The Complete Trainer

It's been quiet!

2011-05-23T18:10:00.001+01:00

We'd love to have more stories from our trainer authors out there - contact me at www.thecompletetrainer.com to submit your articles.

Handling Difficult Conversations

2010-12-05T20:01:00.004Z

How many times have you found yourself having to handle that “Difficult Conversation” whether it is with a client, staff member, peer group or other business stakeholders?

The way you handle those difficult conversations will have a major impact on your relationships with those people and on your results.

Do you plan effectively for any of these meetings, not just data and information, but around the HOW you are going to handle the meeting and the people attending it?
There are a number of ways improvements can be made in the way we handle our difficult and challenging conversations to make them more effective, improving individual and team productivity and our business relationships.

Essentials for Handling Difficult Conversations:

• Preparation
• Self Awareness of our emotional state and our assumptions
• Knowing your Goal for the meeting
• Understanding the other parties goal for the meeting
• Clarity
• Rapport
• Engagement
• Empathy
• Listening
• Authenticity

Being prepared for the meeting is not just about the data and facts; it is also about understanding the other people in the meeting. Are you clear what their preferred method of communication is: face to face, telephone, email so you can establish a two way communication channel that is effective both pre and post meeting. Being aware of someone else’s communication preference is important and we need to be able to flex our own style whilst ensuring we maintain our authenticity.

Be self aware of both your emotional state and any assumptions that you may be carrying about either the person you are meeting or the situation. Your state and your assumptions will seep out into the meeting unless you are aware of them and keep them in check. This seepage may happen either verbally or through your body language so self awareness prior to and during the meeting is critical to having a beneficial meeting.
Having a joint agenda for both parties at the meeting is very important so you and they know the aims and goals of the meeting. How will you know that you have achieved your meeting goal, what are the criteria that you will measure?

Rapport between individuals at a meeting is not built just by talking about the football or weather etc. It is built because you are interested in the other party, asking questions, probing and most critically listening so you can reply with pertinent facts and relevant questions, demonstrating your engagement.

Empathy is a big part of rapport and relationship building, putting you in the other party’s shoes and acknowledging the issues they may have and how that may affect them will build your credibility and trust.

Many Organisations have systems, procedures and methodologies that will need to be followed in order for the business decisions to be made. Sometimes these processes overtake the need to be able to communicate effectively with people in the organisation which then can lead to the difficult conversation.

Being able to handle difficult conversations benefits the organisation as people are dealing with each other in much more collaborative ways. Increasing productivity and moving the culture towards becoming less confrontational, more collaborative and focussing on the issues rather than defending their position or themselves.

Next time you go into a meeting or conversation make sure you give consideration to the above points and come out of the meeting with a win win solution for you, the other parties and the organisation.

Patrick Bird
Managing Director
InterActive Performance Management Ltd.

We have a super DVD by Patrick on our site - check it out!

The Four-Legged Stool for Small Business Success

2010-07-22T21:13:00.002+01:00

by Anne Alexander

As someone who has been providing small business consulting services to small business owners for the past eight years, I have had the privilege of seeing what works and doesn’t work in many small businesses. Not to mention the 20 years I spent in small business before that, owning and running companies.

In order to help small businesses and their owners to thrive, I’ve put together this mini guide. I’m sure that whether you are just starting out or are a more seasoned business person, you will most likely get a few flashes of insight or recognition that will help you improve your business today.

Peter Drucker is famous for once saying that there are really only two core functions of any business: marketing and innovation – and that the rest are all costs. In this guide, I’m adding what I think are two additional core components for today’s small business person: productivity and planning for profitability. To me, this four legged stool provides you with a strong foundation from which to steer your business ship to continued and greater success.

INNOVATION: VALUE DELIVERY

First, our business must provide innovative products and services – ones that clients and customers need or want. The more we can put some extra value into our products and services, the more we can help people enjoy or benefit from them in a more effective or enjoyable way (innovation), the better we have served them and the better our business will do.

For example, I put extra value into my small business consulting services by giving my clients writing and editing help (this is very popular), free books when I think of one that would really help them (without overloading them with yet more to read!), birthday cards and other gifts to let them know I truly care about them and appreciate them being clients of mine, and in-person meetings when I am in their city or town.

Actually, innovation is typically what entrepreneurs love to do. So this one isn’t as tough, typically, as the other three legs.

MARKETING: GETTING THE WORD OUT, BRINGING THE PROSPECTS IN

I’d say a good portion of small business owners hate business development marketing. This is true despite the fact that they are in most cases the best ones to lead the marketing charge because of their passion for their products and services, their personal compelling story and their drive to have their company succeed.

Marketing for small business is, of course, how we get the word out to prospective customers, how we bring in the leads that our sales processes can then sell to. Small business marketing is of course a massive topic, and yet it’s easy to make it an overly
complex process, too. So here are three keys for marketing success.

#1. We have to start with WHO you think your target market is, or your “ideal client” as some like to call it, and work backward from there. There isn’t much in the world that “everybody” needs or wants. Even with such fundamentals as the food we eat, what one person chooses to eat can vary tremendously from the next guy or gal. So you MUST know WHO your business serves and then you must learn as much as you can about those people – their demographics, such as age and gender, location, and income, education, of course, but also their psychographics – attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles.

Then use all you have learned and make sure your marketing (including headlines and copy) really address the needs and wants of those people. Every business can be different, noteworthy and focused on a specific niche or demographic/psychographic.

#2. One key business marketing strategy is to use direct response marketing, not image or brand marketing (leave that to multinational corporations that sell to the mass consumer market like car companies, Proctor & Gamble, et al). You need marketing that incites the prospect to take an action and that action needs to be measurable. Then make sure you measure it! Track it. Tweak it. Rinse and repeat forever.

Remember the line about he business owner who says “50% of my marketing works great; I just don’t know which 50%”? You can’t afford to waste 50% of your marketing dollars or the time you and your team put into it.

#3. You need to be innovative, somehow unique, have a message. Don’t be afraid to be different – embrace it! It’s an interesting thing to me about the name of my company, Authentic Alternatives. I really liked it at the beginning, of course. A few years later I thought to myself “What a stupid name – nobody knows what it means, it’s not about business per se” – all those self-critical voices we get in our heads. Then a few years later I realized it really is a great name for my business, because it attracts the right kind of clients to me – business owners who march to the beat of a different drummer, who truly think outside the box, who want to be real (authentic) and who aren’t afraid to think a bit “alternatively.”

My advice to business is to make your business ABOUT something, like the way Subway repositioned itself to be about health and even weight loss. Pretty good trick for a fast food corporation!

It’s not easy getting noticed in this world of 7+ billion people and billions of marketing messages everywhere 24/7. So if you and your products need to be a little bit eye-opening and remarkable to reach the level of success you deserve.

PRODUCTIVITY: LIFE IS SHORT

As owner, if most of your day is not spent on innovation and/or marketing, you’re probably having a lot less success than you could be having. In the business coaching services I provide to business owners from a wide variety of industries, the same productivity principles apply, regardless of type of business. You must:

1) Manage your priorities
2) Manage your energy. (a better answer to time management for small business owners!)

Let’s look at each of these briefly.

Managing Priorities

Everyone knows they need to manage their priorities, but what does this really mean? The fact is, we all have too many priorities and too little time.

If you haven’t heard the story that Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, passed along, it’s worth repeating. Pretend that a big glass jar represents your life. You have a bucket of sand and the sand represents all the hundreds of little things you need to do each day and every week. You have a bucket of big rocks and they represent your top priorities – the things that if you focus on them will bring you the true rewards you want from your business and life. If you put the sand in first, you won’t have room to cram in very many rocks. But if you put the big rocks in first, you can then pour the sand in and it will fill in all the space very nicely and it will all fit!

What this means is on a weekly and then daily basis you must decide what your big rocks are and then schedule them into your calendar. All the other stuff WILL either get done or if it doesn’t, your life won’t end.

In my small business coaching services, I recommend to my clients that they start by picking just three big rocks for the week and focus everything they can on those until they are done. My clients are high achievers, go-getters who set the bar for themselves very high. Most of the time – too high.

Even though they get a tremendous amount of work done, they continually feel either like failures or like they aren’t realty making progress. In fact, the opposite is usually true. They ARE making very good progress.

We need to open our eyes and be more aware of what the activities are that will truly move the ball forward for our business. If you know you really needs to upgrade your website for example but never seem to get around to launching the project, clear the decks!

Your email can wait, Twitter and Facebook can wait, your laundry can wait, doing someone’s performance review can wait.

You have to be RELENTLESSY FOCUSED on your big rocks. If you aren’t, the tsunami of “life” will roll over you and carry you far, far away at best and kill you at worst. So you must RUTHLESSLY protect your time and focus.

You have to develop a killer attitude toward your time, be as fiercely protective of it as a mother lion of her cubs.

If you have an open door policy, change it. You have to create chunks of time every day which are UNINTERRUPTED, meaning no drop ins (unless the building is on fire), no email (turn off sound alerts if you use them), no phone calls (let your voicemail take messages), no cell phone.

Think back to when you had a job and you went into the office on a weekend – how incredibly productive you were. Eliminating interruptions and distractions is a hugely important productivity strategy. Your customers, staff and family can live without you for a few hours. Really.

Managing Energy

What about managing energy? If you ever read The Power of Full Engagement by Loehr & Schwartz, you had your eyes opened about the fact that it’s not so much about time management as energy management.

Most small business owners run on adrenaline to fuel their endless activities. We know intellectually at least that long term a healthy and happy life cannot be sustainable if we run on adrenaline a lot of the time. None of us will fall apart if we have a cup or two of coffee, eat a candy bar now and then or short change sleep occasionally. However, if we overdo these, we will sooner or later start to be incredibly fuzzy and ineffective and head straight toward total burn out. Burn out can come in many forms, such as a failed business, a heart attack or a failed marriage. The Japanese even have a word for it: karoshi – death from overwork.

There’s been a ton written about work/life balance and the fact is running and growing a business is not for the land of “ideal work/life balance.” But what we can do is incorporate energy rituals into our daily lives. These are simple practices that take little time but serve to dramatically restore our energy and focus, our enthusiasm and commitment to the multitude of tasks at hand in running our businesses.

The term “creatures of habit” is incredibly important here – because all of us truly are creatures of habit. A huge percentage of what we do and think every day is habitual, meaning we don’t really think about it. This is a curse (if we have a bad habit) or a blessing (if we have a good one). If we can set up and program ourselves with just a couple key habits for positive energy management, we will experience a powerful and profound difference in how we feel about our business and in how well our businesses actually do!

So what am I talking about? An energy ritual will be unique to you and what it is that restores you. Since most of us overtrain emotionally & mentally and undertrain physically and spiritually, most of us need energy rituals that focus on the physical and spiritual.

Examples from clients of mine include:

- 10 minute break in your office doing a few stretches or yoga poses.
- Putting on your headphones and listening to music you love for 10 minutes.
- Reading 10 minutes from a book you find inspirational (e.g. the Dhammapada, the Bible, Tony Robbins, Martha Beck, etc.)
- 15 minute walk outside.
- 5 minute closed eye meditation break.

You want to put these into your daily routine and on your calendar when possible to take an energy break mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Also mid-evening if you’re working late. Implementing these energy rituals will take simple, small steps and will give you and your productivity a huge pay off.

Here are examples of the old paradigm (on the left) and the new paradigm (n the right):

Manage time ==> Manage energy

Avoid stress ==> Seek (positive) stress

Life is a marathon ==> Life is a series of sprints

Downtime is wasted time ==> Downtime is productive time

Rewards fuel performance ==> Purpose fuels performance (Intrinsic motivation provides more sustaining energy. i.e. wanting to do something because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides (versus extrinsic – money, approval, social standing, power, love)

Self-discipline rules ==> Rituals rule

The power of positive thinking. ==> The power of full engagement.
There’s a lot more to this, but I think even this info gives you an idea of how radically effective this new paradigm can be in your life.

PLANNING FOR PROFITABILITY: FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

We’ve talked about the key things you need to know in marketing and productivity. The third leg of the stool is financial management. If you hate thinking about financial management, you have all the proof you need to understand why 90% of business failures are caused by a lack of financial management, not sales or marketing management!

Most entrepreneurs are great at innovation and creating new products, services and markets. They’re usually good at marketing and are able to be pretty damn productive, even if it may be in a chaotic way that’s less effective than it could be.

However, most of them struggle at financial management (in the beginning, at least, and often for years). The thing is, you don’t have to become a bona fide CPA! (You need a CPA, but you don’t have to BE one.) The cool thing is you’ll start to enjoy the feeling of power and control that you get once you have your arms around the basics and start to create and use some key metrics – critical indicators of how things are going in your business on a daily or weekly basis.

Yes, of course, you need to have your books done regularly, hopefully by a skilled bookkeeper. You need to review P & L’s monthly. But more than that you need to create a plan to be profitable, deciding what your financial goals are for the year and how you’ll get there and setting up a simple spreadsheet that compares your projections with actuals.

Although it is a popular tactic, it doesn’t actually help to stick your head in the sand when things aren’t going well. Knowledge – even when painful – is power. With the proper knowledge about how your company is doing financially, you can be successful. If not, there is a high chance that you’ll be closing your doors within a few years. Especially when times are tough. Like in a “great recession” (they aren’t going to say “depression,” are they?!)

In providing my advice for business, I make sure my clients have a solid profit plan and a good understanding of margins. And I help them identify those critical indicators they need to keep their finger on the pulse of their business.

IN CONCLUSION

Running and growing a small business can seem really complicated. So we have to apply models and systems that help us simplify things and get our arms around our businesses, both conceptually and then in actual daily practice. I hope that understanding these four legs of innovation, marketing, productivity and profit planning will help you do just that.

Article (C) Anne Alexander http://www.authentic-alternatives.com/

Three Ways to Connect With Your Prospects

2010-07-22T20:43:00.001+01:00

By Mike Brooks, http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

What’s the first thing that goes through your head when you get a call from a sales rep? If you answered, “I can’t wait to get them off the phone,” then you’re not alone. In fact, when a telemarketer calls me up at home and says those words that immediately identify them as a sales person, the “How are you today?” line, my first thought is, “I’ll be great as soon as I get rid of you!”

One of the biggest mistakes sales reps make who have to call prospects – either to set an appointment, generate interest, or qualify and then send information – is they don’t acknowledge in any way what is going through the prospect’s mind. Let’s face it, everyone you call has a reaction to being intruded upon, and each of them is having a similar reaction to the one that you and I have.

If you want to successfully connect with your prospect, and earn the precious few seconds it takes to establish rapport and generate some interest, then you must put yourself into the mind of your prospect and enter the conversation that’s going on in their minds. If you don’t do this, then you will be pitching and pitching and the prospect will just be waiting for you to take a breath so they can blow you off.

So, what can you do to enter this conversation? Incorporate the following three techniques the next time you make a cold call, and watch your call times improve, your confidence grow and your sales and income soar.

Technique number one: If we all know that what’s going on in your prospect’s mind is, “Oh, no, not another sales rep”, then why not acknowledge this? Try:

“Now _________, you probably get a lot of these kinds of calls, don’t you?
Well if you’re like me you’re probably wishing you hadn’t answered the phone right about now, so let’s make a deal: I’ll ask you just two quick questions to see if what I have can actually help you (do whatever it is your product or service can do), and if it can and you’re interested, we’ll continue, and if it can’t or you’re not interested, we’ll part friends, is that fair enough?”

Technique number two: Many times what’s going through a prospect’s mind is that they are too busy to listen at that moment, so they just use the overall brush off of, “I’m not interested,” and this usually gets people off the phone. Here’s how to enter into that conversation:

“_________ if you’re like me you’re probably busy doing a million things so I’ll make this brief. Let me just ask you two quick things and if we find that we’re a fit and you’d like to know more than we can talk about it or we can schedule a time when it’s more convenient, is that fair?”

The nice thing about this technique is that it acknowledges that they’re busy but it gives them the option of spending more time with you now if they like what they hear.

Technique number three: This third technique is something I learned from a good friend of mine, David Frey. I’ll let him tell it to you straight:

When I first started out in marketing I needed to make some quick money.
At the time, there was a rash of mold infestations here in Texas and mold remediators were having a heyday. I knew they were hungry for good, solid leads.

And about the same time I came across a way to generate leads using telephone autodialing. So I bought an autodialing system, installed it in my home and started generating leads for mold remediators. Yes, I admit it. I was one of those pesky, annoying autodialing demons.

It Worked So Well That I moved into generating leads for the mortgage industry. At the height of my lead generating business, I was autodialing 12,000 people in the city of Houston every day out of my little home office. You should have seen all the telephone lines coming out of my wall.

It was crazy!

From all those calls, I would generate about 5 good, solid leads a day (which actually made me a lot of money).

My Eurika Moment! I wasn't happy with only 5 leads a day so I started testing new scripts. I thought to myself, what's the first thing that I do when I hear an autodialed message? I HANG UP! So I added 4 words to the front of my script and KABOOM!

My leads QUINTUPLED….to an average of 20 leads a day with the same amount of dials. Wanna know what those 4 words were? They were simple.

"Please don't hang up"

That's it. I added, "Please don't hang up" at the beginning of my script and my leads quintupled!”

For all of you out there who use an autodial, I recommend you trying this technique. Once again, it’s effective because it gets you into the mind of your prospect.

Think about what you’ve learned today as you go out and make your cold calls. Always ask yourself: “What is my prospect thinking, and how can I speak to that?” If you do, you’ll make a much better connection and you’ll end up making more sales!

If you found this article helpful, then you will love Mike’s bestselling book on inside sales: “The REAL Secrets of the Top 20% - How To Double Your Income Selling Over the Phone.” You can read about it by clicking
here: http://www.completetrainer.co.uk/Training_Books/Complete_Book_of_Phone_Scripts

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. He offers a FREE audio program designed to help you double your income selling over the phone, as well as an internationally acclaimed FREE ezine. If you’re looking to catapult your sales, or create a sales team that actually makes their monthly revenues, then learn how by
visiting: http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

Conflict and Psychology

2010-07-07T22:01:00.001+01:00

The Underlying Relationship Between Conflict Modes and Psychological Types

by Ralph Kilmann, CEO and Senior Consultant at Kilmann Diagnostics

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (also known as the TKI) assesses your tendency to use one or more of five modes of behavior—competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating—in a conflict situation. After taking the TKI assessment, most people become aware they’ve been using, out of habit, one or more of the modes too much—choosing to use one they are comfortable with when another might have resulted in more satisfying outcomes. At the same time, people usually discover they’ve also been using one or more modes too little, not realizing that an underutilized mode could have saved the day.

Since people naturally wonder if they overuse and underuse certain conflict modes because of their personality, organizational trainers and consultants continue to ask me about the relationship between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (which measures personality preferences in assimilating information and making decisions) and the TKI (which assesses modes of behavior in conflict situations). Here is a research-based answer to that enduring question:

Many years ago (1975), I published a research study with Ken Thomas, wherein we correlated the MBTI with the TKI. We found that people who are extraverted are more likely to use collaborating, while people who are introverted are more inclined to use avoiding (as a statistically significant correlation, not as a one-to-one relationship). It seems that collaborating requires a little extra energy in interacting with others (sharing ideas and discussing concerns), while avoiding naturally involves an element of shyness or aloofness in an interpersonal situation.

In addition, we found that the thinking preference is related to competing, while the feeling function is related to accommodating (again, as a statistically significant correlation). Perhaps the thinking preference allows a person to keep an emotional distance from the other person: to pursue his own needs at the expense of the other. Meanwhile, the feeling person's empathy for the other person might compel her to satisfy the other's needs more than her own.

For decades, I’ve been making use of both assessment tools in training and consulting projects, so people can become more aware of their proclivities for using certain conflict modes too much and others too little -- based on their MBTI preferences. With that awareness, people can then consciously compensate with their conflict-handling behavior: For example, an introvert can knowingly put out some extra effort in order to engage another in a collaborative discussion (when the necessary conditions for collaborating are evident). Similarly, a person who prefers feeling can knowingly assert her needs (when competing is called for), when her natural tendency would be to automatically accommodate the other person’s needs.

For the original article that reported the correlations between the MBTI and the TKI, including a figure that visually summarizes their relationships, see:
http://kilmanndiagnostics.com/interpersonal.html

Please note: If you or your clients are interested in receiving advanced training for the TKI and conflict management, Kilmann Diagnostics offers an eight-hour, live, online course to do just that. You can get more information about our online course by visiting http://kilmanndiagnostics.com

10 Things to Learn in a Project Management Certificate Program

2010-06-27T15:55:00.000+01:00

Project management is one of the most important and challenging aspects of completing a project. It includes planning, implementing and managing each stage of production to meet clients’ needs and overcome the constraints of finishing a major project on time. Project managers typically work in architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing and other related fields. Being able to see a project from start to finish takes a determined and skilled individual. Those who are up for the challenge will find a project management certificate program the quickest and most affordable way to become a project manager. Here are 10 things you can expect to learn in a project management certificate program:

1.Communication

Learning to communicate in an effective, professional manner is extremely important for project management. Project managers will use their communication skills when talking with clients, handling work issues and conversing with people on a daily basis. Students will take communication classes that build upon their current social skills and teach them how to discuss business-related topics.

