Business as usual after pre-budget report

Pre-Budget Report - No change?

Having read the reports of yesterday's pre-budget report fairly carefully, there doesn't seem to have been any really big news from a consultants point of view. There wasn't anything that would immediately give a massive boost to business, but no real headline cuts either - but I have been hearing a lot of talk about public sector organisations quietly cutting budgets without it necessarily being headline news. I've also heard of some tenders that are really 're-tenders' aimed at getting incumbent suppliers to cut costs - since those tenders may turn out to be a waste of time it's probably a good idea to ask clients before you bid whether they already have a supplier and how long the contract has to run.

Thanks for your patience

We managed to get the new website live over the week end and as expected there were a few teething problems early in the week, so thank you to everyone who reported problems and for your patience and understanding. One of the new features I think you'll find useful is that the My Project Contacts page now allows you to manage the projects you've contacted into New, Active, Pending and Lost - so you can easily see where you are with each opportunity. We think the majority of problems are no fixed, but if you know otherwise please email or give us a call.

This week's projects

As usual we've had a wide range of tenders and projects;

Funded Training Partners Needed, United Kingdom
Potential Business Partner - Psychology & Profiling
Opportunity Business/ IT Consulting Associates needed
Client Web Site Heritage Evaluation Consultant, North West England
Engineer/safety professional , South East
Managing and Developing People, Greater London
Place Branding, Wales
Branding and Marketing , North East England
Development of Internal Mediation Resource , Scotland
Client Web Site Evaluation of Youth Work Project, South West
Personal Effectiveness Training, Greater London
Community Games Toolkit, West Midlands
Consultant team for theatre feasibility study, South West
IT Audit Services , London
Training for Customer Service Programme , Wales
Client Web Site Website about fatherhood
OJEU Procurement Support Services,Overseas
OJEU Inward Investment promotion newsletters, London
OJEU Telesales and Lead Generation Services, United Kingdom
OJEU Training Consultancy , West Midlands

Arrangements for Christmas

As I mentioned last week, we expect to be loading tenders right up until the last minute before Christmas - we'll aim to get as many as possible into the daily alert on 24th December but if any projects come in after that they'll be included on the weekly alert (which I hope you'll ignore until after Christmas Day!). There won't be any daily alerts the following week and we don't expect to load any tenders, but if anything does come in we'll include it in the weekly alert. Normal service will be resumed on 4th January 2010 - but remember that the membership fee goes up to £144 on 1st Jan so if you're planning to renew you should do it before the end of the year!

Newsletter - Connecting Sideways
While posting your deep thoughts and what you had for breakfast on Twitter may be fun it won't bring in any business unless your potential clients are listening! As we all know though, the people you most want to meet as a consultant are the decision makers within a business and they're often far too busy to get involved in online networking - in fact in larger companies they may not even be able to access the websites. So how can you make the connections you need?
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Newsletter - Marketing yourself on-line
You may remember that we asked early in January if you'd be interested in attending a 'How to use Skillfair' event. The feedback was pretty positive and we've decided that combining this with a review of how best to market your services on-line would be a good way to help you focus on marketing ready for 2010.
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