This morning on BBC Radio4 Today Paddy Ashdown who is leading the Liberal Democratic Party election campaign appeared to be on the wrong side of the discussion following allegations against Ibrahim Taguri, the party’s former chief fund-raiser who carried out that role for 5 years. Fund raising for political parties or even charities is a close cousin to being a sales person in business. The impact of over promising (and the inevitable under delivery which follows) is catastrophic for any Micro or Small size enterprise. As a result of this all of the workers in the business must be on their guard and ensure that any failure by the sales person is fed back quickly and addressed immediately. Sales in any organisation is vital, but once the sales team are treated as being a different species, once their expensive cars and flash suits separate them from the rest of the workforce, the conflict at the heart of the Lib Dem pain today is almost inevitable. The risk in larger businesses and clearly in the operations of Political Parties is that sales or fundraising is deemed to be a black art and because of issues linked to confidentiality of those deemed to be about to make donations (or sales) other parts of the organisation end up criticising the sales team in private, yet they are treated as minor celebrities in face to face contact. Ibrahim Taguri did not suddenly become rogue after 5 years in the job, he wanted the buzz of landing a big donation at a time when the party is struggling on many levels. As the saying goes, if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true. In any well run micro entrerprise or charity there is no prospect of a cheque/order arriving without prior knowledge of the rest of the business or charity. These things are too important to simply turn up, only for the scrutiny to take place once the cheque is received as Paddy Ashdown seems to argue is acceptable. And in any well run business new orders are not needed for the promise that the money would “open doors”, the doors are either already open or else they won’t ever open doors. Perhaps its time for our Political Parties to learn from our SME business community.