The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce

The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce by Stephanie Edwards

Developing a customer-driven workforce is one of the key roles of customer service leaders and managers - but how can they successfully achieve this? In the first article in a new series exploring best practice customer service, Stephanie Edwards starts with a strategic look at the topic, outlining the 10 components of customer-centricity.

Turning a customer service strategy into reality is a key challenge for organisations. Today, most senior managers realise that customer service is the competitive strategic weapon but achieving this is sometimes a major challenge. Organisations are their people, and developing a customer-driven workforce has to be the key role of customer service leaders and managers… so how can they do this?

Peter Drucker famously said: “The purpose of business is to create and keep customers,” so every business needs to organise its service delivery system around the needs of its customers. This means firstly designing a customer service strategy that will put customers at the heart of your business. Senior managers need to ask themselves, “Are we doing everything we can to create the best possible experience for our customers?” Perhaps some senior managers assume that because their marketing departments communicate that the organisation’s service delivery “exceeds customer expectations,” that they actually do. I call this corporate arrogance! It is suicidal for businesses.

Your people are the ones to leave a first impression - and a lasting impression - on your customers. They also intimately understand customers’ frustrations and they often know how issues can be resolved, but are not empowered to make the necessary changes.

In the UK we are now predominantly a service economy, so we increasingly need high performance people to keep our customers loyal. Poor customer service is costing UK business’s £15.3bn per year as customers defect! Companies that increase customer interaction investments during a recession can improve profit margins, sales and market share over complacent competitors. It is critical for organisations to retain every customer and maximise their lifetime value.

Institute of Customer Service research shows that organisations with a reputation for service excellence have on average a 24% higher net profit margin than same-sector rivals who do not have the same standing – and they can achieve up to 71% more profit per employee. Are businesses listening?

Let’s assume there are still many organisations out there that still do not know how to establish a strong customer base, so what do they have to do? Lets get customer-centric and here are my ten key components, tried and tested, which will help organisations get started.

Components of customer-centricity
1. Customer insight – Get to know your customers and understand what they expect from you. How many organisations conduct mystery shopper activities for themselves? Where they do it can be scary but enlightening. Get to know your internal customers too - your workforce. Customer service managers need to focus on all their customers consistently and there are many ways of gathering customer intelligence. This does not mean the odd customer satisfaction survey, which I am personally not in favour of; not because most organisations disregard the feedback or do not interpret them properly, but because many organisations create them with a primary intention of achieving good results! They sometimes only ask the questions that will highlight their good practices.

Also, where satisfaction surveys are concerned doesn’t the customer experience depend a lot on customer expectations in the first place? Easyjet might score highly because we have low expectations, but we might score British Airways lower because we have high expectations. Organisations need more reliable methods of evaluating the customer experience and they need their people to make this happen. I really believe that before you decide what your customer service strategy should be you need to talk to your customers and your people, your internal customers, before you put pen to paper.

I remember one such company that impressed me which has now been taken over. Portman Building Society’s top executives travelled the length and breadth of the country to speak to their customers and their staff to identify what was important to them and what needed to be in place to satisfy all their requirements. When they analysed all the information they developed their customer service strategy, created new service standards and then went back on the road to communicate their new vision to employees and customers alike. Absolutely the right way to go which is why they proved to be a great acquisition.

2. Create the service vision or service personality – This is an identifiable set of service characteristics that define how an organisation service proposition is different from that of its competitors. Some organisations have their own credo, others have a service promise or a customer charter but whatever method you have of communicating your service standards to your customers it is important to make sure those promises are achievable and shared by all teams in the organisation.

3. Develop a customer service strategy - This determines the overall direction of the organisation, and, in particular, how the organisation will go about delivering customer service excellence.This is a high level plan that communicates to everyone involved with the organisation how it will develop relationships with its customers, in order to maximise customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and achieve business success. It is commonly used to prevent non-aligned and disjointed activities between departments and drives everyone towards the same service goals. It includes a service/operational plan to ensure the strategic objectives are met and this should be shared with employees as everyone is going on the same journey. Communication is key; if you do not keep your people informed, rumours and gossip spread fast which can lead to negativity and once embedded it is hard to eliminate.

