As anyone who sells online knows, grabbing your customers' attention is vital. And the same principle works with your council as you embrace commercialism and think about selling your services.

One way to bring customer focus is to teach your staff how to do a ‘lift speech'. The idea behind a lift speech is simple: imagine you've got the time it takes to go from the third to ground floor to sell your service to a potential customer – what would you say, and how would you say it?