2.Team Leadership and Management

Students in a project management program will learn about leadership, management and teamwork as it pertains to managing a business project. They will study leadership skills and management resources, as well as problem solving and critical thinking skills that are needed for management positions.

3.Initiation

Students will learn about the initiation process, which determines the mission and scope of the project. The initiation stage focuses on analyzing business needs, determining a budget, conducting a stakeholder analysis and develop a project charter.

4.Planning and Development

Students will also learn about the planning and development stages of project management. Planning and development follow the initiation stage, in which the manager maps out the time, costs and resources needed to complete the project. Students will also study potential risks and issues of the planning and development stage, in addition to learning how to handle and manage such risks.

5.Production and Execution

Students will learn about the production and execution stages of a project, such as coordinating people and resources, overseeing production and efficiency and making sure all requirements have been met. The production and execution stage requires a great deal of communication and procurement.

6.Monitoring and Controlling

Students will learn about monitoring and controlling projects to ensure timely and efficient production. They will study common issues of production and how to identify and correct them, so that the project manager can maintain control and stay on track with the project management plan.

7.Closing

The final step of project management is to formally close a project, therefore, finalizing all stages and activities, as well as completing and closing the contract.

8.Risk Management

Risk management involves establishing, identifying and assessing the risks of a project. From financial problems, legal liabilities to accidents, risks can significantly slow down and negatively affect the completion of a project. In order to be prepared for such risks, students will learn about managing, reducing and avoiding risks to ensure optimal performance and efficiency.

9.Quality Management

Quality management and quality control coincide within the field of project management. As prospective leaders, students will learn about managing employees, setting realistic goals and expectations of the workers and projects. Quality management includes demonstrating competence, knowledge and experience in the field, as well as exhibiting confidence, integrity and spirit to maintain an effective and positive work climate.

10.Project Portfolio Management

Project portfolio management, also known as PPM, is a modern technique used to select the right projects first, followed by traditional project management methods second. Students will learn about this popular method of project management that emphasizes selection and prioritizing before initiating production, because it gives companies an advantage in selecting the most profitable and realistic projects.

Article courtesy of http://www.onlinecertificateprograms.org/ (C) 2010

How to Not Sound Like a Telemarketer

2010-06-27T15:22:00.003+01:00

by Mike Brooks, http://www.mrinsidesales.com/
I don't know about you but I can always tell when a telemarketer is cold calling me. From the moment they begin speaking, "Hi is that Mr. Brooks?"

to the way they mechanically read their scripts, I have them pegged before they get past their first sentence. And like I'm sure it is with you, too, I am immediately not interested.

If you are reading this article, it probably means you have to pick up the phone - either to make appointments, call prospects back, return calls to clients, etc. - and if so, then you need to learn how to sound natural on the phone and avoid putting your prospects, gatekeepers, assistants, etc., on notice that you're trying to sell something.

The way you do that is by learning how to sound like you're not selling anything, and you do that by learning how to disarm prospects, sound natural yet professional, and how to be friendly without being phony. Use these 5 techniques to not only sound natural on the phone, but to also close more business:

# 1 - Always use the prospect's first name. I know that there are two schools of thought on this, one being that you should show respect for someone you don't know and so use either Mr. or Mrs., but I don't agree. I think you can show respect for someone by being courteous and professional, and I think you're going to make a lot more progress if you use a person's first name. Here are the two reasons to do so:

a. First, by using a person's first name you aren't immediately signaling that you're a sales person! How do you feel when someone you don't know calls you and addresses you by "Mr." or "Mrs."? Also, when you use a person's first name, you are starting the call on equal footing, without giving them all the power.

b. Second, everyone likes the sound of their own name. In fact, psychologists have found that everyone's favorite word is their first name! By starting with that you are immediately making a connection, and a personal one at that.

#2 - Be polite. You'd be surprised by how many sales reps still try to trick or get around gatekeepers and assistants, and how many are even rude in doing so. Always, always use please and thank you when speaking with anyone over the phone (or in person for that matter).

Words like "please" and "thank you" go a long way when trying to make a connection with a prospect, and they work especially well when you're trying to get through to a prospect also. Examine your current scripts now and do all you can to insert the proper courtesies wherever you can.

#3 - Be brief. Most reps go into pitch mode the moment they reach their prospect, and it's no surprise they can't wait to get the rep off the phone. I review scripts all the time that essentially read the company's brochure to the prospect the moment they reach them.

You can turn that around and sound so much better by briefly delivering your presentation and checking in with your prospect. Try things like:

a. Briefly _________, the reason I'm calling is that we've been working with many companies like yours, and I just wanted to see if we could help you as well. Can I ask you just a couple of questions to see if we'd be a fit for you?

b. __________, you probably get a lot of calls like these, so I'll be brief. I'll just ask you a couple of quick questions and if I think we can save you between 15 to 20% I'll let you know and, if not, we'll part friends, is that OK?

Get the idea?

#4 - Make a connection. This is one of the easiest of all and it's a great way to get your prospect talking. All you do is find something that you know is affecting your other clients (like new laws in their industry), and ask how it's affecting your new prospect as well. Try:

a. "You know ________ a lot of my clients have told me of the changes they are having to make because of (the new law/change in regulation, etc.), how is that affecting you?"

b. "__________ what are you planning to feature at the September trade show?"

By addressing something that they are dealing with now, you can instantly make a connection and get valuable information. Warning: you have to fit this in after you've established rapport, and you have to address something that is relevant to them.

#5 - Listen more. This may not sound like a way to sound natural on the phone, but believe me, it's probably the most important of all. Because most sales reps are so busy talking at their prospect, they usually lose them at the beginning. In most cases, the prospect has turned off and are just waiting for an appropriate pause to get rid of the rep.

By listening you actually create space for your prospect to speak (and to think), and because of that you are allowing the conversation to flow.
When you give the prospect a chance to get their thoughts and feedback out, they feel comfortable with you, and that is the best way for the conversation to unfold naturally. Hit your mute button after you ask a question and count three 1000's if you're having trouble remaining quiet.

There you have it - five easy ways to avoid sounding like a telemarketer and ways to sound more natural on the phone. The good news is that they are easy to implement, and, once you do, you'll make more connections and you'll feel more comfortable on the phone. And this will come across to your prospects and you'll end up qualifying better leads and making more sales.

If you found this article helpful, then you will love Mike’s: “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts,” which is packed with word for word scripts and techniques that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales. You can read about it by clicking here:
http://www.mrinsidesales.com/scripts.htm

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US, teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance.

UK HR Update

2010-06-07T08:30:00.002+01:00

Another great HR update from Sandra Beale:

Managing a Disciplinary - Employer 5 top tips!

1. Ensure you undertake a thorough investigation leaving no stone unturned. Take comprehensive witness statements from all witnesses which are signed and dated. The investigator should be an independent manager.

2. Invite the employee to a disciplinary hearing giving plenty of notice and providing all written evidence against them. Provide the right to be accompanied.

3. Ensure the employee has adequate time to give their version of events at hearing. Adjourn to investigate new evidence if necessary and reconvene at a later date if appropriate. Ensure the process is documented by a note taker.

4. Ensure the decision from the hearing is appropriate. If in doubt do not dismiss!

5. Ensure the employee has the right to appeal and the hearing is chaired by an independent more senior manager.

Coalition document: Key implications for employers

Here are the key implications for employers from the new coalition document produced by the new liberal/conservative government:

Jobs and pensions
The government says it will scrap all existing welfare-to-work programmes and create a single welfare-to-work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.

• It vows to ensure that Jobseekers' Allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work are referred to the new welfare-to-work programme immediately.
• The document outlines "support" for the national minimum wage, although there is no stated commitment to raising it.
• The government will commit to establishing an independent commission to review the long-term affordability of public sector pensions, while protecting accrued rights.
Retirement age
• The government will "phase out" the default retirement age of 65 and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.
Immigration
• The two parties have agreed to the Conservative commitment to introduce an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work - despite the Liberal Democrats' strong opposition to the move. They will jointly consider the mechanism for implementing the limit.

Equality
This section has perhaps the clearest Liberal Democrat imprint, with the government vowing to promote equal pay and take a range of measures to end discrimination in the workplace, including:

• Extending the right to request flexible working to all employees, consulting with business on how best to do so
• Undertaking a fair pay review in the public sector to implement the proposed '20 times' pay multiple - ensuring that no public sector worker can earn over 20 times more than the lowest-paid person in their organisation
• Promoting gender equality on the boards of listed companies.
Legislation
• The document outlines the commitment to cutting red tape by introducing a 'one-in, one-out' rule whereby no new regulation is brought in without other regulation being cut by a greater amount.
• The government promises to review employment and workplace laws for employers and employees, to ensure they maximise flexibility for both parties while protecting fairness and providing the competitive environment required for enterprise to thrive.
• It also vows to reinstate an Operating and Financial Review to ensure that directors' social and environmental duties have to be covered in company reporting, and investigate further ways of improving corporate accountability and transparency.
• The coalition will seek to ensure an injection of private capital into Royal Mail, including opportunities for employee ownership, while retaining the Post Office in public ownership.

There are also plans to undertake a wholesale review of employment law in the UK. An area which the Conservative's have previously considered ripe for reform is employment tribunal system. Their pre-election policy paper contained a commitment "to ensure the system offers fast, cheap and accessible justice which is fair to all sides" and to address perceived inconsistencies in the tribunal system and deter weak claims.

The National Minimum Wage is to be retained, the Government acknowledging the protection it gives low-income workers and the incentives to work it provides. It remains to be seen whether and by how much the rate will increase or whether the age bandings will be retained.
Longer term goals likely to be introduced reasonably early in the life of this government are "family friendly" changes including an extension to the right to request flexible working to all employees, steps to encourage shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy – including the promotion of a system of flexible parental leave and support for the provision of free nursery care for pre-school children.

ACAS – Free Guide to Managing Performance
ACAS has published a new free guide on managing performance including dealing with potential problems, see http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=2714&p=0

Free Occupational Health Advice
For free occupational health advice call the Health for Work Advice Line on 0800 0 7788 44. Run by the NHS this invaluable service can help employers get staff back to work quickly and fairly after sickness absence. Alternatively the service can help with disability issues and ill health terminations and retirements. For more details see http://www.health4work.nhs.uk/

The Fit Note – FREE HR Factsheet
Need to know more about the new fit note that replaced the old sick note from 6 April 2010? Sandra has prepared a comprehensive FREE fact sheet. This is available on her website on the useful hr articles page or you can email her for a copy.

Email: info@sjbealehrconsult.co.uk
www.sjbealehrconsult.co.uk

Thanks Sandra!

What sort of leader does it take....

2010-04-19T21:14:00.004+01:00

... to capture poachers, go undercover and lead a remote team that works in a huge jungle?

At the moment I'm working closely with a conservation organisation, Fauna & Flora International. I found out about a most extraordinary leader - someone who has a job that is in may ways enviable, in others most certainly not.

She is a project leader in Indonesia, working to protect the Sumatran Tiger's preserve in the Kerinci Seblat National Park.

I would love to interview her because she has challenges that I don't think any business leaders face; and I'm sure we could learn from her.

Firstly, in a male dominated society, she is a woman in charge of a workforce that is predominantly. Secondly, she is not a native of the country where she works. Thirdly she faces daily danger not only from the local fauna (the most threatening of which is probably the mosquito rather than the tiger) but from the poachers who are armed, dangerous and have every intention of continuing to 'harvest' tiger body parts and skin. It is an extremely profitable and entirely illegal enterprise.

She works in an environment which is hostile - internet connection is patchy and even telecommunications are not the simplest. She manages a remote team who cover thousands of hectares of wild forest and who have to be away from their families for months at a time.

All I can say is that having heard so much about this lady from her colleagues, I would very much like to meet her and find out what the key qualities are that she has that makes her such a succesful leader and, above all, so good at her job that the tigers in her region are actually increasing.

She has to manage the teams, the politics, the morale of her workforce and a challenging situation in so many ways.

So here's my questions for you; if you could ask her three questions, what would they be?
And if you were suddenly posted to a position like this (within your field of expertise, but with similar challenges), what are the key leadership skills you think you would need to be as successful?

Post your replies here or email me on info at completetrainer dot com.

Photograph (C) Fauna & Flora International

Questions to Help Open Up the Sale

2010-02-06T12:07:00.003Z

By Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales

Have you ever been in a closing situation that seems to have stalled, where your prospect isn’t really objecting, but they sure aren’t going where you want them to go? Sometimes during a close you’ll find it necessary to sort of re-open the close, to keep your prospect talking, and to find out exactly what is on their mind.

This is especially true when you’re not sure how to respond to an objection or to how your prospect or client feels about a specific point or feature. It is times like these that you need to just ask a question and let your prospect tell you which direction you need to go in, or how you should respond.

Use the following questions to help open your prospect up and to get them to reveal where they really stand, and what you need to do to close the
sale:

“I can tell that’s important to you; why does it mean so much?”

“Let me see if I have this right. You (restate what they said), right?
What would have to change for this to work for you then?”

“Do I have that right?”

“What else do I need to know to understand how this affects your operation?”

“How would you react if I told you we could handle that and give you this?”

“Can you give me more detail on that?”

“What is your perspective on this?”

“And what has led you to feel that way?”

“What is your experience with this (solution)?”

“When was the last time you tried this?”

“What would have made it work better for you?”

“If you went ahead with this, what would be the worse thing that could happen?”

“I hear you saying X, but I’m also hearing something else. Could you elaborate on that please?”

“And if you didn’t move on this solution today, how are you going to change your results and get more (leads, sales, production, etc.)?”

“Do you see how this (your solution) has been designed to fix your exact problem?”

“How is this sounding so far?”

“I see where you’re coming from. How did you arrive at that?”

“What leads you to believe that?”

If you found these questions helpful, then you will love Mike’s Ebook:
“The Complete Book of Phone Scripts,” which is packed with word for word scripts and techniques that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales. You can read about it by clicking here: http://www.completetrainer.co.uk/Training_Books/Complete_Book_of_Phone_Scripts

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughut 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: http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

Thanks Mike, another great article! If you'd like to publish your articles here, then please contact us

A guide to 360

2010-02-01T20:08:00.010Z

A brief introduction to 360 degree feedback systems and their potential uses, by David Cooper

1. What is 360 degree feedback?
360 degree feedback (or multi source feedback) was first introduced in its current form in the 1970s and has its roots in executive management and leadership performance improvement.

The overall aim of the feedback exercise is to raise awareness of the participant to their known and unknown strengths and additionally to appropriate opportunities for development and continuous performance improvement.

The underpinning concept is to provide participants with the opportunity to see themselves as others see them. Quantitative and qualitative feedback about HOW the person does their job is collected from multiple sources (normally their manager[s], colleagues, direct reports and customers). A feedback report is then produced that allows the participant to compare their view of themselves with the feedback from others. The majority of programmes will allow this to be an anonymous process (so that comment can be honest).

2. What should you expect from the latest generation of 360 tools?
Early iterations consisted of internally driven, generic, paper based questionnaires that were manually processed and thus prone to error, sometimes causing those participating to distrust the process. Today, the best 360 degree feedback tools are:

Fully automated - They use a rigorously tested online system that guarantees the accuracy, quality and confidentiality of the whole process.

Proven Questionnaires – They use questions that are valid and have a sound theoretical foundation, measuring the things that differentiate high performing managers from the rest.

Flexible - Enabling all aspects of branding, process implementation, client support, design, development and questionnaire / report formats to be easily adjusted to meet the client's needs.

User friendly - Today's feedback reports must be easily interpreted yet comprehensive; no longer is it acceptable to provide reports containing cryptic data that appear confusing, overwhelming and require an analyst to decipher! Feedback reports should be clear, concise, understandable and easy to interpret.

3. Where can 360 degree feedback tools add value?
360s are viewed as critical components in a wide range of management development interventions. Below are some of the most common applications where 360s are used to add real value:

Performance Coaching - Used at the beginning of a coaching relationship, a 360 degree feedback report can be a powerful 'accelerator' and 'alignment' tool. By clustering and prioritising any undesirable feedback results the subject and coach can quickly gain a clear picture of where their coaching sessions should focus, ensuring key development issues are recognised and addressed. This approach to performance coaching ensures a needs driven focus based on valid, factual, accurate behavioural information.

Personal Development - Used as part of a 'life coaching' programme or as an annual development tool, 360 feedback can be used to provide genuine insight into an individual's working style across a spectrum of leadership and management behaviours and into how their 'personal brand' is perceived. The feedback report can be used to provide clarity of direction for future personal development and career planning. We are also starting to see a trend for using 360s to supplement and provide qualitative evidence in CVs!

Performance Management - A common trend is to use 360 feedback to provide an 'all round view' of performance as part of the appraisal process. The feedback is used by line managers to inform appraisal ratings and contribute to the development discussion. Used in this way, the tool can also act as a management strength benchmark, as well as highlighting individual personal strengths and problem areas.

Development Programmes - Used at the beginning of a leadership or management development programme, 360 degree feedback tools can be used to:

Inform (or determine) programme content - The feedback data from a group of people can be combined into a Group Summary Report that provides an aggregated view of the group's strengths and key development areas. Using 360s in this way enables programme designers to effectively tailor their programme content to meet specific identified needs.

Individual alignment - Providing programme participants with feedback against what is expected of them in their role and then supporting them to convert their lower ratings into a meaningful personal development plan for the programme is a great way of making the programme 'real' for them and ensuring that they start their development journey with a clear picture of what success from the programme will look like for them.

Talent Management - Whilst 360 degree feedback provides insight into a manager's past and current behaviour, when the framework of questions used includes those attributes and qualities needed to work at more senior levels they can also acts an an indicator of future performance and growth potential. 360 feedback can be a powerful component within a talent management programme and is often used to:

- Identify those individuals who have the potential to operate at the next level.
- Highlight how ability and potential can be developed.
- Act as a progress measure.
- Provide evidence based data for any prospective 'chessboard' talent management process.

Team Feedback - Just as an individual 360 provides a snapshot of how the participant is seen by those they work with, a team 360 feedback report collects feedback from groups of stakeholders from across the organisation. There are tailored survey that can provide excellent feedback for use in team development sessions and can be used to help teams gain clarity of purpose and direction, understanding the expectations of stakeholders and providing a clear picture of a team's strengths and weaknesses.

To find out more about how Lumus™ 360 Degree feedback tools can support your development intervention, visit the Complete Trainer 360 resources or for bespoke solutions email davidcooper@lumus.com

What makes you special?

2010-02-01T12:47:00.003Z

When it comes to being innovative, there are many training companies out there who claim that their programmes are unique. And, I fully believe it! No other programme on the planet will have quite the same content, quite the same presenter, and certainly not the same audience.

So what is a genuine ‘unique selling point’ for a training programme, and how do you go about making this distinction?

This was a challenge I discussed recently with John Giblin, Director of a company called Reach Another Level. His team have spent the last 18 months developing performance improvement programmes based on years of training and development experience. They run residential leadership programmes, experiential team development days (such as Tall Ship sailing events), and open programmes based on accelerating performance improvement in the workplace. Two of these programmes, The Big Picture and The £100,000 Crunch Buster Challenge, seem pretty unique in content, delivery and concept.

I looked at the descriptions on the website, and then used some search terms to see if I could find anything similar. I failed after the first ten pages of Google results. But, if you searched very specifically for these programme titles, you’d only find Reach Another Level, a company whose name matches one of the programme descriptions, and many other inappropriate references.

Switch it round. Looking at the audience for these programmes, the market is the same as for more familiar training programmes, but the challenge is to educate the audience into knowing that these solutions are going to be something they will find genuinely beneficial. That may seem like the challenge everyone faces, but when you take a product such as the forerunner to MP3 players, the Sony Walkman, until they invented it, we didn’t know we needed it!

But to return to marketing, the key is in education. Identify the right target audience; inform and explain your key differences; highlight the benefits that make your product or service stand way ahead of the competition. There’s the challenge – communicating what may be a new concept to an audience who are tired of words like ‘innovative’, ‘unique’ and ‘creative’. Don’t get too clever, and don’t alienate your audience by baffling them with concepts that they just can’t grasp quickly enough.

In this highly competitive world - one which the learning and development industry may find particularly squeezed by the global economy – standing out from the crowd is more important than ever.

Just because you think you are special, does not mean the client will think so. Think like the client, and you stand a better chance of really selling your USP.

Please add your comments - I'd love to hear what you think makes YOU special (or your products, of course!)

The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce

2010-01-21T15:32:00.004Z

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

2010-01-21T12:10:00.004Z

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

2010-01-18T20:23:00.001Z

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

2010-01-18T20:13:00.003Z

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

2010-01-14T10:37:00.001Z

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

2010-01-08T11:06:00.002Z

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

The 7 Lies of Limiting Leadership

2009-12-07T12:29:00.002Z

by Ian A Williams

Too many people fall short of their potential in the leadership game, and also fail to enable or enhance the leadership of others. Ian Williams provides an interesting insight into some of the barriers to great leadership. In this issue, Ian shares with us his belief about some of the common lies about leadership, and in the next issue we follow this up with his account of the seven truths.

My passion for good leadership often leads me to observe and reflect on what happens in the workplace for individuals and teams. I listen out for comments and frustrations, and have concluded that there are some common misunderstandings about leadership issues, which I have summarised as the seven lies of leadership.