4. Build an appropriate customer service framework - A learning and development framework will help identify how the organisation is going to go about delivering service excellence. Reward and recognition, celebrating success are key motivators for employees so use them to deliver your service strategy. Customer service performance will improve when organisations provide support through valued reward and recognition systems. This level of recognition results in higher levels of employee satisfaction which translates into better customer service for your customers.

5. Deploy executive service leaders and managers who will become the organisation’s service champions - Service leaders and managers can make or break an organisation’s values; a leader who successfully creates a customer-focused culture will have a huge impact on business success through employee retention and customer loyalty. Ensure that your leaders and managers have the right skills, dedication and passionate about service excellence, customer focused and are results-driven. Leaders should posses a strong business acumen, be strategic, but lead by example, inspiring trust and embedding a no-blame culture within the organisation. Critically, they must encourage positive teamwork.

6. Recruit high-performance, intelligent and well-motivated people with a 'can-do attitude' - You want people with a customer-focused mindset. Once in place, develop their knowledge and skills for delivering service excellence against competencies that are customer focused – good communication skills, tolerance, empathy, good judgement and the ability to interpret service issues and respond appropriately according to the organisations rules.

7. Create innovative products and services with the support of all your people - Inspire your organisation to develop a culture of continuous improvement and innovation for the benefit of your customers. Employee suggestion schemes have helped many organisations implement change which has improved service delivery for customers but even those organisations that have the answers today cannot assume they know what their customers will want tomorrow. Customer’s expectations have become demands and successful organisations will already be anticipating customer’s demands tomorrow to stay ahead of the competition.

8. Design and implement customer-centric processes that make purchasing easy for customers - Processes should be seamless, designed from the customers viewpoint and be consistently reviewed to make transactions simple and stress free. This includes making it easy for customers to complain, remember complainants are your most loyal ambassadors if their complaints are handled professionally. Organisations seldom achieve competitive advantage through their technology and processes alone; it may add value but only if there is a parallel investment in their people who have to work with the technology to assist customers.

9. Create performance metrics so that the organisation can routinely and accurately assess its effectiveness for customers - Use appropriate tools, proven methods, for measuring your customer satisfaction, remember that customer service as a whole includes a wide range of specific service characteristics and there are many touch points where customer transactions take place. It is important to check on customers` perceptions of your service levels at each of these touch points and compare the results with what actually takes place. In other words, identifying your gaps!

10. Manage customer relationships - Products and service alone will not develop relationships with customers. The organisation must deliver something of value to ensure loyalty. Loyalty is created when you provide a level of service that exceeds expectations and which delights your customers. Managing customer relationships is about establishing, maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers for mutual benefit. This takes us back to the beginning, to learning more and more about our customers in order to deliver what they expect. If your people can be encouraged, not only to deliver the promise, but also to go the extra mile, this goes a long way towards sustaining a fantastic relationship with your customers. You will reap the rewards in loyalty, increased reputation and business success. I must emphasise at this point that although CRM is a term given to the management of customer relationships in high volume consumer services its prime objective is to collect data from different departments to enable the tracking and analysis of customer’s transactions and trends. Although particularly valuable it does not replace the personal touch.

By successfully implementing all these components you will begin to create a customer-focused culture. There is no quick fix, but eventually you will influence the behaviours of all your people so that when new recruits join the organisation the service culture dictates: “This is the way we do things around here”. The customer determines what Best Practice is and they expect the highest possible service, the most innovative products at the right price and they want them now.

To achieve service excellence organisations must make excellent service a priority and ensure that their service leaders and customer service managers posses the necessary skills to support all customer facing teams, whether front-of-house or back office; they should all interact in a carefully designed way to ensure that the customer has a fantastic experience with your organisation.

It is no longer appropriate to simply focus on product and/or services. Instead, organisations must truly understand the emotional interactions between their team leaders and mangers, employees and customers, because this is what determines whether an organisation achieves business success or not.

In the second part of this series, Stephanie will discuss the first step in realising this customer strategy - developing a customer-centric leader. Look out for this feature next month.

