One of the aspects of running a small business where we take a relatively small number of reasonably large orders is that I'm always getting the feeling of "feast" or "famine". A few weeks ago, I was seeing a slight slowing down of bookings (hey - I'm a worrier) and a lower level of booking ahead than I've seen in a while ... and yet in the last couple of weeks there's been a surge in enquiries and I'm now looking right forward through the Autumn and looking to arrange November so that we can maximise the training time we have. Even having to tell people of limited availabily of course that are months ahead.
I'm often asked about seasonality in our business and, yes, it exists but it's not exactly what you would expect. Our quiet period is the run up to Christmas and early in the new year, rather than the summer holidays; people tend to take advantage of a quieter time at their place of work to fit in the training that they're otherwise too busy to take, and that bolsters our order book even for months such as August.
(written 2005-07-21, updated 2006-06-05)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G500 - Well House Consultants - Running a training company [171] Skills and techniques of being a successful trainer - (2005-01-06)
[251] WIBNIF - (2005-03-19)
[402] Netless - (2005-08-05)
[470] I wanna be a Python trainer - (2005-10-20)
[545] Is training seasonal? - (2005-12-28)
[627] JIT or JAU - (2006-02-27)
[652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[838] Talking about other training companies. - (2006-08-19)
[926] Training rooms to learn Open Source programming - (2006-11-15)
[978] Wellhouse Manor, Hotel, Melksham - (2006-12-10)
[1022] No courses. No hotel guests. Rushed off our feet! - (2007-01-05)
[1040] What the customer is looking for - effective training - (2007-01-17)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1393] First Alternative / what has happened there? - (2007-10-16)
[1433] Linux, PHP, Tcl, Ruby, C, C++ - last minute training course availability - (2007-11-16)
[1884] Recession? Depression? - (2008-11-14)
[1963] Best source to learn Java (or Perl or PHP or Python) - (2008-12-28)
[2003] Discount Training Courses - PHP, Perl, Python - (2009-01-21)
[2021] Short health and safety course - (2009-02-02)
[2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
[2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10)
[2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
[2144] Looking for a career change - Physician to Web Site Designer - (2009-04-28)
[2838] Respecting our customers anonimity - (2010-06-29)
[2924] Job applicants - wondering why they apply - (2010-08-16)
[2940] Training course locations - Melksham, UK; Buxton, UK; Lake Constance, Germany; Venice Italy, the USA and India - (2010-08-30)
[3361] Blowing our own trumpet - MySQL resources - (2011-07-18)
[3610] Training to do a job, or training to pass an exam? - (2012-02-13)
[3684] Once upon a Maundy Thursday - (2012-04-05)
[3824] Planned for a quiet period during the Olympics - but it is far from that! - (2012-08-02)
[4004] Annual Accounts - a big job for a small business - (2013-02-15)
[4135] Introducing your product to Well House Consultants - single, personally tuned email please - (2013-07-08)
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