an innovative way to reward them.

6. Get yourself some testimonials. Ideally from early adopters or your first customers. If you don’t have any customers yet, offer some of your prospects a free trial or a discount in exchange for a written or video testimonial.

7. Use a proper landline number. When Learning Pool was starting out, we obtained a London phone number to give the impression that we had a London office, even though we were based in Northern Ireland. We never lied about this to anyone & always told the truth when asked – but the truth is that no-one asked. They recognised it as a London number & assumed the rest. Along the same lines have a co-working space or concierge service to use as your company address – don’t use your residential address.

8. Register for VAT from Day 1 – even if you won’t get anywhere near the turnover registration hurdle in Year 1. It makes your company appear bigger from the get-go and therefore more credible.

9. Partner with a larger organisation if you want to pitch for a big contract or piggy-back onto a bigger company so that you can use their government framework if they’re on one – you will usually pay them a percentage of any contract you win in order to avail yourself of this but it might be well worth it.

10. My last & favourite one – hold all your early days business meetings in the poshest hotel you can find. We used to use The Goring Hotel as our “London office” in the early days of Learning Pool (it was the hotel the Middletons stayed in the night before this year’s Royal Wedding – that’s how posh it is). We would stay in there for days on end ordering tea but never any food as we couldn’t afford that. You’d be amazed at the number of people that have since told us they were convinced we used to stay there. Ha – I won’t tell you where we did used to stay…but it will be in the book when we eventually get round to writing it!

That’s my top 10 folks – can’t wait to see your additions. Keep ‘em coming.

Going for business awards – is it worth all the hassle?

Over the 5 years Learning Pool has been trading we’ve entered a few – won some & lost some – but is it worth the time & effort that it takes?

Like most things in life, the answer is probably “it depends”…which I know isn’t a great deal of help to you if you’re reading this blog to find out. The thing is that awards cover a huge spectrum. At one end are the “straightforward” awards – for example, the Deloitte Fast 50 technology awards. It costs nothing to enter, you don’t have to write an essay or deliver a presentation, you don’t have to be a Deloitte customer, it’s up to you if you want to buy a few more places at the Awards dinner but there’s no pressure. All you have to do is make your published financial information available and a calculation is performed of your revenue growth over a defined period of time. The 50 companies with the highest growth are then ranked with the winner being the company whose revenue has grown by the biggest percentage. It’s black & white and the numbers don’t lie. We like this one & have been the Rising Star winners in Ireland for the past two years.

At the other end of the spectrum are the much less clear & transparent “industry” awards such as those run by e-Learning Age magazine. I don’t know this is the case but from our perspective winning appears to be all about who you know in the industry and how much money you’ve spent with the magazine in sponsorship and advertising – as I say – only my own opinion from Learning Pool’s experience. We’ve entered twice and although shortlisted each time have won nothing. The winners are judged behind closed doors by a panel of industry “experts” – most of whom have their own e-learning companies and are therefore in direct competition with many of the entrants. A more cynical person may conclude that everyone who enters gets shortlisted so as they’ll fork out for a very expensive table at the Awards dinner. I shouldn’t scoff so – at least our last experience of this farce served to remind us that Learning Pool’s industry is very much the public sector and not e-learning.

Somewhere in the mix lies the business “competitions” – usually for seedcorn monies aimed at new or fast growing start-ups. These require a detailed business plan, a significant time commitment and a number of presentations over a period of time. The one & only time Learning Pool entered the Intertrade Ireland seedcorn competition (in 2008) we did well and won the Northern Ireland heat (we’re very proud of our trophy and that’s it in the photograph). We were pipped to the post by resellers of 3D printers…I’ll say no more but c’est la vie. This competition is definitely worthwhile for new start-ups, we learned a lot in the process and I would recommend it for any Irish companies thinking about entering.

In the future Learning Pool will continue to enter the Deloitte Fast 50 but we’ll probably be a bit more discerning about other awards and only enter in partnership with our customers to showcase their projects and achievements.

In summary, I don’t know whether entering awards is worth it or not – and I’ll be interested to hear your views on this. Awards dinners are a fun night out for your team, especially if you win, but weigh up how much time and energy entering will take up and think about whether or not you would be better off, certainly as a start-up business, investing that resource into making sales.

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