Stephanie Edwards is managing director of Customer 1st International, and Customer 1st Learning. You can buy her excellent customer services books from The Complete Trainer:

Best Practice Guide for Customer Service Managers
Best Practice Guide for Customer Service

Career Management Best Practice

Career Management: Best Practices in Organisations and the Implications for HR by
Antoinette Oglethorpe

The Challenge
Career management is about the future of the organisation, and also about the effective deployment and development of all employees. Even so, keeping it on the business agenda is a struggle.

Career management is full of tensions and opportunities. Individuals want a career where there is scope for development and progression, together with opportunities to fully utilise their skills. Organisations need to ensure they have the right people in the right jobs and are building a talent pool for the future.

HR Practitioners therefore need to take into account the needs of both the organisation and the individuals within it, thinking about how to build and retain the talent they need, while satisfying employee career aspirations. However, the lack of integration between the organization’s needs and the individuals needs is clearly reflected in the terminology they use with individuals referring to it as “Career Management” and organisations referring to it as “Talent Management”.

This is consistent with the findings of the CIPD survey which show that for the most part, career management is still seen as an optional “nice to have” activity for employees, rather than an essential part of organisational resourcing. Proactive career management is generally aimed at the “high potential” few. Organisations are, for the most part, not embracing the needs of the whole workforce when they talk about career management. Only a quarter of the organisations have a formal written strategy covering the career management of all employees.

The Opportunity
Employers have repeatedly been warned that a number of problems await them in terms of future availability of skilled resources. A tough economy, significant skills shortages and a future “demographic time bomb” resulting in a shortage of young people entering the workforce are all problems already facing many organisations. However, the survey results indicate that, despite this, very little is being done to rethink how career management can help organisations grow and develop their existing resources and talent to counter these issues.
As Hirsh (2002) pointed out “keeping employees at a standstill, where they are in skill and job terms,, is not a realistic option”

Therefore, gaining the necessary support from the top is very challenging. Two key difficulties are:

1. Career development deals with the future and managers will always struggle to prioritise it above short-term operational issues.
2. Many managers worry that asking about career intentions will unsettle staff and open a Pandora‟s Box of pent-up problems and frustrations that are troubling them.

But the evidence shows that attending to career issues makes staff more committed to the organisation and more productive.

Research by Penna Sanders and Sidney entitled Itchy Feet, shows that four out of ten workers surveyed expect to have quit their job within a year and seven out of ten kept their CV polished in case a better offer came their way. With the job market picking up, combined with the demise of employee loyalty and the ever present war for talent, employers cannot afford to be lax in addressing employee satisfaction. However, employees polled in the „Itchy feet‟ report stressed that faced with an environment of internal promotion (46%), better training and development (41%) and recognition of their work (36%), they would stay put. Hence, an effective career management strategy can produce benefits of:

1. Commitment of individuals to stay and deliver
2. Capability to meet future demands
3. Talent magnets – employer of choice
4. Cost savings – reduced staff turnover
5. Competitive advantage

Get career management correctly aligned and individuals will feel connected to their work, valued for their contribution, engaged with the organisation, and motivated to contribute. Their willingness to apply and increase their capability will be enhanced. Manage careers well and the organisation’s capability to meet future demands will be enhanced by its ability to retain existing staff and to attract high quality applicants thereby unlocking the value chain which links personal success, business results and shareholder value. Get career management wrong, and organisational capability is driven down as individual capability exits to competitors.

Getting the environment right
The typical organisation responds to an identified issue with career management (employee attitude survey, increased attrition, reduced morale etc.) by looking for a tool or set of tools that will put things right. Current HR practice in the area of career management tends to concentrate on formal “processes” or “interventions” driven by the organisation to make career development happen. When they fail to do so, the organisation turns its attention away from career management until the next crisis arises.

Getting the alignment right however, is not led by applying the latest career management instrument or copying competitors. It is shaped by developing an environment and culture which is right for that organisation.

The CIPD Survey suggests that organisations who are effective at career management have addressed these three key areas:

1. Formal written career management strategy
2. Getting the communication right
3. Help & support for line managers

Formal written career management strategy
Organisations with effective career management seem to be using a dual strategy of both focused career management and wider career support. HR practitioners need to work hard to sell to their organisations the business case for a more inclusive approach to career management while at the same time recognising the practicalities and limitations of the organisation.

Every organisation has a culture in the way they manage people. Career management interventions and initiatives need to be designed in a way that recognises that culture, adapts to it where possible or manages any change that is necessary.