1. I'm not a leader
The person who thinks they are not a leader is in denial, and has missed the point about leadership. Everyone is leading someone - whether or not they know it, recognise it or want it. Even if we are on the same level, we lead our colleagues in some respects. We may lead projects, team tasks, or even a staff outing! We also lead our children and others among our families and friends. At the very least, we leave ourselves - or at least we should! Our only limit on personal leadership is what we put in place for ourselves, or how we allow others to limit us.

2. They (or I) have been trained
The magic land of training is where organisations send people for a few days, and expect them to come back as leaders. A whole host of courses and events, or any kind of qualification, doesn't make a leader. Training and development will inspire people, inform them, give them practice, provide experiential learning, build confidence, build competence and skills - but all of this will not produce a leader. Too often I go into organisations, and they struggle to understand why their trained leaders are not leading effectively, despite the huge investment made. No human being can be fully trained in leadership, because it comes from within, and needs to be drawn out by line managers and others who are willing to coach people and give them the space to lead. As part of one-to-one coaching, they build experience and confidence and nurture the leader.

3. There's a personality clash
This is one of the most wonderful leadership cop outs. While personalities do clash to some extent, and ‘problem people’ do exist, the challenge is to deal with it, rather than use it as an excuse for effective leadership. Leaders are accountable for their own relationships, and the relationships around them. They need to rise to that challenge and find strategies for having people work together. Too much time and money is wasted in avoidance, and in living with the consequences of poor relationships. Get people focused back on the goals, find specific reasons to their difficulties, and facilitate finding and implementing the solutions. If necessary get some help, but making work, rather than listen to excuses.

4. They won't step up
This is often the concern of senior managers who feel that either their people will not step up to lead, or that they fail to step up to strategic leadership from operational. The key to this one is identifying the blocks. Is it a question of won't or can't? Are they willing? Are they capable? Are they confident? In my experience the ‘won't’ part of this question is the lie. If the block is about skills, abilities, and/or confidence, it falls back on the senior leader to coach. Sometimes, it's a case of making clear to people what you see as strategic versus operational. Ironically, the most common cause for people not stepping up is senior people holding them down. They too often hold on to strategic issues for themselves, tell people what the decision is, and then wonder why everyone is frustrated! If you want to grow strategic leaders, involve them in strategic leadership.

5. Not a people person
How does anyone walk the earth and deny being a people person. People are everywhere, and we can't avoid them. And if we want to get anywhere with anyone, getting along with people isn't a luxury but a necessity. So unless you're a hermit, or you’re in denial of your leadership role, you have to get on with people. You have to employ others who do this too. If someone is described as not a people person, they need to be given the feedback and required to do something about it, in order to lead themselves and other people. The key here is identifying the specific behaviour that causes the person to think this of themselves, or for it to be attributed to them. Then they need to do some self coaching will be coached. There are three aspects to balanced leadership: task, team and individual. If the leader is not a people person, they are missing two-thirds of their job; so in fact, they are not a leader but a person who just does jobs.

6. It's not my style
We read about and experience all sorts of leadership styles. There is no right or wrong, they are just different. Any leadership style becomes inappropriate if it is used in the wrong way, in the wrong circumstances, or at the wrong time. That is of course the essence of situational leadership. An effective leader is able to use a range of styles appropriately. They fool themselves, and everyone else suffers, when they are attached to one favourite style, come what may. You will have met the constant bully, the habitual delegator, and the absentee. Adopting just one style is simply me centred, and the leader has to listen, learn and adjust if they are to motivate people and achieve tasks. They need to model a range of styles, so that others are learning from how they operate practically. After all, what is at stake if you have a leader who is not leading effectively?

7. Know it all, done it all
We’ve all met the magic leaders who have made it! We had better sit and listen to them, and sit back while they either do it themselves or give the orders! Who are they fooling with this lie? Individuals and teams are always different. Situations, resources, tasks and circumstances are always different. No season is the same; there is no constancy but there is always change. We all bring our experience and knowledge, we bring the benefit of wisdom, but we still need a refreshing quantity and quality of ideas, and the excitement of discovering something new together. It’s this sense of contribution to creativity and synergy that keeps people engaged. No one has the monopoly on knowledge, wisdom, ideas and solutions. The know-it-all leader is living a lie and fools no one but themselves. Don't stand for their robbery.

I hope that some of these resonate with your own experience, and that you have found some ways to overcome the lies, and to stand up for the truths. Let’s stop kidding ourselves with all the hype about leadership, and get some of the simple things sorted out for ourselves and those we influence!

Ian A Williams is an author, speaker and facilitator in leadership development,
and a representative for Professor John Adair.
http://www.kairology.com/ ©Kairos Development Ltd. 2009 – All rights reserved. Reproduced by kind permission.

UK HR Update

2009-12-03T15:55:00.001Z

Equal Pay Considerations

According to research done by The Fawcett Society is the UK’s leading campaign for equality between women and men 85% of the public are in support of equal pay audits. Their website provides the following gruesome statistics:

• 30,000 women lose their jobs in the UK each year simply because they are pregnant
• Only 11% of FTSE 100 company directors are women
• Nearly 1 in 5 women who work in London earn less than the London Living Wage.
• Women in London earn 23% less than their male counterparts

Fewer than one in five (18%) of private companies measure their gender pay gaps, according to other research produced today by IPSOS Mori for CIPD/KPMG. Even in the public sector, where equal pay monitoring is a statutory requirement, the study finds only 43% complete audits, with many of these described as "ticking the bureaucratic box rather than as part of an underlying effort to advance gender equality. Under the provisions of the Equality Bill - due to be passed early next year - the government is considering forcing companies with more than 250 staff to report their gender pay gaps by 2013 if too few of them are doing it voluntarily.

Companies should investigate pay structures from the perspective of fairness and equality whether or not legislation is introduced. Leading businesses will examine their pay gaps not because of government, but because they understand the impact to their reputation and possible legal damage of not getting it right.
Companies who wish to gauge how vulnerable they are to an equal pay claim should ask the following:

1. Is equal pay a consideration in your company's HR policy?
2. Does your HR team understand the implications of current and future equal pay legislation?
3. Is equality of pay embedded in the recruitment, retention and engagement policies of your company, including monitoring starting salaries by gender?
4. Does your executive leadership understand and sponsor the concept and implications of equal pay?
5. Do your managers understand the concept and implications of equal pay?
6. Does your company have a job evaluation scheme?
7. Does your company believe that the job evaluation scheme can manage the issue of equal pay in your company?
8. Does your company provide guidelines to help managers in performance management discussions and in the allocation of pay increase and bonus awards?
9. If challenged, would your company be able to justify gaps in base pay and annual bonus between a male employee and a female employee who have the same role and responsibilities?
10. Does your company have a process to deal with an equal pay claim?

If the answer is no to any of these then an organization should take urgent action to address the issues or face the possible consequences of a lengthy and costly tribunal claim.

Rule Changes on Medical Reports Allows Employees’ Veto

Employers could find it harder to obtain independent medical assessments for employees with health problems following new guidance from the General Medical Council regarding confidentiality issues. The guidance, which took effect on 12 October 2009, places doctors under enhanced duties when acting as independent medical advisers preparing reports for employment purposes. The guidance, which applies to all doctors states that they must:

 be satisfied that the employee is fully informed of the purposes and likely results of disclosing a report to the employer;
 point out that relevant information cannot be concealed or withheld;
 disclose only facts that are relevant to the employer’s request;
 offer to show the employee any report on their condition before it is sent;
 obtain the employee’s written consent before passing on the report.

Those who have actually treated the employees concerned are also subject to the provisions of the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988. While independent or occupational health doctors who haven’t treated the employees aren’t covered by this act, they can no longer supply medical reports to employers without following the above steps. The guidance has been designed to increase trust between doctors and patients, and to prevent the unnecessary disclosure of personal details. Under the previous rules, independent or occupational health doctors not involved in treating the employee concerned could give the employer a report without running it past the individual first. The guidance does not oblige employers to change how they seek medical opinions. It is now, however, even more important that employers set out clearly in writing the issues they are seeking advice on. Then doctors will have more clarity on the relevant information they need to provide. Employees, then, are more likely to consent,however, the introduction of a sign-off procedure means that employers could face delays in receiving reports, which could in turn prolong the absence management process.

The guidance does not give employees the right to amend reports, but it’s likely that most doctors will be willing to correct factual inaccuracies. It is less clear whether employees will ask doctors to alter reports in more subtle ways. Doctors have been advised that it is unacceptable to make changes under pressure from either employees or employers. If consent is withheld the report cannot be disclosed. This change may have unintended and unwelcome consequences for employers and employees. Employers disputing medical information received, for example, from GPs, may face difficulties obtaining independent medical opinions now employees can refuse disclosure. Organisations with limited medical information will be less able to implement reasonable adjustments and may be more likely to dismiss employees for ill health.
How to Manage a Re-structure – 5 top tips!

1. Identify the main objectives for your business re-structure and plan the most appropriate people structure to make your business more effective.
2. Identify which key skills you wish to retain in the new structure and ring-fence key individuals to particular posts; if they only have 70% of the skills required develop a skills development plan for each.
3. Recruit to the remaining posts either from within (first) and then outside the business.
4. Identify which individuals are not required within the new structure as they do not have the new skills required and set a redundancy management programme in place bearing in mind consultation and dismissal legal requirements.
5. Manage performance of the individuals in the new structure carefully and develop training and development plans as appropriate to ensure business success.

If you need support with a re-structure contact Sandra Beale on 07762 771290 or visit her website at http://www.sjbealehrconsult.co.uk

Book Review - Psychology for Trainers

2009-11-23T12:09:00.002Z

Psychology for Trainers (E-book)

by Alison Hardingham

When I was first asked to review this e-book I must admit my heart sank as I have not hitherto been a fan of e-books. However – this e-book is quite different from others I have read. It is well laid out with good spacing and a clear and readable font. The graphics are clear and easy to read and one is not faced with a massive block of text to attempt to read and digest on screen.

So much for visual appeal. What about content?

As a coach who does training (or should that be a trainer who does coaching?) I have always been interested in the psychology of training so I was particularly interested to hear what Alison had to say on the subject.

As one might expect the book starts with building rapport and establishing credibility and then moves on through getting information across; gaining commitment to change; managing the group; counselling the individual; handling conflict, facilitating the transfer of learning and ending on surviving as a trainer.

Alison certainly practises what she preaches as she uses a wide range of communication techniques to expound and illustrate her points. There are questionnaires; diagrams; personal anecdotes all designed to catch and maintain the reader's interest while informing in a highly effective and clear way. There is something to suit pretty much everyone's learning preference Again the layout of the e-book contributes to the ability of the reader to take in and retain information. At the end of each chapter is an 'In Brief' section summing up what has gone before.

Whether you are at the beginning of your career as a trainer (or indeed as a coach) or have may years of experience in either field I am sure you will find this book of interest and use. In fact, far from avoiding e-books, I now have this one downloaded on my desktop as it is fast becoming my 'go to' book of reference every time I start designing a new training workshop or take on a new client. I heartily recommend this book!

Rating 5 out of 5

Angela Lawrence
The Cinnamon Coach
Isle of Man
angiecoach@manx.net

An international perspective on leadership

2009-11-02T09:53:00.002Z

I recently interviewed Chris Fox from Canning International for our Profile of the Month. One of the subjects we discussed which I thought worth separating out, was Chris's comments on leadership. I asked him whether he thought that the current trend for leadership training is just a 'fad':

"I’m not sure it’s a fad, no. But I think there is a tendency for companies to want to pack their workforce full of ‘leaders’ without having any sense of what they really mean. Of course, a handful of inspirational leaders at the top of an organisation can make a huge difference to morale, strategy and direction. But does the team leader of a research desk, or the project manager of a data warehousing project really need to be a ‘leader’ in the same sense? Of course, training companies are falling over themselves to put together lengthy PowerPoint presentations and brainstorming workshops in order to respond to the demand that is out there for these courses, and who can blame them? There’s certainly money in it.

"We’ve heard of clients ‘rolling out a leadership programme throughout the organisation’. Invariably this simply means that a score or more people will be sitting in a meeting room watching a presentation about decision making, strategic precision and disseminating the vision, before going back to their everyday jobs processing orders or checking the wording of a contract. And the next day twenty more will turn up to witness the same thing. And so on, until everyone has taken part in ‘the leadership workshop’, from the post room to the boardroom. It’s not going to produce leaders, and it doesn’t respond to the needs of the people in the room. We run plenty of courses under the ‘leadership’ banner, but they are generally for companies we know well, and with whom we have been able to have honest, candid discussions about what they really mean. Much of the time they simply want project managers without line management responsibility to be able to exercise influence above their level of hierarchical authority. Or they want line managers, promoted thanks to their technical skills rather than their management abilities, to be able to communicate their own vision to their department or team and get them moving in the same direction. Sometimes it is simply that not enough people with management responsibility in the organisation are able to motivate their teams to do what they want them to do.

"This kind of leadership training can be excellent: a small group of people practising the persuasive, communicative or motivational skills needed to get people to ‘play the game’ and follow their vision. But it doesn’t need to be accompanied by distilled academic texts or statistical surveys. If people need to lead, on a grand or a small scale, it seems clear to us that you simply recreate the situation in which they need to exercise that leadership, get them to rehearse that situation, and offer honest feedback, based on a clear set of well refined principles, that will help them perform better next time they’re in a comparable situation. Funnily enough, we have seen the same thing with cross-cultural training. For years we were competing with ‘inter-cultural briefings’, where a ‘country expert’ would deliver an extended PowerPoint presentation on ‘China’ or ‘Japan’ or ‘The Middle East’, passing on political, social and etiquette information to managers intending to operate in that cultural context. We have never got involved in this kind of training, and have always had to defend our own approach against those wanting the lengthy lectures on etiquette.

"Predictably, our culture-specific training is performance based, and focuses on working with Japanese/Chinese/American etc partners. Anyway, it is now pretty clear that the etiquette lectures are dying a death, while our working with… courses have never been more popular. I daresay the same thing will happen with Leadership – eventually people realise that they need to be better at something rather than know more about it. Some clients are much further ahead on that particular curve than others."

Chris Fox is a Director of Canning International Training and Development

About Canning

Canning offers a range of training, information on which can be easily accessed through our website. Simply choose whether you are interested in: Skills, Culture, Teams or Language, and click through to the information you need. More background on the company, its employees, and our additional consultancy services can be found via the menu along the top. http://www.canning.com/

To read my full interview with, visit the Complete Trainer website.

Three Interviewing Mistakes

2009-10-27T10:54:00.005Z

Three Interviewing Mistakes – And How To Avoid Them By Mike Brooks

As the economy slowly recovers, companies are beginning to expand and hire sales reps again. If you’re looking for a job, or looking to change jobs, no doubt you will be sending your resume out, talking to hiring managers, and, if you’re lucky enough to get picked, even going on interviews.

Over the years, I’ve looked at thousands of resumes and interviewed thousands of sales reps. In fact, right now, I’m recruiting for several companies, and I’m amazed by how sales reps keep making basic, horrible mistakes that often times immediately disqualify them for any chance at landing a position. Often times, these mistakes even prevent them from getting an interview!

Here are the 3 worst interviewing mistakes sales reps are making, and what you can do to avoid them:

#1) Filling your resume with every job you’ve worked at for the last 10 years. The first mistake sales reps make – and that hiring managers look for first – is listing five to seven jobs (or more!) on their resume within an eight to ten year time frame.

Nothing will disqualify you faster than a history of job hopping, or a history of staying at jobs for less than a year. (One resume I saw last week listed 3 jobs this year alone!)

Obviously, the reason this is a red flag for companies is that they see themselves investing thousands of dollars hiring and training you only to think that their company will be the next one on your resume.

The Solution: Omit jobs you’ve stayed at less than a year, and never list more than four jobs in a ten year period (it’s better to have only three).

You can disclose other positions once you move forward during the interview process – in person – after you’ve earned a change to wow them with your personality, experience, and obvious qualifications for the job.

#2) Talking for too long when asked a question. Whenever a hiring manager calls you and begins asking questions, make sure your answers are direct and short. You’d be amazed at how so many sales reps will go on and on and on…..

What the hiring manager is thinking is that you are a sales rep who will talk past the close, never listen to your prospects, and never close any business. “No wonder they’re looking for a job,” frequently goes through my mind…

The Solution: Listen carefully to what you’re being asked, think about how to answer it directly, then answer it and shut up! This one technique will separate you from 80% of the sales reps interviewing for the same position.

#3) Don’t interview or interrogate the hiring manager. I know that you have questions about the job, and you should ask a few, but don’t interrogate the hiring manager! Nothing makes us more irritated than being grilled about every aspect of the job, especially about the pay and comp plan. You’re the one being interviewed, not the other way around.

The Solution: Ask some basic questions but save the majority of them for the END of the in person interview. Believe me, the hiring manager will appreciate it and be much more likely to bring you in.

If you’re serious about getting a new position or moving up in your sales career, then avoid these 3 interviewing mistakes. Your chance of getting the new job will increase 100% if you do!

Good luck and happy job hunting!

If you found this article helpful, then you will love Mike’s bestselling book on Inside Sales and his Complete Book of Telephone Scripts

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. He offers a FREE audio program designed to help you double your income selling over the phone, as well as an internationally acclaimed FREE ezine. If you’re looking to catapult your sales, or create a sales team that actually makes their monthly revenues, then learn how by
visiting: http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

Understanding Unconscious Bias

2009-10-26T13:19:00.001Z

By Carolyn Sheppard

At a seminar I attended a short while ago (on the subject of Leadership During Challenging Times), all of the four speakers, from very different backgrounds, mentioned the issue of unconscious bias and the effects it has on leadership, followership and the organisation. Unconscious bias is the underlying, subconscious prejudices that every single person has, due to nature, nurture and experience.

As an illustration of this, one of the speakers (an eloquent and impressive French IT Director), recounted a particularly relevant story regarding her employment at a company in the US. She said that no matter how good her performance and results, she could never succeed because of the culture of the organisation. She struggled in the company for three years. The company talked a good ‘diversity and inclusion policy’, but the behaviour of the employees (right down to the woman who assumed that any other female in the organisation must also be a PA), set the culture based on their own unconscious biases. Changing the entire culture of a huge, Texas-based heavy industry company was not a task she desired to take on (and probably not an achievable one) so, with no sense of failure but a great deal more understanding, she moved on.

That’s the negative side of unconscious bias – acting out a bias that is discriminatory or prejudiced. But the positive side of unconscious bias is that it is a basic survival instinct. Our brains recognise situations or scenarios that get right down to the ‘flight or fight’ principle. However in these times, for most of us, there is much less need for these responses – there is not the physical danger that required us to develop these instincts. We can transfer them from physical to verbal or even intellectual responses – but your brain is still crying out for a reaction of some kind. Our biases are there for a reason, your brain has learned to react in a certain way because of an experience or learned behaviour (eg prejudice demonstrated by parents, culture or other external influences).

Your experience may include, for example, knowing an extremely argumentative red headed person (whatever example I use, it will demonstrate a bias!). You automatically, therefore, are on your guard when you talk to any red head, no matter what their personality.

Unfortunately instinct is not discriminatory – and it takes a lot of training to overcome those gut reactions (take for example being a fire-fighter – deliberately moving towards a threat that you would naturally wish to flee).

Can you train the bias out of an individual? The answer is probably no, you can’t easily ‘undo’ the conditioning or personal preferences of an individual, but you can educate them to recognise unconscious bias in themselves and in others, and to consider the consequences of their actions and reactions in the context of their bias. By making individuals and teams aware of the biases that operate personally and in their culture or organisation, they can make a tangible difference in changing behaviour (if not beliefs) and increasing the opportunities for diversity and inclusion. As a result the organisation can tap into the broad range of talent that may be within their reach that they otherwise may have ignored.

A good example of this is the ‘selling more toothpaste’ story. Instead of just sitting in the boardroom wondering how they could sell more toothpaste, the MD asked everyone in the factory what ideas they had. One shop floor worker put his hand up and said ‘make the hole bigger’. There was the answer they needed – and it wasn’t in the marketing team or in product research. It was right there on the shop floor. This story is many years old, from a time when there were far more class distinctions in society and in the workplace. By disregarding their bias (which was perhaps not so unconscious then, admittedly), the owners of that toothpaste factory achieved a very positive result and sold more.

When you are next in a training room – look around at the people you are with. What unconscious biases have you already applied just in looking at those people? What assumptions have you made about the place you are in, the behaviour of others, the likely outcome of the day? Whether you are a delegate or a trainer – consider those unconscious biases you hold that will be positive or negative be aware how they could affect your behaviour and the results you will get.

Resources:

On-line Implicit Association Testing: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Training on unconscious bias: www.angela-peacock.com/unconsciousbias.html

Trainers need psychology like a fish needs a bicycle

2009-10-19T12:25:00.002+01:00

‘Trainers need psychology like a fish needs a bicycle’: true or false?

What would a training programme designed in complete ignorance of human psychology be like? Maybe something like this…

The 29 participants filed one by one into the windowless room, at the front stood the trainer, behind a dark oak lectern. The tables were in lines across the room, and name cards indicated who was to sit where. At each place was a thick file full of dense typescript. On the front of the file was the title of the training course the participants were about to receive: ‘The basic management skills’. The course was to last five days.

