As we all know, in any relationship, it’s the small things that matter. Yet what many people don’t realise is that it’s not only in our personal relationships that small things can have a big effect… they can also have a similar result in the relationships marketers, brands and companies have with their customers or business partners.

And why do small things matter? Well, as anyone who has ever bought a girl flowers knows; something small but effective can have a kind of result that is absolutely out of proportion to the cost.

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If you want to improve your business writing, be more like Satan.

That’s the advice John Simmons offers at the end of his Writer’s Materials Trilogy. Don’t worry. We’re not talking Satan in the epitome-of-all-things-evil kind of way here. Rather the Satan who appears in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Now for those of you not up to speed with your 17th century blank verse epic poetry, Paradise Lost begins with Satan and his dark angel buddies being banished to Hell by God, after a failed attempt at taking over Heaven.

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