HR practitioners need to bear in mind that the nature of their organisation (sector, size etc.) will strongly influence the types of career management activities which will be appropriate in that environment. For example, it is not appropriate (or possible) for smaller organisations to offer some of the more sophisticated or formal career management activities that some large organisations are able to offer. But small businesses can still find informal ways of providing development opportunities and encouraging skills development, and they can still work to make sure that their HR practices are not unfairly disadvantaging certain employee groups.

Looking across the piece we see active career management for key groups plus a “core” offering for all staff of appraisal, a more open job market, informal advice (from the line and often HR) and perhaps some career information or tools.

The Achilles Heel of this prevalent pattern is that appraisal is really the only process directed at all employees which offers significant formal dialogue between employee and employer. Unfortunately, this approach seldom leads to what employees might see as “real” conversations about their careers. This is partly because an immediate boss is often not the best person to be talking to, and partly because a formal appraisal review is almost the worst place to tackle the complexities of someone’s future working life.

This may also explain why the most common career goals explored by line managers are short-term goals within the organization, promotion and project roles. These are relatively simple goals to be discussed indicating that managers may not feel they have the skills to talk about some of the more complicated types of career management issues like secondments, work-life balance or career changes.

A research project by the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC) showed that only a minority of useful career conversations took place in the context of formal HR or management processes such as appraisals. Most occurred naturally and were informal. These effective conversations were with a variety of people in the workplace. About a fifth were with the employee’s line manager, but far more were with other managers (including the boss’s boss). Mentors or a friendly, well-informed HR function were also valued sources of advice.

Informal career support is not about providing an “answer”. It often takes several conversations to help someone talk through their career issues. Even then they are still likely to need more information or advice. Sharing our networks and putting employers in touch with those who have access to wider information or know about another part of the organisation can be very useful.

So how can HR use informal discussions as part of a wider career development strategy? First, a strategy should include support from sources other than line managers, including career workshops, mentors or people in HR. Lloyds TSB is promoting this kind of “off-line” provision by training staff in its HR call centre, as well as volunteers from other functions, to act as career coaches. In addition, HR can encourage employees to seek less formal advice from a range of people.

Getting the Communication Right
Career management is often described in terms of the implementation of particular activities or processes. However, most researchers in this field also emphasise the messages – and implied promises – to staff which lie behind the strategy.

Whatever the type, organisations must make sure they are offering clear and honest messages to employees about career and development prospects.

The aspects of career development most likely to be promised to staff are opportunities to develop their skills, flexibility in aspects of their work, interesting work and reasonable levels of security. The “employability” angle is strong here.

The messages are clear and unsurprising. If employees want to get on they should seek qualifications and training, greater responsibility and varied work experiences. They should not work reduced hours, take career breaks, work from home or get ill. So “being there” in continuous full-time employment is a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition for career progression.

The CIPD Survey showed that, on balance, HR practitioners believe that organisations should be adopting a “partnership model” approach to career management. In this partnership deal, individuals should “own” their own careers – but employers should support them by offering advice, support and training. The reality however, seems to be that individuals are pushed towards fulfilling their side of the “deal”, taking ownership for their own career development, but most employers are not delivering their side of the deal.

This amounts to a difficult message to employees. The message about managing your career can easily be heard by employees as saying “you‟re on your own”, with the messages about career partnership and support being less audible. We also see that the career management activities undertaken offer information support to employees, but probably fall short of an active partnership. The message about the organisations need to develop certain groups of people can also seem at odds with the more universal messages about career support. This is not to say that the strategic thinking is flawed just that the communication challenge is considerable.

Help & support for line managers
The CIPD survey shows that getting involvement in career management from line managers is still an uphill struggle. Career management activities are mostly driven by the HR function and by individuals with the Board taking rather secondary responsibility. It seems that the line will play a part but need to be coaxed and cajoled by the HR function on the one hand and employees on the other.

HR practitioners need to devise ways of helping line managers support career development more effectively particularly since one of the major barriers to career management is reported as being a “lack of time”. Other research has shown that career education for employees can help them extract support from their bosses (Yarnall, 1998), so this should be a focus for practitioners.