The trainer waited until everyone was seated. Then she started:

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this programme in basic management skills. I shall be describing the 10 main theories of management and indicating the strengths and limitations of each. You may think you already know the basics of management, but I can assure you plenty of managers make elementary mistakes all the time. That is why this programme has been designed.

'Now, if you would turn to page 32(a) of your file, we will begin with the origins and development of the situational leadership model. The list of points that I have put up on the overhead shows you…’

And so on.

How many ‘deliberate mistakes’ did you spot in that happily fictitious account? ...

This is an excerpt from the book 'Psychology for Trainers'. Click here to download and entire chapter free. To buy the book, click here.

Time Termites

2009-10-13T09:59:00.004+01:00

The Top 10 Time Termites and How to Exterminate Them - by Anne Alexander

Did you know that “time termites” eat up as much as 25 – 50% of your time? It’s true, and in this article I’ll discuss what a time termite is, as well as what the top 10 time termites are, and - most importantly! – how you can exterminate them and take back a huge amount of your time and your life.

Time termites are activities and people that “eat up” your time and destroy the beautiful design of your life. In my Time Architect™ model of time management, we design a life that is grounded solidly in the four cornerstones – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. We protect these areas by understanding and applying the storm proofing principles.

Just like you design your home to withstand intruders (such as termites), you must design your life to strongly protect against the situations and people that will run right over you and eat up your life - if you let them.

Let’s look at the top ten time termites, based on my unscientific experience with hundreds of clients.

1. Wasting time on trivial items – computer games, gossip, etc.
2. Waiting around to talk with the boss or manager
3. Meetings without a good agenda and/or good facilitation
4. Too many unnecessary reports to write
5. Problems in locating documents or other needed items
6. Answering unimportant phone calls & email
7. People with a negative attitude - complainers and whiners
8. Inability to say "No." That is, saying "Yes" to too many people
9. Interruptions
10. Add your own: What’s your biggest time termite?

Time termites vary depending on whether you work in a huge Fortune 500 type business, or a small company or organization, or are a solo entrepreneur, but these are a representation of what steals most people’s time.

As a business and executive coach I work with hundreds of high achieving business owners and professionals. In my experience, only a very energetic, intelligent and vigilant approach will work to protect your time.

Extermination tactics:

1. Values & vision: Get crystal clear on your personal values and vision. You must know what matters most to you and where you are going in order to be able to make choices that support the best use of your time.

2. Planning: When you create annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals, plan with your values and vision clearly in mind. This way, you will focus in on your highest value activities.

3. Systems: Get good systems in place. Be able to find immediately any information or tools you need in your business or organization. These systems are highly individual. Feel free to contact me for information on resources to help you get organized.

4. Boundaries: Erect strong barriers around yourself – you can think of this as a sturdy fence with an electronic gate around your house (and life) that only grants access to those people and activities that fit in with your priorities. This is a challenge to anyone who likes to think of themselves as a “nice person,” which is many of us. It takes some practice to regroove our neural pathways to hold a new belief that having boundaries is not only OK, but downright healthy. (For more on strong boundaries, email me for an article that goes into more depth on that topic.)

So get crystal clear on your values and vision, create a good plan, install excellent systems, and erect strong boundaries. When you implement just one of these suggestions each month, in a year you will have 12 awesome new habits that will help you take back 25-50% of your time…and your life. Congratulations: your time termites will have been exterminated.

Anne Alexander provides authentic (real) alternatives (choices) to business owners and helps them stop spinning their wheels and move forward with substantial, profitable business growth, personal satisfaction and bottom line control. To receive Anne's free 49 page report, 3 Master Marketing Strategies That Will Dramatically Multiply Your Sales & Profits, send a blank email to business100@aweber.com or visit http://www.authentic-alternatives.com/

Latest UK HR and Government Update

2009-10-01T12:59:00.002+01:00

Taxes, returns & payroll
The Companies Act 2006 is changing the law for companies. Passed in 2006, the Act reaches the final stage of implementation on 1 October 2009. More information here

Directors' addresses: all companies will need to provide a service address for every director in their register of directors and keep a record of their directors' residential addresses separate from their register of directors.

Company and business names: measures will be introduced to enable the public to easily find a business name and prevent business names being misleading.

Memorandums and articles of association: where a business incorporates on or after 1 October 2009, it will be able to use - if it so chooses - model memorandum and articles of association. Check the Companies House website, for updates/templates.

Company particulars in correspondence: a company will have to include its name in all forms of business documentation, including electronic documents.

Place for keeping key company records: every company will be able to have a single alternative inspection location (SAIL) as an alternative to its registered office, at which it must make its key records available for public inspection. This site will have to be in the same part of the UK as its registered office. Companies will have to notify Companies House of their SAIL, the records they keep there and of any change in their SAIL's address.

Inspection of company records: a person wishing to inspect a private company's records will have to give advance notice of the date and time they wish to carry out the inspection. In addition, companies will not be able to prevent the person from copying all or part of a record they are entitled to inspect.

Providing copies of company records: if a person requests a hard copy of a company record, the company must provide a hard copy even if the record is held electronically. If a person requests an electronic copy, the company must do so if the record is held electronically.

Notification of particulars of share capital: in an application for a new company, the particular of share capital will be included in a new 'statement of capital', rather than being included in the memorandum. Any changes in capital will be notified to Companies House through a new statement of capital.

Reduction of share capital: as an alternative to the current process requiring court approval, private companies will be able to choose to reduce their capital by special resolution, supported by a solvency statement by each of the directors.

Overseas companies with a business establishment in the UK: there will be a single regime for the registration by overseas companies of the particulars of their UK establishments. There will also be a new regime for the registration of charges over property in the UK created by such companies.

Merger of Companies Registry in Northern Ireland with Companies House: there will be a single register of companies for the entire UK. As a result, companies incorporated in Northern Ireland wishing to establish a place of business elsewhere in the UK will no longer have to register as an overseas company. See our regulation update on the merger of Great Britain and Northern Ireland company registers.

Record-keeping requirements for limited liability partnerships (LLPs): new record-keeping requirements will be introduced for LLPs.

The above outlines key changes for the final implementation of the Companies Act 2006. Find detailed information about Companies Act changes on the Companies House website

Regulation of community interest companies (CICs): new provisions will enable a CIC to convert to the asset-locked form of a community benefit society and a Scottish charity to convert to a CIC. In addition, requirements relating to the appointment and removal of directors, alternate directors and casting votes will be removed and a reasonable-persons test will be added to the community aspect section of the community interest test.

Formation of limited partnerships: on registration, Companies House will officially confirm that a limited partnership has been formed. Limited partnerships will also have to include in their name an indication of their legal status.

Employing people
The national minimum wage (NMW): the NMW for eligible workers will increase. It will rise to £5.80 an hour for workers aged 22 and above and to £4.83 an hour to workers aged 18-21. The rate for those under 18 but above compulsory school age rises to £3.57 an hour. See our regulation update on the increase in the national minimum wage rate.

Tips, service charges, etc and the NMW: bars, restaurants, hotels, etc will no longer be able to count service charges, tips, gratuities and cover charges paid to a worker through the employer's payroll as part of the NMW.

Redundancy payments and certain employment tribunal awards: the limit on a week's pay for calculating statutory redundancy payments, and tribunal awards that use a week's pay as the basis for calculation, will increase from £350 to £380.

Source: (C) Businesslink

Top Sales Producers - Inside out!

2009-09-16T14:04:00.011+01:00

by Ken Buist

Recruiting sales professionals with the appropriate raw material to rapidly and consistently become top producers for your company is even more essential within the current economic climate. Our research study suggests it is now possible to predict more accurately who these top producers are likely to be.

Up until now the main research carried out on potential top producers has tended to focus on behaviour. It was important that sales professionals performed to a high standard at interview. They had to look and sound good as well as be able to communicate with influence, all observable behaviour.

For predicting behaviour, there is the individual’s CV (past behaviour being a predictor of future behaviour) as well as a temperament analysis (temperament being the biggest single influencer of behaviour).

How Would You Define Top Producers?

Over the years clients have asked us to define potential top producers based on temperament analysis. We have always resisted coming up with an ‘ideal’ because our experience is that top producers come in a variety of ‘shapes’ with regard to temperament.

What happens on the inside?

The purpose of this new study was to find out:
a) Is there a particular temperament ‘shape’ associated with top producers?
b) What influence do values (hidden motivators) have on the performance of top producers?

The results indicate that what drives top producers on the inside is consistent, whilst the behaviours displayed on the outside are variable and useful but are probably less crucial when it comes to identifying top producers.

Study Details

Top producers from the sales forces of 39 companies were given a dual assessment to measure Temperament (behaviour – the HOW) & Values (motivators – the WHY). The temperament dimension was based on the highly internationally validated DISC model. The results below show that the top producers were spread across at least 5 major and 3 minor ‘shapes’ of behaviour.

Values were measured and based on the Workplace Motivators model which looks at 6 values. The results shown below were conclusive; 72% of top producers had ‘Utilitarian’ as their number one value and in every case were considerably above the average.

Conclusions

Top sales producers are spread across a variety of behavioural dimensions. However when it comes to what drives these behaviours, a Utilitarian value can be found in almost ¾ of top sales producers, confirming that the drivers which are on the inside is at least as important as looking good and sounding good.

Would you like to try out one of the assessments? We are allowing (for a limited period only), Complete Trainer contacts to access this superb tool for free: www.thetrustedadviser.com/new-assessment-ct

We love the tools that Ken at The Trusted Advisor has shown us - we think you will too.

UK HR Update

2009-09-14T11:48:00.003+01:00

by Sandra Beale

Largest ever fine for data protection breach
The Financial Services Authority has fined the bank, HSBC, £3.2 million, the largest fine ever, for losing the personal details of thousands of customers. The FSA considered that HSBC had failed to put in place adequate systems and controls to protect customers' details from loss or theft. For example, unencrypted disks containing extensive personal details of policy holders had been sent by normal post and were lost. The FSA also criticised HSBC for being careless with customers' confidential information, leaving it on open shelves and disposing of it in regular waste collections. Given the increasing awareness of the issues around keeping personal data safe, all organisations, not just those regulated by the FSA, need to ensure they are doing everything they can to prevent the misuse of confidential and personal information this includes implementation of appropriate policies and training.

Health & Safety Executive’s Health & Safety Guides Offered Free of Charge
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is to scrap charges on 250 of its online health and safety guides from September in a bid to make workplaces safer. The comprehensive guides can be downloaded as PDFs from the HSE website

Growth in Young People’s Unemployment
Unemployment statistics show that one in three young people aged 16-18 are unemployed according to recently published figures. With one million young people aged 16-24 unemployed a whole generation of school leavers and university graduates who faced the prospect of no job for months to come. It does not bode well for this year's school leavers seeking their first ever job - they are not included in these latest figures published by the Office of National Statistics. Youth unemployment now costs the state £3.4 million per day in Jobseeker's Allowance. It can be just the start of a long and downward spiral, which all too often leads to crime, homelessness or worse. Only by stopping young people fall out of the system can lost potential be rescued and save the economy billions each year. Youth unemployment is a serious waste of talent which has to be bad for our future workforce and our current economy.

Lord Mandelson, has said the Government was encouraging businesses to offer greater work experience and internships to help youth unemployment. Businesses on the other hand are stating that schools, universities and the government are not doing enough to support new graduates’ entry into employment. Given that so few government schemes to get the young back into work seem to be effective, something has to be done, but it is difficult to say what.

With the wealth of young people applying for every vacancy it is difficult to recruit the best people and it is those with work experience who will fare better.

Strategies undertaken by some UK-based companies include maintaining student recruitment levels, opening a summer academy for first year undergraduates, implementing an online employability skills clinic, skills seminars and career showcases at schools (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) and recruiting trainees direct from school, offering internships and summer work experience placements (Grant Thornton).

The Forum of Private Business is encouraging small firms to implement apprenticeship schemes, internships and work experience programmes to help "creative and driven" young recruits learn what employers need from their staff. The members of this forum value young people who can bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to the workplace and have said it is important that young people leave school, college of university with the skills and confidence they need to enter their first job and do well.

The government is keen to promote internships for students as part of a sandwich degree or a vacation placement. For unemployed graduates internships will be offered through the newly launched Graduate Talent Pool website (www.graduatetalentpool.direct.gov.uk) whereby SMEs can gain access to good talent. The aim is to match employers with the skills required for their business. As traditionally SMEs have not tapped into the graduate market this is a promising development. The average weekly wage offered as part of an internship is £300pw. With an internship young people can have access to valuable work experience so that when starting a jobsearch they have something to offer an employer.

Companies need to seriously consider investing in apprentices to build up the vocational skills of young people. Despite active government promotion, this is sadly a missed opportunity for many companies who view the investment as a cost too huge to bear. An apprentice need only cost £90 per week with government funding for training provided by Train to Gain. An apprentice is a low cost employee option with the chance to build skills for the future for long term company development.

Recruitment of young people can be difficult when many don’t have the demonstrable work experience that demonstrates capability. However, by being encouraged to gain skills, not just through paid work-related activities, but, for example, through volunteering, charity work, sport and relevant hobbies, young people can enhance their CV’s dramatically showing potential employers what they can offer.

Investing in young people could be the key to many companies being ably equipped in terms of skills to meet the economy upsurge head on when it eventually happens. In any case, they are the work force of the future.

Employment of Children
If you employ children and need guidance on working time and health and safety issues, etc the Department for Children Schools and Family has produced an excellent guide on employing children. If you would like a copy please email info@sjbealehrconsult.co.uk and they will send you the free guide.

Northants Business Expo 2009 – 18 November
See http://www.northantsbusinessexpo.co.uk/ - SJ Beale HR Consult is organising a business expo in Northampton incorporating a business exhibition, a networking lunch, speed networking session and free business seminars.

How To Make Your Sales Manager Better

2009-09-14T10:13:00.004+01:00

by Mike Brooks, http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

I consult with a lot of business owners, and I hear a common complaint:

“The sales team isn’t making their revenue numbers and my sales manager doesn’t seem to know what to do to get them to improve. What should I do?”

After reviewing their sales processes, their training program, sales scripts, etc., I always ask the same question: “How much production is your sales manager generating per month?” And I almost always get the same answer – “My manager doesn’t sell.”

Therein lies the problem.

The problem with most sales managers that they don’t sell. And the problem with that is how can they teach and manage something they aren’t doing themselves (or worse, can’t)?

Now I know there are differing opinions on this – some say managers need to manage from the sidelines (like coaches), need to be involved in higher level responsibilities, need to attend endless meetings, and need to be able to set revenue goals and get their team to achieve them.

I agree with some of this (except the endless meetings part!), but the most effective and respected sales managers and V. P.’s I work with all lead by example. They have a personal quota and they keep their skills sharp and refined because they are on the phones closing prospects and clients every day.

Because of this, they have a real understanding of what it takes to get the job done, and so they are in the best position to teach it to others.

Here are the top 5 benefits of having a selling sales manager:

1) Sales managers who actively sell have an up to date, intimate understanding of what techniques, skills and strategies work in your selling environment. And having this first-hand knowledge means they can teach it to others.

2) Because a selling sales manager has this immediate experience of closing sales, they are in a much better position to help their team members close business as well. They can easily do a TO (take over) when a sales rep needs help. This not only teaches the rep how to handle selling situations, but it often saves a sale as well. This is what your sales manager must be able to do, and it is a crucial part of their job.

3) A selling sales manager commands the ultimate respect and confidence of his/her sales team. A sales manager is a leader of his team, and the best way to lead is by example. Sales reps respect and follow a leader who can help them close sales and achieve their goals. They’ll also work harder for them.

4) A confident sales manager grows a confident and productive team.
Nothing is better for a sales manager than to have him/her demonstrate, to themselves and others, that they have what it takes to successfully close sales. A successful selling manager isn’t afraid of setting production goals because he knows he can achieve them (and he knows what it’s going to take).

5) As a business owner, you must have the confidence that your manager knows exactly how to accomplish your company’s revenue goals. The most accurate way to determine this is by having the sure knowledge that he knows how to do it himself. This experience is invaluable and will ensure that the goals you set are reasonable and reachable.

The #1 problem I run across when working with companies is an unreachable, unrealistic revenue goal set by the owner that has no real buy in by the sales manager. It is this disconnect that causes friction, undermines morale, and often leads to demotivated, underperforming sales teams (and managers).

All this can be avoided when you have an experienced, hands on, selling sales manager who can give you honest and accurate feedback about production goals and the ways to achieve them.

There are many more benefits of having a selling sales manager leading your team, but I hope this short list has convinced you. Believe me, the fastest way to make your sales manager better is to give them a quota and require them to pick up the phone and start closing business.

If you don’t already have a quota for him/her now, then do yourself (and your company and your manager) a favor and set one this week. All of you will benefit from it!

Mike is the author of several sales books including The Complete Book of Phone Scripts and Inside Sales.

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance.

Newsletters - do they work?

2009-09-09T16:04:00.006+01:00

The art of clear and interesting communication is important and it's wonderful to receive good, concise and relevant newsletters that provide a real benefit, even if it's just a smile or a useful web link.

I find writing newsletters hard - I need to announce products, direct people to links on my site or the blog and share information. Making it relevant to my audience is sometimes difficult when I have such a fantastic wide range of people that I connect with. But before you go down the 'segment the market' route, don't worry, I do.

Something I liked

Back to newsletters - today I received a newsletter that started with:

You are a 100% Verified Member of this mailing list. To stop receiving this newsletter, Ordinary Brilliance, please visit the end of this email.

Hello Carolyn,

Your one-minute-to-read issue of Ordinary Brilliance is here. Take just one minute to read it now.

And then the main body of the newsletter focused on just one key customer service issue. It did take a couple of minutes to read (not one, maybe I'm a slow reader) - but it was relevant, carried a good business message and had an interesting and tempting offer at the end. The message hit the right spot for me. It also helped that I knew who the newsletter was from.

How do you do it?

Clear communication - stating what you mean right up front, asking for engagement and being clear about why you are contacting someone - is crucial. I think I've a lot to learn from Anne Alexander's approach (check out her guest blog entry on Dealing with Problem Employees).

I also receive some really fancy emails with lots of graphics and some in simple plain text. The key to getting me to read them is content - and sometimes I completely miss it.

There's a lot to having really gripping opening copy (and not just for newsletters) but stating who you are and what you expect right up front is not a bad tactic. I wonder how many golden nuggets I've missed just because the complex graphics that take too long to download or some fussy intro turns me off before I get to the really good content?

But do newsletters actually work? If you do them properly, then yes. There's lots of guides out there on the web to writing a good newsletter - I quite liked this one: http://www.webmarketcentral.com/effective_email_newsletters.htm.

Unsubscribe
The most important thing to remember (and Anne puts it right at the top of her newsletters) is the Unsubscribe option. Not only is it a legal requirement in many countries, but you are empowering your audience. Every unsubscribe I get I always acknowledge politely and expedite as quickly as I can - just because they don't want my newsletter doesn't mean they won't ever visit my site again. A useful feedback tool is to have a 'please tell us why you unsubscribed' if your system can manage it, but only if it doesn't mean too many hoops for your audience to jump through.

Hopefully people who register for my newsletter (easy to do, visit the site and fill in the box on the right or drop me a note via the contact page) are familiar with the style and content of my newsletters. Yes, they include product announcements but I do make sure I have some interesting articles and don't just 'sell sell sell'.

(C) Carolyn Sheppard 2009

This article may be reproduced with permission.

Dealing with problem employees

2009-09-08T13:43:00.004+01:00

Turnaround or Terminate?
How to Deal with "Problem" Employees

Do you struggle with a "problem" employee? If so, join the crowd! Many of my coaching clients - businesses owners or managers - tear their hair out over one or more toxic employees. In our business environment, we tend to recreate the dynamics of the family we grew up, so no wonder problems develop.

It's amazing often a business owner or manager will endure a "problem" employee, unable to help the employee make positive changes and unable to fire them when necessary. Tolerating a problem employee is like walking around with a sliver in your foot - highly irritating, but you can kind of get used to it. Then, when you finally pull it out, you can't believe the relief! That relief generally comes in one of two ways: either you and your employee are able to make some mutual improvements, or you part ways.

I recommend a two step approach to this issue. First, you do whatever can be done to turn the situation around. Very often, you may have made a few half-hearted attempts to resolve the situation, but feel lost at sea about what else can be done. You must address the issues directly, calmly and clearly with the employee. Expectations must be set, problems and solutions explored. Check in regularly with the employee to monitor progress.

On a more powerful level, the turnaround can result when you learn your own and your employee's behavioral style. I like to use the Platinum Rule assessment, developed by Dr. Tony Alessandra. It's inexpensive ($30 - $50), easy to understand and extremely powerful in helping us understand our own and others' behavior. Your style and this employee's style probably differ. (For more information on the Platinum Rule, visit: www.authentic-alternatives.com/platinumrule.htm )

The Golden Rule advises you to treat others as you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule advances this to the next level and suggests that you treat others as you would like to be treated. Your "problem" employee may be - and probably is - a different style than you. The Platinum Rule shows us four core behavioral styles (Relater, Socializer, Thinker and Director) and gives us many concrete tactics of how we can flex to meet the other person's style. I have seen near miracles occur - the proverbial light bulbs go off - when my clients use this assessment to better understand themselves and their employees and co-workers.

