You've got your business set up and running and your first enquiries start coming in. Now is not the time to sit back and relax you need to stay ahead of the competition and constantly research your market, honing and tuning your marketing. Here are some things that you should absolutely definitely not do.

1. Exaggerate your claims. Sooner or later your hype will catch up with you. Its bad for business to underestimate the intelligence of your potential customers and if you do sell them something that does not work then they will tell others and a bad reputation and demands for refunds will follow.
2. Not testing. Make sure that our ads are effective. Just think of the TV ads that are very memorable, but you cant remember the product that was being advertised. Monitor the response from your ads and make changes as needed. If you are getting loads of traffic but no sales thats a message to you your sales page is not working. If you have an ad or article that gets a lot of click thrus then find out why? What was different?
3. Expect immediate results. Responses to your ads increase the more they are seen. Many people will see your ad but not need your services at the time but if you are consistent they will know where to look when they want you provided that you ad is still there of course!
4. Not making the best use of unpaid advertising. Make yourself into an expert, provide press releases, write columns, offer advice in forums AND always, always leave your name and web link.
5. Forgetting you should always market. Always carry your business cards with you. Put your web links and phone number on everything that comes out of your office. Put your company name on your car; leave some brochures in the car window etc. etc. Take every opportunity to leave your mark!

If you remember these errors your enquiries and sales should improve. Good luck.

Lee Lister

Lee Lister is Management Consultant and Program Manager with more than 25 year's management and consultancy experience and more than 20 year's program and project management experience in projects for Banking, Finance, Insurance, Leisure and Government bodies. She also have more than 10 years bid management experience ranging from bids for medium companies to large international and infrastructure bids.

British born, Lee received her BA(Hons) Financial Economics from the University of Essex. She went on to work in or for a considerable number of countries within Asia and Europe as well as Australia and the United States. While building a name for herself through helping company restructure, change management and project management consultancy, Lee became a well-known figure for her skills in analyzing, problem solving and trouble-shooting. She has consulted for many major industries, including banking, telecommunications, insurance, transportation, leisure and governments from many different countries. Some of the companies who have benefited from Lee?s expertise are Hewlett Packard, Siemans Nixdorf, Electrolux and the Philippines government.

Whilst working in the Far East she became a recognized expert on preparing and evaluating large World Bank Proposals (infrastructure projects within developing countries). These accomplishments called upon the skills of bid and project management, risk assessment, contract negotiation and supplier management and required dedicated work to very tight time scales. This expertise was acknowledged by an invitation to be the principle speaker at an International Business Development Conference in Washington, USA. She has also consulted at very senior level in several countries.

She owns and manages two companies, Biz Guru LLC in the USA and Biz Guru Services Ltd in the UK as well a considerable number of profitable web sites. She works almost entirely via the internet, visiting clients on site during major consultancies and training. Her Internet skills span from when major companies first started to consider obtaining their own web sites. During these years, she has kept up to date with the rapid changes on the internet, including the dot com boom and the resulting bust ? which her own web based companies survived.

She regularly consults, writes and lectures on business, bid management and marketing and has published numerous courses and books.