Wendy Hirsh expresses a personal view that “career development needs stronger „hands on‟ HR input than many other areas of people management. Some of the reasons for this include: its future orientation which makes it slip down the business agenda; the need sometimes for expert and confidential career support; and the need to facilitate career moves across functional or business unit boundaries. These are not reasons to pull line managers out of their role in career management, but they do imply more proactive HR input alongside that of the line.”

If organisations were really serious about line managers taking the lead in supporting the career management of their staff, they would train them to do it. Not surprisingly, the survey shows only a minority of managers receive such training. This will reinforce the “optional extra” status which career management so often has in the line – nice if you have the time and interest, but not really all that important.

The CIPD survey results show that few managers appear to take career management seriously or are trained to provide effective career discussions to their team members. CIPD research indicated that, if delivered well, HR practices such as career development and training can contribute to producing highly committed, motivated employees (Purcell et al, 2003). This is where line managers have an important role to play. CIPD research “Understanding the people and performance link: Unlocking the black box”, also highlights the crucial role of line managers in delivering HR strategy and effective practices. If line managers are to be the main source of support for employees in terms of career support, organisations need to properly equip them with the training, guidance and information to perform their task effectively. Much needs to be done to make line managers understand why career management is important to future individual and organisational success.

Career Management Practices - Developing a “Career Partnership”
The duality of the objectives of career management – meeting the needs of the organisation and of the individual – have led to much debate about who “owns” career development. In reality of course individuals have always owned their own careers and certainly their own attitudes and aspirations.

There are three general strands of thinking about career ownership:
1. Individuals should take primary responsibility for their own careers, and be proactive in their own career development, particularly when in a rapidly changing organisation or when unemployed.
2. Employed individuals will manage their career‟s inside an organisation more effectively if they have information and support from their employer. To be most effective, a “career partnership” should be formed between employer and employee based on active dialogue and negotiation to meet the needs of both parties. Employees need advice, support and training in how to manage their careers.
3. Organisations have a vested interest in taking more initiative in planning for the careers of their most valued employees, typically senior managers and their potential successors.

The processes most commonly made available to “all” staff are online vacancy boards, an open internal job market, formal appraisal or development review, and career information/advice from staff in a learning centre. These processes can be seen to be relatively standard or straightforward activities, predominantly focused on providing information or forming part of another process such as appraisal.

Practices less likely to be aimed at all employees are succession planning, high potential development schemes, formal mentoring, graduate entry schemes, development or assessment schemes and external secondments.

In other words there are a number of widespread processes regularly implemented and aimed at “all” employees. However, these are often informal and not always considered to be effective e.g. appraisal. Certain groups of employees, such as senior management and graduates, do seem to be receiving more proactive career development, but this only affects a small proportion of the workforce.

The survey tells us what activities or processes HR people think are being deployed in their organisations, which employees they cover, and how effective they are felt to be.

Succession Planning is one of the more common processes, although it remains difficult to implement effectively. A high proportion of respondents reported their organisations had some career processes aimed at specific populations (such as high potential or graduate schemes). This links with the survey findings that the dominant objective for career management is developing future leaders. Other research would support this view (Gratton et al. 1999).

Appraisal is the only formal process applied to nearly all employees. The survey respondents who used this process found it only moderately effective. Other research has shown it is not very helpful for career dialogue (Hirsh et al. 2001)

An open internal job market is now very common (Hirsh et al, 2000) and available to the whole workforce, often supported by an online vacancy board. The survey shows the open job market is most used in organisations with lower proportions of managers and professionals. It is felt to be an effective process, at least by HR practitioners.

Over two-thirds of organisations offered some form of career support such as career information, career counselling, or workshops. With the exception of information (often now intranet-based), most of the initiatives are not offered to all staff. They are, however, less common than the targeted forms of career management for potential senior managers.

Informal career support is, as we would expect, very widespread. It is interesting, however, that over three-quarters of respondents felt that HR or training people in their organisation offered informal career support to employees.

The practices considered to be most effective are:
• An open internal job market
• Development or assessment centres
• Online vacancy boards
• Development Programmes
• Graduate entry schemes

Practices considered to be least effective are:
• Succession planning
• Career information/advice
• Informal support from managers

The implications for HR
The barriers to better career management appear to be practical rather than philosophical. The main barriers are seen as lack of time/resources; being seen as peripheral; and a lack of senior management commitment – all to do with getting it done rather than strategic intent.