The second step of the two-step approach: suppose you've fully implemented the first step (turnaround) and the situation remains unacceptable. Now it's firing time, and because I bet you care about other people, you know that it's one of the most unwanted and difficult tasks an owner or manager faces. I encourage my clients to remember that a business or organization cannot afford to carry an unproductive and toxic employee. An employee person unwilling or unable to make the necessary improvements must be sent to find an employment situation that fits them better. This does not make you an evil or uncompassionate human being.

So pull out "the sliver" and create a positive, unstoppable team. The number one key to professional success is the quality of the people you surround yourself with - employees, colleagues, spouse, friends. Life speeds by, so remove the rocks from your river and let it flow forward, full force. If you can't turn around a problem employee, you must let them go. It's not your fault and if you want your business to flourish, and you will at times find you have to terminate.

Anne Alexander provides authentic (real) alternatives (choices) to business owners and helps them stop spinning their wheels and move forward with substantial, profitable business growth, personal satisfaction and bottom line control. To receive Anne's free 49 page report, 3 Master Marketing Strategies That Will Dramatically Multiply Your Sales & Profits, send a blank email to business100@aweber.com or visit http://www.authentic-alternatives.com

New book release

2009-09-04T16:29:00.006+01:00

I am as excited as a labarador in a field of bluebells!* For the past few months I've been working with coach, trainer and - most importantly - author, Alison Hardingham. Alison is an amazingly talented and experienced L&D professional with affiliations with some rather 'special' organisations and her reputation is tremendous (search her name on the internet, you'll see what I mean).

Some years back she wrote 'Psychology for Trainers' for the CIPD as part of their Trainers Toolkit series. It's now out of print with the CIPD, but with their permission, Alison is now re-releasing the book through The Complete Trainer Ltd.

We have updated and revised the book and it is now in ebook format. We are delighted to announce that the book is being published on 10th September 2009 and will be for sale via the Complete Trainer website.

Why am I so excited about THIS book? Well, not only is it the first book that we have actually published (under our own name, and with our own ISBNs), but when I was editing and formatting, I couldn't help but be drawn into the book - I learned so much and (as I am not shy to admit) I am not even a trainer! I love the opening - 'Trainers need psychology like a fish needs a bicylce. True or false?' and the way Alison leads you into each subject with clear examples, great references and in such an easy to read style.

But don't take my word for it:

"It's rare to come across a book that that provides practical ideas founded on intellectual rigour...Psychology for Trainers is such a book.

It provides insights into the psychology that effects every aspect of training, with illustrations that can be immediately applied without over complicating the message. A book that every trainer should read."

Brian Fitzgerald HR Director : Group Talent Management
ATKINS
The official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

That is what I call high praise indeed!

Well, mosey on over to the website, take a look, and if you are interested in writing a review for us, please let me know, we are looking for some appropriate individuals to send out preview copies to for review purposes.

*If you'd really like to know why I've posted the picture of Jasper the dog here, you have to read the book!

Profile of the Month - September

2009-09-03T11:20:00.005+01:00

Michael Ronayne - communicating clearly, concisely and with confidence.

This month Carolyn finds out more about Michael and the College of Public Speaking. As the name might suggest, the College places Public Speaking skills at the centre of its training programmes; believing that the fundamentals of communication are unchanging and if you can communicate with conviction in front of a group of people, you will also come across as more animated and confident on a one to one basis.

Michael Ronayne, alongside Vince Stevenson and Richard Johnson, is one of its 3 Directors.

About the College

Carolyn (The Complete Trainer Ltd): How did you start and why did you decide to call it a college?

Michael (The College of Public Speaking): Each of us came into the College of Public Speaking from different directions, but unified by a public speaking background and with a passion for communication.

The root definition of ‘college’ as a group of people living together under a common set of rules (‘con’ with; ‘lego’ law) appealed to us. Happily we do not actually live together, but we felt it captured a little of the idea of educational diversity; the ability to provide recognised qualifications; that like a musician, communication skills can be honed, studied and refined throughout a lifetime; that we see the importance of speaking in a vocational sense, rather than purely as a business. It also allows for a more academic element (in September for instance I delivered a paper on ‘Successful Speaking in the Business Sector’ at the ‘Spoken Word Conference’ at Kingston University) and therefore providing a sense of skilled individuals with a common aim coming together and sharing and developing ideas.

For me it was a logical evolution. I was a professional ‘cellist for 15 years and then spent 8 years in the sales industry. Once I left the music profession I took up public speaking, as it gave me an element of ‘performing’ that I began to miss when I stopped playing the ‘cello.
Carolyn: You are a performer at heart. Where did you start? From playing music to just talking is quite a leap!

Michael: I started in my local speakers club in Wimbledon and went on from there. I quickly realised that speaking was a lot easier than playing the ‘cello – I mean ‘What can go wrong?’ The worst that can happen is you get your words mixed up; whereas when playing the ‘cello you can drop your bow, play wrong notes and shake so much that your fingers go wobbly. So quite quickly I moved on to reach National Speaking Finals - and became a UK National Champion in the process. It was challenging, and a great development path, being a ‘competitive’ speaker.

All areas of my professional life so far have had an element of performance and communication in them - sales then added the one element in the communication process that I have always found fascinating – people. Public Speaking for me is about learning to communicate directly and effectively with different types of people. And the more effective you are at communicating, the more effective you are at sales or whatever else you choose to do.

Carolyn: There are many training companies out there, what do you think makes you stand out particularly?

Michael: In our case it is simple: 2 things - Firstly, we are all active public speakers, so there is always an aspect of genuine experience and of “walking our talk”. I remember from my sales years going on a particular training session with my colleagues. It all started well, but within a few minutes we all started making eye contact with each other, because it was suddenly clear that our ‘trainer’ had never actually done what he was asking us to do. We made sure we never made that mistake! The results are consistent feedback references to us ‘knowing our stuff’ and ‘speaking from experience’. It means that when we are asked by a client ‘What would you do in this case?’ or ‘How do you react in this situation?’, we can usually answer from direct and recent experience.

Our second ‘unique selling point’ is that we are the only Public Speaking trainers that can offer nationally recognised BTEC qualifications, rather than just a certificate of attendance.
We offer a BTEC Professional Award in ‘Training the Trainer’ and a BTEC Advanced Award in ‘Public Speaking and Presentation Skills’. We are serious about our business, and passionate about our subject.

Carolyn: I’d love to be able to have people ‘hear’ you say all this, but we’ll have to rely on them reading. Can you tell me more about how you see your business’ future?

Michael: I have a very specific vision - to have Public Speaking and Presentation Skills recognised as a core competency from school onwards, rather than just and add on that some employers feel ‘would be useful’. Having delivered Public Speaking training in a number of secondary schools I would suggest it is simply a matter of developing awareness. Once a teenager realises that speaking skills are not just for lawyers and politicians, but they are an essential life and social skill for any career choice, their perspective changes. The debating societies of our great universities are about the only place where these skills are honed – and there’s some pretty impressive names in business, politics and the media that have cut their teeth in the Oxford or Cambridge debates.

Too often in business there still seems to be an almost childlike belief that for most people good speaking and presenting skills are not attainable. I really want to change that perception.
Carolyn: Your commitment is evident – what else would you say is important in this area of training?

On the broader level; self belief and confidence – it is nice to see the light coming on as a person realises that they can do this.

On a more specific and technical level; structure. Whether conducting training in public speaking, executive speaking, media skills or training trainers, the one key aspect that I believe has the greatest impact on how a person comes across is good structure. Not complicated or ‘clever’ structure, just clear, concise and transparent. After all, most of the detail of what is said in a presentation is forgotten within a very short time by the audience. Good structure leaves a good impression.

Carolyn: Where are you based and where do you tend to work mostly?

Michael: We are based in London and most of our work is in the South East of England. Our Training the Trainer programme usually runs at the City University in Islington and we are very fortunate to be able to use the Playhouse Theatre in London for many of our Public Speaking programmes. However we work more widely in the UK too. One of my colleagues has recently run a programme in the Isle of Wight and I have just been asked to run the BTEC Training the Trainer programme in Cyprus. I have travelled quite a lot as a musician, and I suppose the same rule applies; if it makes sense for us and for the client, we are happy to be flexible.

Carolyn: What are you most proud of about your company?

Michael: I think it is attitude and ethos. We do some advertising, but a lot of our work comes from recommendation. We are an accredited BTEC centre, which is something to sing about, but we do not attempt to be overly aggressive in promotion. We only take on clients and projects that we feel we are ideally suited for, and that the client particularly needs. For instance, a few days ago, after a brief conversation with a lady, who thought she might need to go on one of our open courses, I received an email from her thanking me very much for my time and saying ‘I still cannot believe you happily talked yourself out of a customer’ – the fact was she probably did not need a professional course, she probably needed to join a speakers club. In the end I would always want clients to come away thinking unreservedly, not just that we were excellent but, that they had genuinely benefitted.

Carolyn: I’ve heard quite a lot about training suffering in the current economy. You offer what you have already said many people consider a ‘non-essential’ business skill, has this affected your business?

Mixed. On balance I would say that larger organisations have been more likely to postpone training, while individuals have been more likely to take a view that they need to get the skills for themselves. So open courses and particularly the BTEC in ‘Training the Trainer’ have attracted increasing interest.

Carolyn: Can you give me an example of where you think you have really made a difference?
I think we are very privileged in the area in which we work, because more often than not we do make a significant impact on an individual. However, the people that interest me the most are not necessarily those who display natural ability and apparently make the most progress, but rather the more timid soul who maybe was dreading the training, but really managed to get over a hurdle in the process. I had one such a little while ago from a very shy and nervous man working in the Royal Household, who went out of his way to tell Buckingham Palace training department what an enormous difference the training day had made for him.

Open Programmes

Introductory presentation skills (1 day) 17th October Premier - Euston: £150 + VAT
Training the trainer (2 days) 22nd-23rd October City University, Islington: £580 + VAT
Introductory presentation skills (1 day) 31st October & 14th November & 5th December Premier - Euston £150 + VAT
Introductory presentation skills (1 day) 19th November & 11th December Playhouse theatre £250 + VAT
Training the trainer (2 days) 23rd-24th November & 17th-18th December City University, Islington £580 + VAT

http://www.collegeofpublicspeaking.co.uk/
michael@collegeofpublicspeaking.co.uk

The College of Public Speaking donates a percentage of its profits to the Speakers Trust, a charity devoted to the development of effective communication skills throughout all strands of society.

Testimonials

"The BT Effective Speaking Programme has had excellent results. Participants have been able to learn how to improve their speaking skills in a safe and supporting environment. BT is very pleased with the College of Public Speaking’s programme and are looking to extend it next year"

Keith Dickerson, Head of Standards, BT

“From the outset, the approach of The College of Public Speaking to the task of running a series of training sessions has been friendly and efficient. Before any training took place, one of the directors of the College of Public Speaking, sat down with members of the Leadership and Professionalism team to identify the precise needs of the organisation and to discuss the most suitable structure and content for the proposed training.

From then on the trainers from the College of Public Speaking each demonstrated a very positive and professional manner and the clearly defined focus of the training has meant that, although different sessions were run by 3 separate trainers, the feedback has been universally very positive.”

Marianne Lister, Head of Leadership and Professionalism ,
Ministry of Justice (UK)

“I have undertaken a huge amount of training, but I can honestly say the trainer is one of the best trainers I have worked with. He had all the core competencies that you would want from a learning environment, supportive, caring, always willing to help further, flexible, but most important – really valued the work we the students undertook. I am going home on a real high.”

John Roberts (London Borough of Lambeth)

Coaching by accident

2009-08-27T10:36:00.003+01:00

I had some new coaching cards arrive from Israel. I have to say that just by looking at the supplier's website I was 'taken' immediately, but once I'd spoken to my guy in Israel and got a real feel for them, I was hooked!

The Points of You cards arrived and within two days I'd had three sets taken by a training company who were delivering a series of 'coach the coach' programmes to a major UK insurer. All I'd done was show one pack to them, and they were instantly engaged!

Why do I like these so much? I don't really do my own product reviews, I like my customers to do that, but these cards have a lot going for them - not the least of which is the fantastic imagery they use.

What I learned, talking to Yaron, is that the cards themselves are made by prison inmates, and the packaging is made by workers in a factory employing the less abled. I didn't only like the product, but I liked the whole philosophy behind their creation and in the execution of their manufacture.

So why did I call this post 'accidental coaching'? Simple! I was showing them to a colleague. She chose three cards, laid them out on the cloth 'board', and we started talking. I asked the relevant questions, looked up the references in the book and... well, I very nearly gave an 'acciental coaching session'.

The cards are also promoted as a self-development tool and they are great for that too - I have sat with a set and looked through images and used them to help with creative thinking and also to lay out some personal issues and perceptions.

I have two sets of coaching cards on the site at the moment (and a third set coming soon) - I believe in offering choice and, of course, it's horses for courses (and cards for coaches!). Take a look at the cards, both sets, you'll find one or other appeals to you more.

I'd love some feedback, but everything I've heard so far about Points of You and the Kairology cards has been extremely positive. I'm meeting Ian, author of the Kairology cards and book in November - I'll post my thoughts on these cards then. I already bought his book for myself.

Tribunal Support

2009-08-05T11:17:00.003+01:00

Growing Demand for Tribunal Support & Representation by Sandra Beale FCIPD

According to the ACAS annual report 2008-09, over the past year the conciliation service has received 55,000 unfair dismissal cases - an increase of almost 12,000 from the previous year equating to a 22% rise. Dismissals can arise from conduct, capability, redundancy, statutory restriction or some other substantial reason. This alarming statistic shows that many companies may not be following due process before reducing headcount. The economic downturn has, no doubt, contributed with companies making redundancies without following a fair and reasonable process. However, dismissed staff, faced with a possible lengthy period of unemployment, may also consider trying their chances at tribunal to secure compensation.

There is nothing to stop an ex-employee taking their ex-employer to court, however, there are steps a company can take to ensure that costly compensation is not the outcome.

Having robust policies and procedures in place which are well communicated and followed to the letter are key. Training for managers in operating the policies is essential particularly if they are operating without “hands on” HR support. The policies should, ideally cover, all areas of employment particularly grievance and discipline, absence, redundancy, capability, performance management and code of conduct. The policies should be sufficiently detailed to provide clear guidelines to managers and employees alike.

The grievance and discipline policies should follow the ACAS Code of Practice and accompanying guidelines introduced in April 2009 alongside the Employment Act 2008. The restrictive procedures dictated by the dispute resolution regulations, introduced with the Employment Act 2002 were abolished, however, companies need to follow a fair and reasonable procedure in order to successfully defend a tribunal case. A robust investigation into any issue that may lead to dismissal is essential, leaving no stone unturned to uncover the facts, before deciding to proceed to a fair hearing, if required, with adequate time spent allowing all the facts from all parties to be heard.

With redundancy following a few simple principles is essential whether making just one person redundant or one hundred. Consultation is paramount before proceeding to dismissal including trying to identify ways to avoid compulsory redundancy. Providing outplacement services to include CV writing and interview skills training can go a long way to appeasing unhappy staff who will lose their jobs.

For those companies that unfortunately end up receiving an ET1 from an ex-employee it is the start of an often stressful process that can last for months due to the increasing workload of the tribunal courts. There are several options for support.

The use of an in-house HR Manager with experience of tribunal defence is the most cost effective solution. However, HR Managers with this kind of experience are very thin on the ground. Many companies immediately hand the case over to an employment lawyer who may then instruct a barrister to take the case into court. This can be a hugely expensive option as there are often many hidden “run away” costs leading to an astronomical final bill which can run into thousands. This can be compounded by the increasing amounts of compensation as tribunal panels take into account the anticipation of lengthy periods of unemployment. The Ministry of Justice has plans to examine and regulate the offering by lawyers many of whom offer a lack of clarity and clear explanation of fee arrangements to their clients. The provision of clear and transparent information on total costs will be the aim.

The use of an experienced HR consultant with a track record of successful tribunal defence with transparent costings can be another more cost-effective option.

For more information, please contact Sandra directly:

SJ Beale HR Consult Ltd

Keep your customers happy

2009-07-31T10:44:00.006+01:00

“Companies that are struggling to survive the credit crunch should embrace the service culture to ensure their customers stay loyal,” says Stephanie Edwards, author of “The Best Practice Guides for Customer Service Professionals & Customer Service Managers” and Director of Customer 1st International UK

Customer service is hot news. In addition to well-established consumer organisations such as Which?, there are now a myriad of online opportunities and offline mediums which allow consumers to give their opinions on good and poor customer service. These range from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, to direct communication with national newspapers and TV stations and even websites set up specifically to allow customers to tell of their good and bad customer service experiences.
Customer satisfaction in the UK is at 74% UK Customer Satisfaction Index 2009(published by the Institute of Customer Service) shows that many customers' needs are still not being met. We may mull over customer satisfaction indices, listen to tales of horrendous service, or just rely on our own experiences of the wide-ranging levels of service that exist. But things just don’t seem to get significantly better for customers. And that is in spite of the rising mountain of evidence showing that the customer experience is the prime determinant of business success, and that customers’ expectations are not only increasing, but that those expectations are actually turning into demands.

In the current economic climate customer service is a key differentiator between those companies gaining and retaining customers and those who don’t and become unprofitable or even go out of business. Both poor and outstanding service have a strong emotional impact upon us, creating intense feelings about organisations. Many businesses find service excellence elusive, hard to grasp and difficult to deliver. But companies must face up to how service - good or bad - impacts dramatically on their reputation and business success. Everyone in business has a customer, and it is time to look after them!

Create a Customer Service Culture
The challenge for many businesses is inconsistent customer service delivery which can create real challenges in maintaining a reputation for service excellence. Customer expectations are rising daily and complainants can do irretrievable damage to organisations. Organisations must not be complacent, but instead develop a customer-focused culture and can-do attitude, keeping the customer at the heart of their business, offering a seamless but effective service. Feedback is essential from both your teams and your customers before implementing any major changes in the way you deliver service to your customers.

Typical causes of customer defection:

Lack of personal contact – commitment, trust, confidentiality
Broken promises, always letting customers down
Corporate arrogance, a failure to listen to internal/external customers – a failure to listen to their own staff who recognise where things are going wrong but senior managers do not listen to them
Failure to handle complaints successfully

Develop Customer Service Standards
World class leaders develop customer service standards for both internal and external customers, promoting the “Promises to Customers”. These standards inform customers what to expect from your organisation and it is vital that you identify what is important to customers. The Institute of Customer Service (UK) commissioned a research project led by Professor Robert Johnston of Warwick Business School, and he discovered the gold nuggets that can keep customers happy:

Deliver the promise.. Do what you say you will do.
Keep transactions personal.. People are individuals, so treat them how you would like to be treated.
Go the extra mile.. Give your customers something extra to keep them loyal.
Handle complaints professionally.. This is paramount, because research tells us that 91% of complainants will stay loyal to an organisation if their complaint is handled professionally. They will also become your most loyal ambassadors and tell others about your brilliant service recovery.

Increased levels of service effectiveness results in staff and customer retention; loyal customers spend more and become ambassadors for the organisation, enabling a company to devote fewer resources to the search for new customers. Organisations that embrace service excellence will weather the storm, there IS no other way to survive.

Companies must remember that their customers decide whether they survive or die.

Customer 1st International’s Best Practice Guide for Customer Service Managers is available in hard copy, as an e-book, e-workbook and accredited tutor-led online award.

Telling Stories

2009-07-29T13:25:00.004+01:00

I am a story teller! You may notice from my blog posts, articles or – if you know me personally – most certainly from my songs and my creative writing. I write about events and people (you can hear a snippet of my song about the infamous witch finder Matthew Hopkins on theMP3 page of www.shavethemonkey.co.uk/) , many of my articles feature on this blog and my story telling style comes through very strongly on my personal blog.

So why am I telling stories on The Complete Trainer? Because there is not a single training experience I have yet been on that does not, to some extent, rely on storytelling. No matter what slides or materials are presented, the trainer or facilitator can usually bring an example to life by adding a story of their own. Sometimes it’s a ‘stock’ tale, sometimes personal experience. But story telling in training, and in business, is important, for a very simple reason – it builds credibility.

In these days of information overload, with millions of messages hitting us every week from every direction, the brain does it’s favourite ‘delete, distort and generalise’. This applies not only to the many indirect messages we receive but also to the key messages we want to receive. So in order for us to really listen, we need to have belief in the information giver. Story telling is a great way of doing this.

Storytelling has been with us since humans could first speak – it is as natural to us as breathing. We are raised with the story, and stories are used to influence, inspire and persuade us. Advertisements for products don’t just extol their virtues any more (Irish Stout is Good for You, Mr ‘Shine’ Makes Umpteen Things Clean), they create stories around characters and we are involved in the mini tableaux we are presented with:

• Anthony Head visits his neighbour to borrow coffee, is there the prospect of romance?
• we know the whole gravy family
• we want to know what the ‘good news’ is that the man in the phone ad is telling his friends.

People LIKE stories.

Stories for business development are not just anecdotal – though the retelling of an incident that serves as an example is one great way. You can also use storytelling to teach lessons that only the listener can learn. By presenting a situation as a story, you can create discussion, evolve solutions and raise issues that engage us through the use of our own imaginations.

