'With Talk Up Your Business, Mary Morel has produced an easy to read book with practical and workable advice on how to verbally sell your small business.

The advice given is based on personal experience, feedback from seminars, meetings with other small business owners and extensive reading. For example, in chapter three, which looks at how word of mouth and referrals work, Ms Morel refers to previously published books and studies with which the reader may already be familiar.

Where the book really comes into its own is the chapter looking at different ways of answering when someone asks you 'what do you do?' for a living. "How you introduce yourself will often determine whether the other person wants to invest their time talking to you," the author says.

Ms Morel and colleagues trialled different ways of answering the question at a network meeting and afterwards agreed answers must be short at about 30 seconds, avoid current buzz words or generic words, and include stories and details that are memorable.

Another strong chapter in the book looks at networking. Ms Morel says the mistake many people make with networking is treating it just as socialising, rather than as a marketing exercise. She says the more visible a person is in a networking group, the more accepted they will be.

Ms Morel suggests it may be possible to measure the value of networking by doing a return-on-investment analysis over a period of time, such as a year. Costs could include membership and entrance fees, parking and a valuation on the time spent away from the office. Sales and invoices might be used to gauge returns.'

Damien Lynch