Hence, two key activities for the HR function should be (a) working hard to involve senior management both in strategy and implementation and (b) training line managers much more thoroughly for the role they are expected to undertake.

HR need to develop a clear business case for career management. Career management should improve the deployment of skills and develop a stronger and more flexible skills base for the future, as well as supporting the attraction, motivation and retention of high-quality staff.
Career management in most organisations requires two strategies to work side by side. The first pillar of the strategy facilitates planned career development for selected groups of staff the organisation wants to bring on. The second pillar of the strategy offers information, advice and support to all employees who wish to develop their careers.

HR practitioners need to bear in mind that the nature of their organisation (sector, size etc.) will strongly influence the types of career management activities which will be appropriate in that environment. For example, it is not appropriate (or possible) for smaller organisations to offer some of the more sophisticated or formal career management activities that some large organisations are able to offer. But small businesses can still find informal ways of providing development opportunities and encouraging skills development, and they can still work to make sure that their HR practices are not unfairly disadvantaging certain employee groups.
Organisations expect all employees to manage their own careers; all managers to support other employees in their career development; and senior managers to take a strategic lead and provide positive role models. Employees at all levels need adequate training to equip them for their roles in career management.

In conclusion, the HR function needs to be an active player in career management and to allocate enough of its own resources to offering practical career support.

(C) 2010 Annette Oglethrope, Banana Park Consulting

Career Coaching

Career Coaching has a valuable role to play in retaining and managing talent

"Don't ask what the world needs - ask what makes you come alive because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

There are few organisations who would argue with the need for talent management. Talent management is about getting the best people in the right places at the right time. It is about highly skilled individuals performing optimally according to changing business needs. It is also about developing those highly skilled individuals in a way that realises their full potential and satisfies their aspirations.

And it is those last three words – satisfies their aspirations - that often get lost. Organisations focus so much on what the high potential employee needs to do to meet the business’s needs that they lose sight of what the organisation needs to do to meet the employee’s needs. And this is crucial if you are going to be effective in engaging and managing the talent within the organization.

It is vital that talent management processes take into consideration employee’s career aspirations because:

- People make their own career decisions and need to balance their work lives with their home lives;
- High potential employees have arguably always managed their own careers and will turn down roles they are offered which they do not want;
- High potential employees are at risk of leaving the company if they are never told that there are exciting career opportunities available to them.

Career development is a tricky area for organisations. This is because it deals with the future and is a venture into the unknown. It is also deeply personal. Many managers worry that asking about career intentions may unsettle staff or even make them leave. But the evidence shows that discussing and attending to career issues makes staff more committed to the organisation and more productive.

So organisations need to help employees manage their own career development. And this is where career coaching has a clear role to play in talent management. Where the organization is turbulent, or individuals have specific career development requirements, targeted coaching by a skilled career coach can be extremely effective.

Career coaching can help employees develop:

- A clearer sense of career direction – not necessarily a detailed career path but an idea of where they are going in the future
- Increased self-insight – a more realistic view of their abilities and potential
- A broader understanding of the career options available to them and the resources available to help them learn more
- Increased confidence and motivation – an emotional impact, which often lasts a long time

With the increased clarity and confidence that career coaching can provide, employees will be in the best possible frame of mind to share their aspirations with the organisation, discuss future career options and produce a focused and realistic development plan.

These outcomes also have positive impacts on the organisation. Career coaching plays a strong role in developing the potential of employees (maximising their contribution over time) but even more as an essential component of a motivational style of leadership (maximising their engagement). A strong business benefit can be gained from the impact of attending to the real concerns that employees have about their futures.

As a wise person once said, “High-flyers will stay for today if offered challenge and empowerment; they will stay for tomorrow if offered the chance to grow.”

Written by Antoinette Oglethorpe, Banana Park Consulting

Four Ways to Handle the “I’m too busy” Brushoff

by Mike "Mr Inside Sales" Brookes

Let’s face it – we’re all busy. This is especially true if you are cold calling and are lucky enough to actually get a decision maker on the phone. Just like you, they’ll be in the middle of at least three things and be on their way to or from a meeting. Because of this, one of the most frequent objections they use these days to brush you off the phone is the, “I’m too busy/don’t have the time objection.”