I’ve seen storytelling done by forum theatre actors (they leave the ‘action’ mid performance and ask for response from the audience), I’ve watched corporate videos that the group must then discuss and, of course, even the good old slide show can tell a story. But the use of audio – whether spoken by an individual or through recordings – allows even more freedom for the imagination because it presents no pre-set visual context.

I’ve been listening to the Telling Tales series and the pictures they create in my head are, undoubtedly, going to be different to the pictures they would create in your head. My interpretations of an accent or simply the sound of voice will have different associations for me than for others. This is amazing – it means that every single person can interpret and create their own meaning and learning from the sound of a voice as well as the content of the tale.

I also pick up ideas from the radio– from the BBC programme ‘Word of Mouth’ (on the power of language) to The Archers (wonderful examples of how not to communicate between family members), I learn from these ‘stories’. Something goes in that I will access and retain for future reference, even if it means using the ‘listen again’ function.

We may well admire the raconteur at the network meeting (as long as they are not too pushy) and we are entertained, engaged and entranced by stories. The same goes for the gregarious friend who delights us with their tales at the dinner table. We will talk about their story, what we would have done in that situation or marvel in horror or delight at what happened. We are fully engaged – our brains are keen to receive this information. This, surely, is an amazing tool to use when developing yourself, your people and your organisation.

Sound More Natural On the Phone

2009-07-23T11:41:00.002+01:00

5 Ways to Sound More Natural On the Phone By Mike Brooks, www.MrInsideSales.com

I don’t know about you but I can always tell when a telemarketer is cold calling me. From the moment they begin speaking, “Hi is that Mr. Brooks?” to the way they fumble through their scripts, I have them pegged before they get past their first sentence. And like I’m sure it is with you, too, I am immediately not interested.

If what you sell for a living means you have to pick up the phone – either to set appointments, call prospects back, return calls to clients, etc., then you have to learn how to sound natural and how to avoid putting your prospects, gatekeepers, assistants, etc., on notice that you’re trying to sell something.

And the way you do that is by learning how to sound like you’re not selling anything, and you do that by learning how to disarm prospects, sound natural yet professional, and how to be friendly without being phony. Use these 5 techniques to not only sound natural on the phone, but to also close more business:

#1 – Always use the prospect’s first name. I know that there are two schools of thought on this, one being that you should show respect for someone you don’t know and so use either Mr. or Mrs., but I don’t agree.

I think you can show respect for someone by being courteous and professional, and I think you’re going to make a lot more progress if you use a person’s first name. Here are the two reasons to do so:

a. First, by using a person’s first name you aren’t immediately signaling that you’re a sales person! I mean how do you feel when someone you don’t know calls you and addresses you by “Mr.” or “Mrs.”? Also, when you use a person’s first name, you are starting the call equal, without giving them all the power.

b. Second, everyone likes the sound of their own name. In fact, psychologists have found that everyone’s favorite word is their first name! By starting with that you are immediately making a connection, and a personal one at that.

#2 – Be polite. You’d be surprised by how many sales reps still try to trick or get around gatekeepers and assistants, and how many are even rude in doing so. Always, always use please and thank you when speaking with anyone over the phone (or in person for that matter).

Words like “please” and “thank you” go a long way when trying to make a connection with a prospect, and they work especially well when you’re
trying to get through to a prospect as well. Examine your current
scripts now and do all you can to insert the proper courtesies wherever you can.

#3 – Be brief. Most reps go into pitch mode the moment they reach their prospect that it’s no surprise they can’t wait to get them off the phone.
I review scripts all the time that essentially read the company’s brochure to the prospect the moment they reach them.

You can turn that around and sound so much better by briefly delivering your presentation and checking in with your prospect. Try things like:

a. Briefly, (prospect) the reason I’m calling is that we’ve been working with many companies like yours, and I just wanted to see if we can help you as well. Can I ask you just a couple of questions to see if we’d be a fit for you as well?

b. (Prospect), you probably get a lot of calls like these, so I’ll be brief. I’ll just ask you a couple of quick questions and if I think we can save you between 15 to 20% I’ll let you know and, if not, we’ll part friends, is that OK?

Get the idea?

#4 – Make a connection. This is one of the easiest of all and it’s a great way to get your prospect talking. All you do is find something that you know is affecting your other clients (like new laws in their industry), and ask how it’s affecting them as well. Try:

a. “You know (prospect) a lot of my clients have told me of the changes they’re having to make because of (the new law), how is that affecting you?”

b. “(Prospect) what are you planning to feature at the September trade show?”

By addressing something that they are dealing with now, you can instantly make a connection and get valuable information. Warning: you have to fit this in after you’ve established rapport, and you have to address something that is relevant to them.

#5 – Listen more. This may not sound like a way to sound natural on the phone, but believe me, it’s probably the most important of all. First of all, most sales reps are so busy talking that their prospect has turned off long ago. They are just waiting for an appropriate pause to get rid of them.

By listening you actually create space for your prospect to speak (and to think), and because of that you are allowing the conversation to flow.

When the prospect has a chance to get their thoughts and feedback out, they feel comfortable with you. And that is the best way for the conversation to unfold naturally. Hit your mute button after you ask a question and count three 1000’s to see how well it works.

There you have it - five easy ways to sound more natural on the phone.
The good news is that they are easy to implement, and, once you do, you’ll make more connections and you’ll close more business. Try them today!

Mike is author of the Complete Book of Phone Scripts and works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout 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

Profile of the Month - July

2009-07-16T14:25:00.004+01:00

Heather Butler – passionate about developing people

This month Carolyn talks to Heather Butler, MD of The People Development Team Ltd.

Established in 1998, The People Development Team Ltd (PDT) has grown from a partnership to a thriving consultancy delivering a range of highly interactive Leadership Programmes, bespoke and accredited management programmes, personal skills and career support.

About The People Development Team

Carolyn (The Complete Trainer Ltd): How did PDT start and what motivated you to get into training?

Heather Butler (PDT Ltd): The Company originally formed as a partnership by me and Angie Peacock. My previous roles were all involved in Leadership Training and Consultancy and it became obvious when we met that our high impact form of training that gave companies the sustainable results they needed was what companies were looking for. As many companies do, we have grown organically starting with an extra consultant and an administrator then as we gained more contracts including some really terrific leading edge consultancy so our team grew and we knew early on that we must have been doing something right if our clients kept coming back. We soon added career development onto our product range when we realised that clients wanted an end to end service which included the consultancy piece, the change piece which included the training and then assistance for individuals on their new career paths whether internally or externally of the company.

Carolyn: There are many training companies out there, what do you think makes you stand out?

Heather: That’s the question that any potential client always asks and throughout our journey it has changed and will carry on changing but the one thing that has been maintained throughout is that we design and create events which are exciting, sustainable and meet the objectives set and more importantly move people forward so the company can see a real ROI. We also have a number of superb courses which are accredited (ILM, C&G, CMI) and for many companies that gives them the quality framework they need. Delegates come away with real skills, real learning and a qualification that is theirs, for life. More importantly employer benefits from any great training include: increased retention, motivation – and a workforce who can demonstrate the effectiveness of their training.

Our unique selling point is not just one thing – it’s not just the accreditation or our programmes, it’s the way the whole structure works together with us as a partner to our clients: administration, programme content, marketing, client management, flexibility, quality control and our great trainers; it’s the whole package. We often say to our clients that the only way to see all of this in action is to try us out and we are happy to come along and do a session for their senior decision makers – at no cost – so they see real training.

Carolyn: You are obviously passionate about training and development and believe firmly in the value of that training. What is your business vision?

Heather: PDT has a very simple vision – to help individuals, teams and organisations to be the best they can. Training, really effective training, has the potential to change organisations completely, not just give individuals an extra skill or qualification. Bespoke and accredited management training is one aspect of our work, but we also continue to support organisations through Outplacement, helping transition people both as they leave and those who remain. The important thing is to meet the needs of the client.

Carolyn: What is the single most important aspect of the training you deliver as a company?

Heather: That’s hard to answer. I can’t say there is a single thing – but top of the list is quality. We assess our trainers regularly; we are assessed as an organisation regularly by the various bodies which we align ourselves to and we ensure our trainers have their own CPD programme too. But then making sure our programmes meet a client’s needs is also paramount – you can deliver the best programme in the world but if it isn’t what the client actually needs, then you are wasting effort. As I said, with PDT it’s the whole package – everyone in the organisation strives to deliver great service and brilliant results for our clients.

Carolyn: Where are you based and where do you tend to work mostly?

Heather: Our Head Office is in Hertfordshire but we work all over the country. Many of our clients are national and international, so we also work overseas in Europe, the USA and the UAE, however the vast proportion of our work is in the UK.

Carolyn: What are you most proud of about your company?

Heather: Simple! Our people and our clients. We have won a National Training Award and been a finalist for many more awards with our clients, we are Matrix accredited, we have our Investors in People as well – all of this is because of the people in our organisation and the relationships they have with our clients.

Carolyn: I’ve heard quite a lot about training suffering in the current economy. Has this been your experience?

Heather: Business is still good, and fortunately still growing, but I would say that organisations are sometimes taking slightly longer to commit to some of the largest projects. Conversely we have found that the Government Funding opportunities have encouraged more clients to continue with their training and development programmes using the opportunities presented to enhance their training projects rather than cut back. Reducing training is a false economy – increased competitiveness means that you have to invest more in people, improve performance and do the best you possibly can in these difficult times.

Carolyn: Have you any closing comments to add before I send this ‘to press’, as it were?

Heather: Yes, I’d like to make a special offer to your people, if I can. We have open programmes running in London and Stansted shortly – if any of your clients want to book, we are more than happy to give them a second place free if they book using this link: http://www.people-development-team.com/tct-promotion.htm and discount code TCT0709

Carolyn: Thank you Heather. All the details are listed below:

- Open Programmes Impact and Influence – 3 August London and 8 September Stansted
- Introduction to Coaching – 12 August London and 23 September Stansted
- Presentation Skills – 14 August London and 10 September Stansted

To get your ‘buy one get one free’ on any of these programmes please book via this link http://www.people-development-team.com/tct-promotion.htm and enter the promotional code TCT0709.

PDT offers a wide range of training options and delivers bespoke and accredited programmes for both the private and public sector. For more information visit their website at: http://www.people-development-team.com/

Testimonial

Learning and Development is a crucial part of our business. We believe that if our Team Members are happy, well-trained and committed to the job that they will deliver a better guest experience. And if our guests have an enjoyable experience they are more likely to want to repeat it ….which is good for everyone. We want people to recognise that we are giving something back in terms of investment in their personal development.

In return we find that people are more loyal to the company and the brand and more productive in their jobs. We encourage Managers in all areas of the business to continue their development with the externally recognised Institute of Leadership and Management scheme that includes written assignments, formal presentations and tests their leadership and team building skills in an environment well beyond their normal comfort zones. To deliver this extremely vital development to our Management population we have partnered with the People Development Team on several development programmes and the feedback from delegates has been extremely positive.

HR Manager, Bourne Leisure

Behavioural Analysis

2009-07-08T15:10:00.003+01:00

Trainingzone have published Carolyn's article on Behavioural profiling. Visit or you can read more here:

For the last four years I have regularly used DISC profiles which give you a snapshot of your ‘behaviours’ in a work environment. DISC is an acronym:

D = Dominance-Challenge: How you respond to problems or challenges.
I = Influence-Contacts – How you influence others to your point of view.
S = Steadiness-Consistency – How you respond to the pace of the environment.
C = Compliance-Constraints – How you respond to rules and procedures set by others.

The concept of DISC profiling is based on the work of Dr. William Moulton Marston who, in 1928, published ‘The Emotions of Normal People’. This book described the theory which is applied to nearly all the versions of DISC profiling available today. The profile is a behavioral assessment designed to accurately measure the four dimensions of normal behavior.

A few years back I completed a Level 3 ILM management qualification and I chose Communications as my main project. For this I mapped all the preferences for the office staff using their DISC profiles and created a ‘how best to communicate with xx’ chart. It was used for many years, indicating communication preferences and styles. It was a very simple and effective way to implement the results of our profiles and use them practically. Nothing more personal than communication preference was shared.

DISC profiles were used for recruitment and appraisal and with clients. The reports, which are created by answering very simple ‘most like’ and ‘least like’ questions, give a comprehensive summary of behavioural preferences. They are used by line managers, trainers, HR, recruitment and outplacement consultants.

The value of using these profiling tools is not just in ‘input and output’ – you put in your answers and get your report – but what happens next. Many people will be open minded enough to accept the validity of the report, feel happy to internally challenge areas which they do not feel accurately match their perceptions, and even perhaps accept the areas which may indicate a need for self-improvement.

I recently took a different profile from the one I’d done for the last four years – this one was from The Trusted Adviser and followed a similar DISC format so it was not unfamiliar. The resulting report, however, was superior to those I’d taken before. The depth of information was far greater – the profile included more aspects and gave a greater analysis of my behaviours and preferences. Though every assessment is affected by variables (hence taking them annually), this one was definitely the most accurate I had ever taken.

Most importantly the language it used was more accessible – though probably still generated by an American English language programme, the terms and language used were easier to understand and I found much less to challenge than in previous reports. My next stage, importantly, is to go through the report with my coach.

The real power and value of behavioural assessments is how they are used to develop individual performance. The ideal scenario is that the report is not just given directly to the respondent but is reviewed by an appropriately qualified coach or manager who can then spend time going through the report with the individual and build a positive action plan.

There are many ways in which assessments can be applied:

Recruitment: does the report reflect the right personality for the role they are being considered for?

Job hunting: the report may produce some excellent wording and highlight skills and strengths that the respondent can use in their CV or job applications

Appraisal: the line manager and respondent can work together (both may have their profiles completed) and improve working process and performance

Team building: pick members of a team who have the right mix of skills or who you know will work best together

In fact behaviour assessments can be used in many ways, for leadership development, trouble shooting, team development, sales skills, benchmarking; with the right training and understanding of the psychology behind how these reports are generated, they can become an extremely powerful tool for trainers, managers and the individual respondents.

Finally, the most important question - do they work? From personal experience, yes; impartially, one assessor I know performs over one million assessments per year – that’s just one provider! I think the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Carolyn Sheppard is director of The Complete Trainer, a training resources ecommerce company. She has been in marketing for over 30 years and directly in learning and development for over five years.

On line learning

2009-07-06T12:33:00.003+01:00

One of my favourite quotes is from Winston Churchill:

“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”

We learn best by doing, and Churchill certainly ‘did’ a lot – from his career as an officer in the British Army, through his exploits as a historian, writer, and artist to being the only British Prime Minister ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

There was no on line learning in Churchill’s day, but I am sure he would have embraced it. You may think on line learning was not available during Churchill’s life time, but in fact on line learning pre-dates the internet. The first recorded system was the Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, developed at the University of Illinois in 1960* (and remained in operation until the 1990’s). In 1994 the Open University in the UK developed a Virtual Summer School. Those are just some examples of how long on line learning has actually been around.

As computers became an everyday item in households throughout the Western World, so on line learning also grew. During the early 1980s (in the days of 8” floppy disks) I worked for a large international computer company. There was excitement as the concept of desk-top computers equally as powerful as machines which, at the time, occupied whole rooms, were a reality that we saw grow nearer every day.

On line learning is now part of everyday life. Children today are given homework assignments and assistance via the internet, you can gain business qualifications and learn new skills without leaving the comfort of you own home. You can study with fellow students at a University half way round the world, if you so choose.

However, if you want to train to be a chef, you can complete a training programme, check recipes, find out about new foods, techniques, purchase the best tools – all on line. On line learning is an excellent enhancement to classroom and practical learning, in this example. The practical side can be done without external tuition, but the results and the credibility of the training may be perceived as inferior.

There are tremendous advantages to on line learning – but what are the barriers to learning? Access is important: you need a computer, probably internet access, and appropriate programmes for audio and video content. Learning styles are also highly individual and many people don’t like ‘reading’ what to do. There are also issues for those with reading disabilities (though audio and visual options are available for many systems). Some people just don’t like learning with a computer instead of a person. For example, I may find using the internet an excellent way to research a subject, but if I want to learn to identify birds, no matter how great the video, audio and catalogue resources on the internet – I actually want to be outside, listening, watching, and learning with a book or (even better), with an expert.

With management development, in a corporate environment, access is usually facilitated through the workplace. Individuals can work not only in the place of their choosing, but also at a time that is convenient for themselves and the business. Teams can work together in remote locations, company competency frameworks can be implemented globally and individuals can be given access to the tools they need to develop their skills.

Much has been, and continues to be, written about on line learning. What advantages does it hold over face to face, how flexible is it, do people really learn from electronic resources or is it just a cheap alternative to ‘proper’ training? I don’t need to go into a detailed breakdown of the pros and cons, because they are highly individual – the important thing is that this resource exists, in many forms from simple on line documents through interactive e-learning to simulations and live web and pod-casts.

On line learning is, above all else, a wonderful opportunity. For self development, business development, individual skill building or implementation of organisation wide knowledge sharing – on line learning is an extraordinary resource that, had he been alive today, Churchill would no doubt have welcomed with open arms and mind.

Stop press: The Complete Trainer launch their own on line academy - find out more on their main website: The Complete Trainer Academy

* Sir Winston Churchill died in 1965

The 4 Secrets of Leadership

2009-07-03T10:39:00.006+01:00

by Mike Brooks, "Mr. Inside Sales"

Can you name the one or two best sales managers, or business owners you ever worked for? If so, how did they make you feel? What qualities or traits did they have in common, or which ones do you most try to emulate in your own company?

I work with a lot of business owners and managers, and I can tell you that the most successful ones all have at least four core characters in common.

Many of them possess other qualities as well, but these four "Secrets" as I call them are always at the center of their power and charisma.

As you read through them, ask yourself which ones you currently have, which ones you’d like to strengthen, or which ones you can develop. Once you master them all, you will be able to lead any team and any company to greatness.

Here they are:

#1: Unbounded Optimism. Ask any great leader to describe the future, and they will always tell you it’s a wonderful place. Leaders are extremely goal oriented, have clearly identified what it is they want and what they are willing to sacrifice to get there, and they radiate an optimistic glow because they already live there in their mind’s eye.

Because people want to feel good about themselves and their futures, they naturally gravitate to winners. People want to work for and, in fact, work harder for people who are optimistic. Plus, optimism is contagious.

A great leader can often turn an organization full of negativity around, and the excitement they inspire can result in greater morale and greater results.

If you’re in a position of authority, ask yourself if you’d want others to catch your attitude. If not, then focus on ways to become optimistic – you’ll be a much more effective leader when you are.

#2: Rock Solid Confidence. Great leaders are convinced they can do anything they set their minds to. I love a saying of Napoleon’s: “The improbable we’ll do at once. The impossible will take a little longer.”

A leader’s attitude is: Whatever the challenge, we’ll find a way to overcome it.

Confident leaders create confident followers, and a company, family, or team with an “I Can” attitude is unstoppable. The confidence of a great leader always inspires the best performance of his/her employees, and their team’s success just adds to and confirms the leader’s confidence.

#3: Integrity. In a recent survey about what qualities employees wanted from the managers and business owners they worked for, integrity was the most desired trait people picked. Integrity, including honesty, fairness and consistency of attitude and action, are traits that build confidence in a leader and that build loyalty in the people who report to them.

Leaders with integrity genuinely care about the company they are building or the job they are doing, and this helps everybody feel as if their work has meaning and makes a difference in people’s lives. Most people spend a third of their lives at their jobs, and while we go to work for a pay check it’s the intrinsic satisfaction someone gets from their work that helps them feel fulfilled. Leaders with a high degree of integrity help foster this feeling by setting the example.

#4: Decisiveness: All great leaders are decisive and committed to the actions they take. This doesn’t mean they act capriciously, on the contrary, they fully weigh out and think through their options, but the key characteristic is that they aren’t afraid to make a decision and implement a plan of action.

Most employees tell many tales of bosses who are afraid of making a decision, or who frequently go back on them, and this habit of hesitation undermines their authority and the confidence of everyone in the organization. Leaders, on the other hand, may not always make the right decision, but they can be counted on to make a well thought out one, and then to take action on it. If facts change or results warrant it,they are flexible enough to reevaluate and make another decision.

If you’re in a leadership role, don’t shy away from decisions. Evaluate the data at the time and the relative need of making a decision and then choose the best course of action and commit. Making a decision – even if it’s the wrong decision – is better than making no decision at all.

If you are in a position of authority and wish to become an effective leader, then find ways of developing or strengthening these four characteristics in yourself. Remember, everyone is counting on you for guidance, and it is your ability to lead that will determine the ultimate result in your team or company.

Mike Brooks, author of "Complete Book of Phone Scripts" and "Inside Sales".

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. He offers a FREE audio program designed to help you double your income selling over the phone, as well as an internationally acclaimed FREE ezine. 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

Delivering Bad News

2009-07-02T16:17:00.001+01:00

by Susan Heaton Wright

Last week I received some bad news about a future speaking opportunity. The lady that called me was fantastic in ‘softening the blow’ so that my expertise and time was still valued. In fact she immediately booked me for future engagements that were very exciting.