Now here’s the thing: while this may be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t need or aren’t interested in what you have to offer. Like all initial resistance statements, what you must do with this objection is to quickly control the situation, assess whether or not your prospect is or can be interested, and then find a way to quickly qualify them. Sound like a lot? It is if you’re not prepared with proven and effective scripts like these:

Here are four ways to handle the: “I’m too busy, don’t have the time” brush off:

Response #1:
“I know that feeling; my desk is full of things I need to do, too. I’d be happy to schedule a time to call you back, but I don’t want to bother you if you’re really not interested. Let me ask you a quick question and be honest with me: If I could show you a (system/product/service) that is proven to (reduce your overhead, generate more sales, etc.), would it be worth it for you and I to take for just 5 minutes to see how it could work for you?”

If NO: “No problem. Before I go, who else do you know that might be able to use a system like this?”

If Yes: “Terrific. Do you have 5 minutes right now?”

If No: “I’m looking at my schedule, what is a good time later today?”

Response #2:
“___________ you probably get a lot of calls like I do, and my initial reaction is to say I’m too busy as well. But I can explain this to you in just 3 minutes and if you think it can help you we can schedule more time later - and if you don’t we can part friends, is that fair?”

Response #3:
“I’m with you. Before I schedule time to get back with you, just a quick question: Is it a priority for you to (fix or improve what your product or service will do for them) this quarter?”

Response #4:
“I’m glad you’re busy, that means that you don’t have the time to waste looking at things you have no intention of taking advantage of. Quick question: If I could show you a proven way to (get the benefits of your product or service), is that something that you would invest 5 minutes learning more about?”

If you found these scripts helpful, then invest in “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts,” which is packed with many more word for word scripts and techniques that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales.

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps all over the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. If you’re looking to catapult your sales, or create a sales team that actually makes their monthly revenues, then learn how by visiting: www.MrInsideSales.com

Association launches new branding for learning practitioners in the UK

The Learning Practitioners' Association, the voice, marketplace and professional route to excellence for learning practitioners in the UK, has launched its new branding to identify the Association as a distinct and unique body within the learning and development sector.

The Learning Practitioners' Association Ltd, now incorporating the TrainerBase learning industry marketplace, is establishing a family of logos for its learning practitioner accreditations and qualifications, including the Certified Learning Practitioner (CLP) accreditation and a new Certificate in Learning Practice Management (CertLPM) qualification, as well as a new identities for the Learning Practitioners' Association (LPA) itself and the TrainerBase (TB) marketplace.

The branding has come about as a result of the name change of the trade association in July of 2009. Peter Mayes, Chief Executive of the Association commented; "The Association will benefit by establishing its own identity and be more than the TrainerBase site from which it originated". He went on: "By changing the name and creating a new distinct image the Association will be seen as a truly representative body with its own aims whilst maintaining the services developed since the launch of the TrainerBase site in 2002. The Association is in a stronger position to expand its appeal to a wider group of learning and development professionals and support their career development."

For more information, visit their website: www.learningpractitioners.org.uk

Profile of the Month Lumus 360 Feedback

An interview with David Cooper of Lumus™ 360

Established in 1999, Lumus are one of the UK’s leading suppliers of 360 Degree Feedback tools to trainers/ consultants and organisations. They specialise in providing fully managed online 360 degree feedback tools for individuals, medium and large organisations and development consultants.

About Lumus™

Carolyn (The Complete Trainer Ltd): Tell me a little about your company.

David: I’ve been with the company since we started. What is important to me, and to our clients, is that rather than being just a straightforward 360 service provider, our aim is to take the hassle out of designing, developing and delivering 360 degree feedback surveys. We also help with the strategic, project management and support to assist in implementation so that the surveys aren’t just done and forgotten, they become part of the organisation’s development framework.

Carolyn: What sort of clients use 360 feedback surveys? Is it just huge companies who use it to support manager development?

David: No, A good 360 feedback process works in any organisation. We have the privilege of managing feedback surveys for medium and larger organisations such as Dyson, Muller, DeBeers Diamonds, Greggs the bakers, Total, Local Authorities and NHS Trusts etc. We also provide bespoke 360 surveys to consultants/ trainers in support of manager and leadership development programmes/ interventions that they are delivering for their clients. When we work with a client, it’s not just sending them a link to a totally automated system (though that is part of it); it is about developing the relationship and making the 360 really count for something.
Carolyn: Where are you based and where do you tend to work mostly?

David: We’re based in Chepstow, South Wales but, because our products/ service are internet based - our clients come from all across the UK and Europe – we even have a client in Japan!
Carolyn: I’ve visited Chepstow, a lovely town and of course you have access to a great motorway network. Anyway, there are quite a few 360 providers out there (and indeed I know a few quite well), what do you think makes you stand out above the rest?

David: I would say, four key things:

 Our team: Unlike many of our competitors, we are not just IT/ systems experts. The team comprises a web designer, technical programmer, data analyst/ report specialist, permanently dedicated administrative support and several OD consultants who provide a broad range of strategic and project management implementation support. This great mix of people ensures that we provide technical excellence and the consultancy and administrative support demanded by HR professionals and consultants.

 The Lumus engine: all of our surveys are powered from an online web application that was specifically designed for the management of online 360 surveys. It’s fully automated and guarantees accurate, fast and confidential results. The system's built-in quality control mechanisms also ensures we get things right, first time

 Customisation: No two organisations (or consultants) that we’ve ever worked with want the same thing – our platform lets us easily customise the number of questions, rating scale type, user interfaces, reports, email message content etc

 The service: I know everyone would say this, but in our case, we really do ‘go the extra mile’ for our clients and always strive to provide an outstanding start to end service – we also provide briefing packs/ slide sets, internal communication plans, feedback coaching resources etc all for FREE

Carolyn: 360 Degree feedback is now well established and of acknowledged benefit – how do you see it further developing in the future?

David: For me, the future is not so much about technical process advances, but how the feedback collected can be better used – some of the projects we are working on include:

 360 multi-level feedback surveys – we’re currently working on an innovative multi-level 360 feedback tool, specifically designed to underpin the development and deployment of senior talent within larger organisations. This alternative report approach differs from traditional feedback reports in that it provides feedback on each management competency area at four levels of performance, allowing people to get a clear picture of how they are doing on a sliding scale from mediocre to exceptional performance

 Group summary reports – Using the feedback from a group of managers to produce TNA type reports - identifying population strengths and assessing group development needs which can subsequently be fed into management development programmes / strategies etc

 360 team surveys – Just as an individual 360 provides a snapshot of how the participant is seen by those they work with, we’re now developing a team 360 feedback report based on how team members rate the team, against those skills needed for successful team working and functioning

 Managers’ summary reports - This unique approach provides line managers with the headline news needed to start a meaningful action planning conversation, without them having to plough through 40 pages of data

 180 degree training course workbook - As trainers and developers we all recognise that the pre - and post-course discussions between a course participant and their line manager are crucial in the process of making training stick and ensuring a real return on investment. These pre-course reports combine feedback from the line manager and course participant and are designed to facilitated those conversations and ensure participants start their course with a clear set of development objectives

Products/Links:

Here’s some tailored 360 degree feedback surveys we developed specifically for the Complete Trainer: http://www.completetrainer.co.uk/360_Degree_Feedback

You can find out more about our bespoke solutions on our website: http://www.lumus.co.uk/

and we also recommend that you research and understand 360 before embarking on a feedback process, so we’ve set up this site which gives unbiased information: http://www.everything360.org/

Testimonials

Lumus designed an excellent 360 instrument that provided feedback on a range of critical leadership behaviours which enabled the team to significantly improve both their personal capability and their desire and ability to help and support each other. Considerable and valuable help and support was provided throughout the project and I look forward to future opportunities to work with the Lumus team.

Peter Underwood - Training Consultant

Lumus continue to provide Greggs of Treforest with a flexible, adaptable and tailored approach that meets the changing needs of our business. They do what they say they will do, on time with no fuss.

John Eagle, Greggs

Contact

To contact David Cooper at Lumus, please visit the website http://www.lumus.co.uk/ or email davidooper@lumus.co.uk