Delivering bad news can be a real challenge. We will all be faced with the unpleasant role of delivering bad news at some point in our lives. Here are the top 5 communication strategies that compassionate leaders have used:

Tell the truth. Give as much information as you can to put the situation into perspective. We tend to fear what we don’t understand. Don’t speculate and try to squash rumours by addressing the best and worst possible scenarios.

Put yourself in their shoes. Empathise with their situation. Give them all the facts. They will be worried about how the situation will affect them, and it is unfair to leave them guessing. It is unfair and useless to tell the other person not to worry.

Acknowledge their feelings. Don’t devalue their feelings by telling them to ‘Cheer up’. Let them vent and express their emotions. Negative emotions must be expressed and dealt with before they can be replaced with a positive plan of action.

Take charge. Lead a discussion or outline a specific plan of action for the future. Do not express your own specific fears to others. You need to assume the role of leader.
Keep the group unified. Facing a crisis alone can be terrifying. Encourage the group to pull together, support each other and share ideas about how to find a solution. Conclude the meeting on a positive, optimistic note by reemphasising the commitment to overcome the present challenge.

And just a couple of notes on the delivery; if you are delivering bad news over the telephone, check that the listener has the time for the call, and suggest they go into a quiet room.

If you are meeting someone face to face, consider the environment of the meeting. Try to be on a level with the other person – both sitting down, and a private room rather than an open plan office, so that the other person has an opportunity to let off steam.

Copyright 2009 Susan Heaton Wright of Executive Voice

Complete Trainer Academy is Launched

2009-06-30T10:21:00.005+01:00

The Complete Trainer Academy is a brand new offering which features an incredible on-line resource. We first saw this product a while ago and knew we wanted it for the Complete Trainer portfolio. You have access to thousands of in depth articles, assessments, book reviews, a management newsletter and an on line coach.

The site is easy to use, the material well written and you can navigate the site quickly and easily. The Academy provides learning pathways which is a guided route through the site. It takes you through a selection of articles and learning exercises that are relevant to the topic you want to study and gives you a commentary and explanation. Pathways are a bit like programmes or courses and cover a wide range of subjects.

In the current economic climate, the pressure is on training budgets. This system is affordable, flexible and accessible. With an increasing number of employees in disparate locations and improved internet access, the ability to collaborate over the web is rapidly becoming a learning imperative. As well as being web-based, we believe that the engine that drives the Complete Trainer Academy is unique:

Easily integrated into a blended learning solution
You can create your own customised learning paths
It is quick and easy to implement – all you need is a log in to the Academy
The Academy tracks and measures activity, performance and even changes in behaviour
It provides a flexible way to increase the learning of your people without the impact of taking them away from the workplace
Very cost effective – at just £200 per year per log in, you could train as many as ten managers for less than £6 a day!

The Complete Trainer Academy launches on 1st July 2009 and we are delighted to give our site members a unique opportunity to ‘try before you buy’. Please contact us for a trial log in and we will give you full, unlimited access to the site including:

Access to over 40 different learning topics
More than 100 exercises and assessments
Over 50 different ‘top ten tips’
Articles from luminaries such as Edward de Bono
Book reviews, case studies and much more

We are really excited about the Academy here at The Complete Trainer. Contact u s now for your free trial log in*.

* Your log in will expire after two working days. Please bear this in mind when you ask for your log in so that you can make the most of this opportunity to explore our on line Academy.

Speed Reading

2009-06-25T15:57:00.003+01:00

Learn how to speed read
… and read faster, understand and remember more of what you read

The aim of speed reading is to help you read faster with good comprehension. By practising these skills you will be able to deal with the deluge of journals, books, research papers and reports which have been pouring onto your desk in recent years. And with emails and other material flowing out of the internet, the flood has reached almost unmanageable proportions.

These days, we can’t succeed without knowledge, not only of our special field of interest, but also of a broad range of other subjects. The problem is that, while technological progress has made the production and distribution of information an effortless and instant process, our strategies for coping with this flood have hardly changed since the early 20th century. Some of us are experiencing stress because, although we’re doing our best to deal with the torrent of information, it’s hard to keep our heads above water.

So how does it work?
It’s simple mathematics really. If you can read two or three times faster, you can get through more material in the time available. The end result is that you’ll become better-informed than ever. But it’s not just about knowing a great deal about a large number of subjects: reading faster will also help to harness the huge reserve capacity of your mind. Your memory will improve, you’ll be able to communicate better and you’ll feel much more confident.

The way you read at the moment is just a habit acquired over several years. Some of your approaches may be useful, but many more will be counter-productive. Developing and embedding new, more useful reading habits will take a bit of time. But it will be well worth the small amount of effort involved.

How can speed reading make a difference?
The average person reads at between 200 and 240 words per minute. So a typical 250 page book, with about 500 words per page, might take you nearly ten and a half hours to complete. You can expect to double your reading speed while you are learning how to speed read. And if you practice regularly, you may eventually attain 1,000 or more words per minute with good comprehension. This would mean that you could read your 250 page book in two hours.

Most people enjoy learning how to increase their reading speed and they gain a lot of long-term benefits as well. In fact, a wealth of new possibilities opens up. It is possible to conquer those stacks of unread books, reports, manuals, papers and journals. You rapidly have all kinds of information at your fingertips, instead of having to search for it. The idea of further professional training or education suddenly seems to make sense. And there is finally time to read the newspapers or relax with a novel.

How can you learn how to speed read?
You can learn how to speed read quickly and effectively with Jane Smith’s popular audio book ‘Speed Reading for Success’.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to improve your memory, choose Jane’s highly praised audio book Memory and Learning for Success.

Together, these self development packages offer some steps you can take to increase your reading efficiency and improve your memory of what you read. Most people are surprised at what they achieve – I’m sure you will be too.

Jane Smith, Word Smiths
http://www.word-smiths.co.uk/

Profile of the Month: June 2009

2009-06-22T09:50:00.007+01:00

An interview with Sharon Gaskin

Sharon Gaskin is the Founder of The Trainers Training Company. She works with freelance trainers to help them create successful training businesses. I first met Sharon last year via Ecademy and since then we have stayed in touch and shared ideas and information in our shared passion – learning and development.

About The Trainers Training Company

Carolyn (The Complete Trainer Ltd): Tell me about your company and why you started this venture.

Sharon Gaskin (The Trainers Training Company Ltd): I started the Trainers Training Company in 2008. It was an idea that I had had for a while, but had never done anything about. It was only when I had a spate of questions from different people – all wanting to be freelance trainers – and all within the space of a week – that I realised there were people out there who really needed my help.

We help trainers develop their businesses. Our clients include trainers who have been made redundant and decide to go freelance. It can be a bit overwhelming coming from the secure environment of being employed to going freelance. We help them get started and approach their future in a positive and purposeful way.

Sometimes trainers make the decision to break out of corporate life voluntarily – they have tremendous experience but may find taking that first independent step daunting. Our company offers support and guidance – helping people turn what was just the dream of being self-employed into a reality.

Not all our clients are brand new start ups. Many people we are working with start out with lots of ideas and enthusiasm but are now becoming disillusioned because the market is challenging and they haven’t got enough work. We help them with practical strategies that they can start applying to the business to bring in more clients fast.

Carolyn: What about trainers who have been in the business a long time? Do they come to you for help too?

Sharon: As, they say, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” In these times, even the most established of trainers and training providers need to look at their practices and re-energise their business methods to really get their business moving forward.

Carolyn: What is your business vision?

Sharon: We aim to be a 1 Stop Shop for freelance trainers providing a range of services to suit all needs and budgets including Workshops, Teleseminars and 1 to 1 Business Coaching.

I am passionate about helping freelance trainers to develop and grow profitable businesses. I know what it feels like – I am a freelance trainer myself. I have been there and done it and know how hard it can be, particularly when you first start out. The reason I can offer such good advice is that I am not shy to admit my mistakes and to share them. In the first year as a freelance trainer I learned a lot – not about training but about how to operate as a successful business.

Carolyn: Where are you based and where do you tend to work mostly?

Sharon: I live in the West Midlands, about half an hour from Birmingham. The beauty of my job is that most of it is done from home, I give people coaching sessions and run Teleseminars over the phone.My workshops are run in Birmingham but I have plans to widen the net next year.

Carolyn: What is the weirdest experience you have had as a trainer?
In the course of 20 years as a trainer I’ve seen a lot of things and dealt with all types of people and situations. But I have to admit that the weirdest thing I have ever experienced is having my husband as a delegate on a management training course - and having to put up with everyone else's jokes!

Carolyn: Sharon, any last words to say about training in today’s economic climate?

Sharon: I’m seeing a mixture of people who are undoubtedly finding it more challenging than usual but there are also others who have never been busier. In my experience the most successful freelance trainers are the ones who continuously market themselves regardless of whether they have plenty of work or not and who make it a priority to work ON as well as IN their businesses. And I think in the majority of cases these are the trainers who are reaping the benefits at the moment.

Products/Links:

Downloadable E Book: How To Launch A Training Business in 30 Days
Teleseminars: Live Teleseminars and Downloadable Recordings on topics such as How To Build Relationships That Win Corporate Business and How To Overcome Your Fear of Selling Yourself
1 to 1 Business Coaching
1 Day Workshop: September 29 in Birmingham - Workshop: How To Create A Successful and Profitable Training Business - The Easy Way
Get your FREE Enterprising Trainer Pack at http://www.thetrainerstrainingcompany.co.uk/

Testimonial
“Having recently taken redundancy after 31 years of working for a major retailer, I’d decided to start up my own freelance training business. I’d attended several workshops on self-employment, networking etc, and my brain was buzzing! I was unfocussed and beginning to worry about where to start, and then!I discovered How to launch a training business in 30 days!

This book is fantastic! It helped me order my thoughts, gave me focus, and produce a clear plan of action. The language is easy to understand, the exercises are practical, and the overall product gave me the motivation to continue – and I’m now feeling much more confident. One of the major plus points for me, was that it is specifically about a training business – everything else I’d read or attended was quite general.

Thank you Sharon – a great tool for brand new freelance trainers!” Sue Parsons

Training games? I’d rather be...

2009-06-15T11:09:00.002+01:00

“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand”

Confucius

Whether it’s soft skills or compliance training, there are very few people in the finance sector who don’t have to attend a training session at some point in their careers. And training games may well be part of the programme. The question of whether training games are effective or not is a challenging one. Every single person has their own preferred learning style and a different motivation for being in a training session. Do training games work for you? That I can’t answer, but I can recount some of my own experiences.

In training and development you reach many different audiences, but the company I used to work for had a huge number of clients in the financial and insurance sector. I attended training (helping facilitate, never actually training) and events (at networking evenings such as Women in Banking and Finance). One of the key tools used by the trainers I worked with was a game called Colourblind®.

The Colourblind game requires your delegates to be blindfolded. They are then presented with a series of unusual shaped pieces of different coloured plastic. With very basic instruction from the facilitator, the group are then left to organise the shapes into sets.

The group has to rely completely on verbal communication and the outcomes are always stimulating and engaging – watching who takes the lead, the different language used and the communication skills of everyone involved. It was sometimes hectic, sometimes quite emotional, but always interesting (for the observer if not always the delegates).

RSVP Design, who developed the game, say it takes about 40 minutes for a group of 8-10. The very first time I saw it was with a group of 12 and, astonishingly, they took just 17 minutes to complete the task. A ‘natural leader’ took charge and, with a clear lead, the patterns were established and the sets made up quickly. It was a mixed group – an open programme with delegates from several different companies and industry sectors. A completely new ‘team’ that had never met, let alone worked together, yet they still hold the record in my experience.

Conversely, the trainer said their worst experience with the game he had ever had was when it had to be abandoned after nearly three hours. The record holders for the longest (and uncompleted) test were, interestingly enough, the senior team of a major financial company.

Some of the feedback from the first team (the speedy mixed team) was ‘fun, exciting, learned a lot’, whilst the senior team reported ‘frustration, pointless, difficult’. The key of course is not in the composition of the teams, but in the communication skills of the members of those teams. Perhaps the motivation was not right? The mixed team were there for a day that they had volunteered to attend, the senior team were being ‘sent’. But both outcomes resulted in serious learning for each group.

By using training games you can stimulate new experiences in a group who may think they already ‘communicate well’. Exercise can comfortably show where communication skills may be lacking and also highlight strengths. The object is often to teach new strategies, in the context of what is learned through the game. By being interactive, cynics and the ‘untouchables’ (who think they are right anyway) can find out exactly how effective their techniques and strategies are in a very simple simulation.

There are more complex games on the market and there are many simple training exercises that require no props whatsoever. The most important element is an effective facilitator or trainer and a clearly set objective. Playing a ‘game’ without having clearly defined learning outcomes would be self-defeating.

People learn in different ways, but by using activities that get delegates ‘doing’ instead of listening (or not), you will be able to develop training programmes that ‘stick’.

(C) Carolyn Sheppard 2008

NB: This article was written in 2008 for a financial website. It has disappeared into their archives now, so I have also put it up here for easy reference.

UK HR Update

2009-06-08T14:58:00.006+01:00

HR Update by Sandra Beale

While the recent media reporting of swine flu has dwelt on the obvious health and safety issues, the threat of a pandemic, whether now or in the next few months, also raises some practical challenges for companies across the country.

Companies should consider taking proactive measures such as:

providing employees with access to the latest government information and advice via emails, posters, etc.
advising unwell employees to seek medical advice and to stay away from work
restating absence reporting procedures to ensure that employees report their illness at the earliest opportunity
postponing face to face meetings and training courses or replacing them with teleconferencing; cancelling unnecessary travel and social events.

There should also be the development of a contingency plan to include:

how the organisation could continue to function with a skeleton staff
whether and how to train more employees in essential business-critical knowledge and skills, to ensure the organisation can continue to operate
how to manage working hours and overtime where employees agree to cover absent employees
how and when employees will be permitted to work from home to avoid workplace infection
whether the employer has the right to require employees to submit to a medical examination
how to deal with employees who are well but who are refusing to attend work to avoid the risk of general infection
whether and how normal absence recording will include quarantine time, working from home to avoid infection and falling ill with swine flu (one risk being that employees are ‘penalised’ for reporting symptoms)

Rise in Alcohol Abuse
Research done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has highlighted five main trends related to the rise in alcohol abuse:

An increase in drinking among women
An increase in drinking among middle age and older groups
A recent decrease in drinking 16-24 year olds
Increase in alcohol consumption among children
An increase in drinking in Northern Ireland compared with rest of UK

According to the government’s Know Your Limits survey, England’s biggest drinkers are media workers, consuming more than 10 units above the NHS recommended weekly average limit. Workers in the media, publishing or entertainment industry drink an average of 44 units a week, with the recommended average limit being 28 units a week for men and 21 units for women. IT workers are the second heaviest drinkers (34 units a week), followed by service-sector workers (33 units) and people in finance, insurance and real estate (29 units). An office drinking culture could be partly responsible, as many workers felt pressured to drink by colleagues. One in 10 drinkers felt their alcohol consumption affected their work.

Teachers were found to consume less overall but the survey found they are among the most prone to rely on booze to unwind after a stressful day, along with journalists, builders, bankers and estate agents.

The main issue for an employer is how can the symptoms of serious alcohol abuse be recognized and how can they be dealt with as there are potentially moral and ethical obligations to fulfil. A starting point would be the implementation of a drugs and alcohol policy which manages alcohol misuse making it clear to employees that drinking to a level negatively affects performance, attendance or behaviour at work and is unacceptable. The policy should spell out the health risks of excessive drinking and make it clear about available support.

Health & Safety Poster Change
All businesses are required by law to display a health and safety poster. From 6 April 2009 following the implementation of the Employment Act 2008 there has been change to the format of these posters. The new poster clarifies your responsibility as an employer and those of the employee. Best practice states you should display this poster at the entrance to your building.

Other health and safety products required in by law in the workplace are an accident book, a first aid kit and no smoking signs at the entrance to your building.

National Minimum Wage Increases
NMW hourly rates that will apply from 1 October 2009:

workers aged 22 and over: £5.80 (up from the current £5.73 per hour)
workers aged 18-21: £4.83 (an increase on the present rate of £4.77 per hour)
workers aged 16 and 17 (provided they are above compulsory school age): £3.57 (up from the current £3.53).

Sandra Beale FCIPD SJ Beale HR Consult Ltd www.sjbealehrconsult.co.uk

Customer Service

2009-05-28T11:39:00.005+01:00

This week I interviewed Stephanie Edwards who wrote our best-selling Best Practice Customer Service books:

Carolyn Sheppard (The Complete Trainer): What do you think are the main issues for staff in delivering a good customer experience?

Stephanie Edwards (Director/Author Customer 1st International Ltd): Ask yourself this question the next time you receive service, did you feel the company really understood what you were trying to achieve or did it feel like ‘I am simply being processed’?

The biggest business challenge facing most large organisations is creating an individual customer conversation that is relational and not transactional, that can only happen if staff work in an environment where they are trained and encouraged to see beyond the immediate request for a product or service. Understanding what the customer is trying to achieve not only creates openings to go further and provide proactive advice, it also reveals opportunities for additional sales while creating a foundation for an ongoing relationship.

Carolyn: What are the hardest issues for companies to crack when asking staff to deliver a good customer experience?

Stephanie: The hardest thing most companies have problems with is trying to reconcile productivity / efficiency targets with allowing time for customer facing staff to deeply sense, understand and then respond to their customer needs. The reality is this; if you have already devolved management targets for efficiency down to your customer facing staff then the efficiency trap has already been set. Because the targets will always win and your customers will always lose and staff are caught in the cross-fire. Efficiency should and must be measured but only mangers need to be targeted as this is a resourcing issue which customer facing staff have little or no influence over. Customer facing staff should be targeted on satisfying customers and optimising processes using the simple and effective methods found in lean service.

Carolyn: How does lean service help improve the customer experience through staff?

Stephanie: Lean Service starts with involving customer facing staff in the discovery of customer value, then understanding how well the organisation responds to their customer needs and set about eliminating non value added activities and creating new value. This completely changes the relationship with the customer and their experience of doing business with you.

For managers running a traditional efficiency driven organisation this will seem like an impossible dream, but what they don’t realise is that service staff are already spending between 40%-90% of their available time performing non value tasks i.e. waste. If it were removed then companies could spend time providing a great customer experience, reducing costs and maximising revenues, to put simply…. sensing and responding to customer needs.

Many Leading brands have woken up to the problem of waste and are using the efforts of all their staff to eliminate it, effectively turning their own staff into small management consultants becoming highly effective and efficient as a result. Most importantly, it creates differentiation. And remember, all businesses have costs but waste is optional.

The training and development of all your staff to become Customer Service Professionals is vital for business success in today`s economic climate. Service is the differentiator and organisations need to upskill their workforce.

Stephanie is author of:

Best Practice for Customer Services Managers

Best Practice for Customer Service

Please contact us if you would like to participate in future interviews.

Leadership in tackling crime

2009-05-18T15:53:00.003+01:00

A leadership case study by Niall Kennedy MMKtng

When I lived in New York, it was a very scary place. 42nd Street was a disaster and crime was everywhere. Within a few years it was one of the safest cities in America. There is no doubt that the transformation was a result of excellent leadership. There is debate about which leader transformed New York City and it was probably a combined result of the Mayor, Police, Transit Authority and Borough Leaders. So no matter what state your environment is in it could not be as bad as New York with rampant murders and other terrible events. So if you want to improve your working environment here is the checklist on how the leaders turned New York around.

Shattering complacency: The leaders reminded people that it was not OK for New York to be as bad as it was.

Fixing broken windows: Broken windows were identified as the first sign a neighbourhood was going to fall to crime. Broken windows were fixed immediately to keep a positive environment.

Charging the community: There was lots of media and communications ensuring everyone knew they were fighting back. It was a reminder that everyone is on the same side.
Identifying struggle points and hot spots and deploying resources: There were heaps of problems with job descriptions and demarcation lines. These had to be straightened out across all departments.

Hitting the King Pins: get these king pins on your side and half the battle is won: If you do not have the support at the top do not bother starting.

Framing the challenge: You have got to correctly label the exact challenge. This is vital and if you get it wrong everyone will be working on different directions.

Walking the talk: Many people slip up here. It is a bit like “we are going to have an open transparent workplace and do not tell the accounts people”. Your people will not get behind you and you are doomed if you do not walk the talk.

Getting beyond “This is the way we always do it”: Really successful leaders anticipate pushback and the saboteurs never get a chance to railroad your plans.

Building an environment of continuous improvement: There is a Chinese saying that states a truly great leader will never be content. Everything can be improved. An Australian organisation recently announced that they had no room to grow as they had expanded every possible area for customers. Their share price is still sliding and thankfully there is a new leader taking the reins.

Niall Kennedy works for http://www.lionglobalhr.co.uk/ who run leadership development programmes . You can find products from Lion HR on our website (bullying), as well as further leadership resources.

For more about the Mayor of NY - the leader who is acknowledged as a major contributor to these amazing changes - you may wish to read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani

A Tale of Two Pots

2009-05-18T11:26:00.004+01:00

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole that she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house." The old woman smiled,
"Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them."

"For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

Story provided by Iain Wilson.

Save money on training

2009-05-15T10:55:00.001+01:00

Use your brains and save money on training - by Stella Collins

Whether there’s a recession or not, companies always need to ensure their training budgets are being used properly and not wasted.

It’s estimated about 80% of what is ‘taught’ can be forgotten 24 hours later – so when you have to continue to invest in training people in the important stuff (health and safety, IT, finance, products etc) then it’s vital they remember what they’ve learnt.

By understanding a little about how brains work and applying a tried and tested process to training, you can challenge this natural tendency to forget. Instead people can consistently remember at least 50% and up to 100% of what they learn – and that means they can apply it back at work, and you can recoup your return on your investment.

This effective process has 6 steps:

Step 1: motivate people to want to learn the information, however technical.

Step 2: present information through different mediums so they absorb it in their preferred way

Step 3: encourage people to use multiple ways of exploring information to search for their own understanding

Step 4: generate strong memory triggers so that, when it matters, they can recall the information again

Step 5: ask people to test and exhibit their new learning

Step 6: create regular opportunities for people to review and reflect on their training to ensure it’s learnt for the long term.

You will find more ideas about how you can use your brain in business and save your training budget by reading more in these great books: Learning - the Creativity Myth and Learning - Begin with the Brain in Mind

Article kindly provided by Stella Collins of Stellar Learning www.stellarlearning.co.uk and author of Learning - the Creativity Myth and Learning - Begin with the Brain in Mind

Disability – Is it a problem for your company?

2009-05-14T14:50:00.004+01:00

By Susan Patrick

For many companies, it is a real problem when they have to deal with disabled people, but it doesn’t have to be.

Knowing how to approach people who are disabled, irrespective of their disability, may be the start of a “beautiful” love affair, because if the service offered is right, disabled people (and those who are non-disabled) will return again and again to buy your products, services, goods, and/or use your facilities.

Service in this day and age is extremely important if you want to increase your bottom line (or even maintain it)! People want to be treated as if they are your one and only customer and that you and your staff are there for them and them alone. Staff training is where it starts. If you don’t spend sufficient time with your staff, either when they are inducted or with continuing or ongoing training, standards slip. Once they slip below an acceptable standard, you will lose customers. Training of staff in how to handle disabled people is extremely important. Get it right for them and you will get it right for others. For instance, if someone were to come into your premises that had a large strawberry birthmark on their face or someone like Simon Weston who was seriously burnt during the Falklands War, the normal reaction by someone when they first see that person is to drop their jaw! What you should try to do is to control your own natural reaction, look them in the eye, and smile a warm welcoming smile. This will immediately help to put the individual at ease and they will be less likely to feel embarrassed at the way they look.

Another example is when you first meet someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, the natural reaction is to shout. How many of you have done that in the past? Be honest. I would think that everyone has done that at one time or another – but these people are not stupid, they haven’t lost their marbles, they just have a disability that may cause communication barriers if not treated in the right way. If you face them so that any light falls on your face (even if you can’t sign – and it may not be their first language) they will have the opportunity to lip read. They may also have a companion with them who does sign, so again don’t block that person however inadvertently, from being seen by the person who is deaf.

I could go on further and in more detail, but I recommend you read my newsletters each month. Go to my website http://www.smpconsultancy.com/ and sign up to the newsletters - whilst you are there have a look round the site. I hope you will find it interesting.

Susan Pattrick
Director SMP Consultancy Ltd

5 Ways To Capitalize On the Economic Recovery

2009-05-14T11:24:00.002+01:00

By Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about how bad the economy is. The truth is, many parts of the economy have stabilized and many sectors are on the rise. In fact, I'm excited about the Economic Recovery that is happening right at this very moment.

Haven't heard about it yet? Perhaps you're listening to the wrong news stations, or hanging around with the nay sayers at your office, or still looking for excuses for your performance. Regardless, the economy IS turning around and the Top 20% are talking it up, driving the enthusiasm and writing more and more business because of it. How about you?

Are you still:

Listening to the negative news in the morning and arriving at work defeated before you even pick up the phone?
Convinced that the economy has to fully recover before you can make your quotas?
Siding with your prospects when they tell you they can't afford it and justifying it when you don't make sales?

Getting on the phone with an already defeated attitude dreaming of Friday or of another job?
If so, then it's no wonder you're not picking up on the signs of the economic recovery that is taking place right now. On the other hand, if you're ready to take advantage of it before your competition does and you're ready to contribute to and so start being part of the recovery, then here are 5 things you can start doing today to capitalize on it:

1) Look for the evidence of Economic Recovery and talk it up. Again, it's there if you look for it. Most news programs (print, radio and the
internet) report bad news because it sells. However, there are plenty of sources that report the good news as well. Find them, read them, and then spread the word.

The economy doesn't have a mind of its own - it has our mind. By concentrating on the recovery already taking place, you'll increase it.
Start today.

2) Ask your prospects and clients for the Good News. It's hard to turn somebody's attitude around, but one way to counter your prospect's negativity is to ask them for the good news. There always is some if you'll just help them find it. Try:

"I totally understand __________. You know I heard some good news about the economic turnaround." (Tell them what you've heard and then say:) "What good news have you heard?"

Then reinforce what they tell you and keep selling!

3) Tell a recovery story: I know you hear about client's successes all the time (if you don't, then you need to begin asking for them!!). Gather two or three successful stories and be quick to share them with your current prospects and clients. Show them how they are in a similar situation and how they can succeed as well.

Remember, that's what your clients want to hear from you (solutions) and if you're ready with other client's success stories, they'll be easier to influence and sell.

4) Practice perfection. Those of you who know me know how big I am on practicing perfection. Remember, if you're using poor sales techniques including weak openings, not qualifying prospects, etc., then you'll have no chance regardless what is happening in the economy.

Your best bet is to go back to basics and begin using your scripts! I'm sure you've got them, why aren't you using them? If you're still winging it, God help you.

Another great option is to invest $17 in my book, "The Real Secrets of the Top 20%" which you can get on Amazon.com right now. If you're not sure you need it, go read the 20, 5-Star reviews and see for yourself. Bottom line - if you're not doing something to get better, then you won't get better.

5) Write up and begin using an affirmation to imprint the performance and results you really want. I'll tell you right now, most sales reps (80%) have horrible, negative self-talk, and this, more than any single thing, affects their results. Ask yourself: what do you say to yourself after you miss a sale or get brushed off on the phone?

Take some time right now, and develop some affirmations and begin using them to replace your negative self-talk. There are many books on the market that will show you how to do this (including the last chapter of my book), but which ever you choose, do it today.

There you have it - five proven ways to contribute to and take advantage of the economic recovery that is happening right now. Don't wait for the negative news stations to finally get on board - all the good sales will be long gone by then...

If you found this article helpful, then you will love Mike’s eBook: “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts,” which is packed with word for word scripts and techniques that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales. http://www.completetrainer.co.uk/Sales_and_Marketing/Complete_Book_of_Phone_Scripts

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps nationwide in 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: http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

Mike regulary provides us with great sales articles - if you have articles you'd like to see here, please get in touch! www.thecompletetrainer.com/contact_us

Coaching and the Learning Process

2009-05-12T08:54:00.003+01:00

by Sean McPheat

John Radshaw offers what I feel is an incredibly apt definition of what it means to be a coach. He says that coaching is:

“Systematically increasing the capability and work performance of someone by exposing him or her to work-based tasks or experiences that will provide the relevant learning opportunities, and giving feedback to help him or her learn from them”

He’s absolutely right.

The role of a coach is to get the coachee from A to B quicker than if they tried on their own. They are there to question, probe, push, align and provide a thought provoking sounding board.

A coach is a catalyst for change but the coachee has to want to change!

The coach does not have to know the answers either and they do not need to be the best in the field.

Don’t believe me? Well, what’s the name of Tiger Wood’s coach or Usain Bolt’s? Did their coach ever win major golf tournaments or win an Olympic gold? The answer is No!

But they know how to get the best out of their coachees and that’s what the role of a coach is all about.

As a coach you need to know how to get your coachee started - how do you jumpstart the learning process?

There are three things that need to be in place before you can teach anyone anything. They are:

Desire - the person you are coaching must want to learn as opposed to finding himself in a situation where he is forced to adopt a coach

Opportunity - you must have the time to coach your employee, he must have the time to dedicate to the things you are teaching him/her, and you must have the support of your organisation (in both time and materials)

Competence - you must be an expert in your area of specialty. Otherwise you’ll only cause confusion to the person you are coaching. The person you are coaching must be competent as well - he needs to care about his work, have the skills necessary to do the job, and be willing to work with you to make his job even better.

If these three main points do not exist you will have a very difficult time facilitating the learning process. Of course there are people who just do not want to be coached, but we'll deal with that in a later session! Take the time to review your situation before you get started. Doing so will enable to you make the changes necessary to ensure you are successful.

Sean McPheat is the Managing Director of management development specialists MTD Training. http://www.m-t-d.co.uk/

My first attempt at playing music on the site

2009-05-08T15:06:00.004+01:00

This is the forerunner to future podcasts. This track is by Shave the Monkey (UK folk rock band). However, I am not very successful with this technology as yet so probably you won't hear a thing!

If you would like to be interviewed for a podcast, please contact me on +44 (0)1920 466591. We are looking for interesting leadership, motivation, sales and development specialists to provide added value to our network.

Thank you.

Redundancy and Equality

2009-05-05T15:38:00.001+01:00

by Sandra Beale

This year's Budget announcement raised the limit on weekly pay for statutory redundancy pay purposes from £350 to £380. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) is saying that the change will be effective from 1st October 2009. However, there is yet to be official confirmation of this date and whether it also includes an identical increase to the statutory basic award. For those employers planning large-scale redundancies, the timing of this change is a factor to be taken into account.

All well and good cutting employee numbers to reduce costs, but employers must still pay attention to those left behind, as these employees could struggle to cope with new workloads. Levels of stress tend to rise among survivors post-redundancy, as well as levels of anxiety. Not only do these employees worry that they are the next to go, but there is also the added workload because the level of work has not dropped and the number of people has.

The increased pressure on survivors can have a direct impact on the amount of hours staff spend in the workplace, and often serves only to fuel a 'long hours culture' where even though employees spend more time in the workplace, their productivity levels drop due to tiredness and stress.

Increasingly, people are becoming workaholics, work is their life and relationships with family and friends away from work fall apart. Such an environment is far from ideal for organisations trying to weather the economic storm; and to resist productivity and motivation levels dropping among remaining workers. Those who are left behind need to be managed efficiently, and so too are the hours they are allocated to work.

It is really valuable to ensure that staff are fully briefed on the progress of the company, so good communication from top to bottom is crucial to keep employees' stress and anxiety levels to a minimum. It is the not knowing what is going to happen next which impacts on stress levels.
Top tips: Supporting redundancy survivors

√ If making redundancies, employers should pay careful attention to staff members who are left behind, as an increased workload can cause stress, anxiety and lead to a 'long hours culture'.

√ The 'long hours culture' should be easy to identify as employees will be anxious that they are soon to lose their job and will put in the extra hours to complete tasks. However, tiredness and stress often sets in, and productivity will level out or decrease.

√ Effective communication from top to bottom is important, and line managers should be used to ensure that messages about the company's situation get to staff. This can ease help worries about redundancy and let staff get on with their work.

Publication of Equality Bill
The Equality Bill was laid before parliament during April and published on 24 April 2009. When it becomes law, probably in 2010, it seeks to consolidate existing discrimination and equal pay legislation to make it easier to understand and comply with. Measures to be introduced is an outlawing of pay secrecy clauses in contracts and employers can take steps to recruit under-represented groups in their workforce. Currently in the UK a woman is paid on average 23% less than a man and this latest equality legislation seeks to address this. As equal pay is top of the list of tribunal claims (see below), companies may want to consider undertaking an equal pay audit and/or a job evaluation exercise to check the tribunal risk factor and take steps to address this.
Publication of Tribunal Statistics 2007-08

The latest tribunal statistics have been published and make illuminating reading. The top three claims made were related to Equal Pay, the Working Time Directive, and unfair dismissal. The statistics show there has been a dramatic growth in the use of lawyers to help defend a tribunal claim.

Sandra Beale FCIPD

www.sjbealehrconsult.co.uk

World's best icebreakers

2009-05-05T15:23:00.002+01:00

I met Philly on line - I can't even remember whether it was Facebook, Ecademy or Twitter, but we hit it off instantly.

She has a great range of training support materials, but I particularly liked her Best Training Icebreakers.

Take a look! It's a long time since I went on a training programme now (time to address personal development again?) but I would certainly enjoy and benefit from some of these. Icebreakers and activities do help to embed learning.

Experiential exercises are always good too - make the learning really 'sticky'. I asked a question about Sales Exercises on Trainingzone - see what they said here:

TrainingZone Community

Handling the Economy Objection Once and For All

2009-05-05T11:57:00.003+01:00

by Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales

If you're still getting the "We're just not going to do anything until the economy (settles down or improves, or whatever...), when you are closing the sale and asking for the order, then I've got some good news and bad news for you:

First the good news: After reading this article, and applying the techniques in it, you will virtually eliminate this objection once and for all.

Now the bad news: If you're getting this objection during the close when you're asking for the sale then you're responsible for creating it.

Here's the bottom line: It's your responsibility to qualify out any economy, price, budget objections on the front end call so that these objections don't come up during the close. If you're still getting these objections later on, it means you didn't "disqualify" out the non-buyers - which are what you're dealing with when you get this objection.

It doesn't mean they aren't EVER going to be buyers, it just means they aren't going to buy now. And you need to know that in the beginning and NOT send any information or demo out.

Here are some questions to ask to identify who will and who won't use the "We're just going to wait until the economy gets better" objection.

During the qualifying call, make sure and ask any of the following questions by working them into your specific sale:

"A lot of companies are taking advantage of this (your product or service) now that the economy is slow - do you think the time is right for you, too?"

"Given what's happening in the economy right now, do you still see yourself (or your company) moving forward with this now?"

If they say they don't know, then layer it with:

"When do you think would be a more appropriate time for you?"

Also, ask:

"How are you doing in this economy?"

Layer:

"Are you still going to be able to participate in this if we can get you the (price, rate, deal) we're talking about here?"

Ask:

"__________, many of our clients find that this (your product or service) is still important regardless of what is happening in the economy - is it something that you still have in your budget?"

I think you're getting the idea, right? The bottom line is that it's up to YOU to eliminate any budget objections BEFORE you get into the closing arena. And you'll do this by asking these types of qualifying/disqualifying questions in advance.

Start using them today and watch as your closing ratio goes up, and your frustration level goes down.

If you found this article helpful, then you will love Mike’s Ebook: “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts,” which is packed with word for word scripts and techniques that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales. You can read about it by clicking here:
http://www.completetrainer.co.uk/Books/Complete_Book_of_Phone_Scripts

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps nationwide 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: http://www.mrinsidesales.com/

A Taste of Sundial

2009-04-29T10:43:00.010+01:00

On Friday night I picked up a friend and we drove across to Kenilworth to Woodside, part of the Sundial Group. I had been invited on a 'Taste of Sundial'- a promotional event which included around 70 guests.

When we arrived we were greeted with tea and chocolate eclairs, and every staff member we met was very welcoming and friendly. We then convened at 7pm for an official welcome and a 'mysterious' tour. Taken in groups of 20, we walked round the beautiful grounds and met historical characters along the way. Each encounter entertained us with a story of events from the darker side of history. The tableux were presented by a group called 'Walk on the Dark Side'. We learned the story of Jebediah Stone and his misdeeds, his encounter with the Devil and a dishonest innkeeper (and a deal with the devil where he didn't trade his own soul, but that of the innkeeper), plus the strange story of Moll Bloxham of Warwick, who misused the generosity of the court and ended up cursing the city.

This was followed by a marvellous dinner which was, I have to say, extremely appetising. Amongst the guests at our table were of the actors, plus Jo (part of the family who own the Sundial Group). We mixed well, had extremely interesting and stimulating conversations (from Spinoli dogs to haunted houses, from Egypt to existentialism), and I was impressed with the service of the staff.

I had been to a Sundial Hotel before, Highgate House, and had been extremely impressed last time. There is something about a business run by a family - rarer and rarer in these times in this industry - that is very encouraging. Without exception, at both hotels, the staff were friendly and welcoming. From the cleaners who I passed on my way to the swimming pool, the Czeck barman, to the General Manager - everyone had a ready smile.

After breakfast on Saturday morning we were given a 15 minute tour of the training facilities - including (and I really liked this) the training rooms with magnetic walls. Well, the walls must have been metal but the little magnets stuck to them (and they looked just like normal walls) so you could put up flipchart paper or promotional materials without damaging the walls. How many times have I been to venues with bits of wallpaper picked off due to sticky tac? Too many! Or to be told sternly by Venue management that we must only use WHITE tac... ah, these magnetic walls are a great idea! Sundial also run their own team building events with 'Teamscape' and have facilities within the grounds at all of their venues.

We were then taken by coach to Warwick Castle where we were briefed on a Treasure Hunt exercise which took us round the castle on an information trail - finding the answers to questions and find certain items. This was arranged by Adventure Sports. One of the objects we were asked to acquire was a peacock feather. They have many peacocks in the Castle Grounds who are no doubt used to gawking tourists and being chased by children, but they must have been particularly irritated that day as so many adults were following them round in the hopes of a dropped feather! Warwick Castle is a great venue for corporate events, and they have a superb range of team building and facilities that the 'tourist' visitor doesn't see. Well worth checking out.

We then returned to Woodside for a lovely barbecue and those who were not staying over left. That was the end of the official part of the weekend, so my friend and I headed into Stratford to visit Anne Hathaway's Cottage, took a trip round the town and then in the evening extended our 'dark side' experiences by going on the Warwick Walk with the Darkside folks. We learned even more about the history of the city and also some speculative intrigue on Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. I may blog that story in more detail on my personal blog at some time.

Sunday morning my friend and I took a walk and accidentally ended up at Stoneleigh Abbey, which is nearby. We were too early for it to be open to the public, but it looked impressive. And in walking distance from Woodside too! Before heading home we went to Kenilworth Castle which the Sundial team had kindly arranged free entry to. This was another amazing experience steeped in history and further intrigue with Dudley and Elizabeth.

My overall impressions of the weekend are that Sundial Group care about their delegates and that their staff are fantastic. The Midlands is a superb area for activities and sites of historical interest and if you are arranging retreats, soft skills training or team building events, then this is a superb location.

Click here for photographs I took including some of the actors and of Warwick.

Delivering training projects on time

2009-04-23T11:58:00.003+01:00

Delivering training projects on time and to budget…every time

By Ron Rosenhead

I received a call from a woman who is a self employed trainer. She wanted some hints and tips for managing a training project. A short while later I was talking with an in-house trainer who had a similar issue; he was developing a training package. but how could he use project management tools and techniques to help him ensure he delivered on time and to a tight budget?

Here are a few tips I gave to them which you may want to think about using:

ensure a training project is worth doing. How?
- do a simple cost benefit analysis – identify all the costs including time and a statement of benefits. Then check the benefits are worth the cost!
- ensure that the project fits with the overall strategic direction of the company or department. If not, should you be doing it?

define what you are doing. It may sound self evident, however I still come across many training projects where the objectives are unclear. Ensure you clarify what is included in the project and what is excluded

openly identify the risks in running the project. Share these with your client and include methods for reducing the level of risk and who will be accountable for them e.g. impact of no shows on a series of training programme will increase budget costs

identify stakeholders – these are the people who either have an interest in the project or will be impacted by the project. I learnt the hard way on this one from one group of first line supervisors who clearly did not want to be at a training event – their heal marks were deeply engrained in the carpet!

produce a realistic plan. You only have to watch the property programmes on TV to see people’s approaches to planning; over budget and over time. Use simple milestone or Gantt charts to help show how the plan will progress

avoid OPB – optimistic planning bias. This is a process where we over estimate how long or how much cost is involved e.g. we can develop this e-learning package by….be realistic about how long activities take and use yours and other people’s experience to help develop realistic estimates.

monitor – have a process that checks the project is on track avoiding long and lengthy reporting processes. Ensure you manage changes to your project, or they will manage you
review at the end. We are all in the learning business so build in to you training projects a formal review process. This can be as detailed as you want it to be but link it back to the overall objectives and scope…and don’t forget to celebrate success!

You can get further information by downloading 2 free booklets:

Project Management Tips – www.projectagency.co.uk/word/tips.pdf
Project management templates – www.projectagency.co.uk/word/templates.pdf

You can buy Ron's workbook 'Deliver That Project' from the Complete Trainer Website.

Good luck with all of your projects and always remember what Spike Milligan said: “I don’t have a plan so nothing can go wrong.”

Ron Rosenhead has vast experience of training and development. He runs Project Agency and has his own blog at http://www.ronrosenhead.co.uk/

Using Twitter for your business

2009-04-22T15:57:00.004+01:00

I just saw an ebook on Twitter for Business at the grand price of $17. That’s a lot of money I think, because all the guides/advice/help you want is already out there... in the ‘Twitterverse’.

But for those who are eager to learn, then looking up a decent resource first is a very sensible move. But you don’t have to pay for it, if you know where to look.

Here’s a few resources, and a few ‘tips’. The tips are from what I have learned from the perspective of a business owner, plus some great resources that I have found on the web. Here are my top twelve tips:

1. Set clear objectives for your use of/reason for being on Twitter
2. Don’t talk twaddle! Be interesting
3. Make your tweets relevant and ‘complete’ (not just ‘oh yeah!’ but ‘Yes! I won the lottery’)
4. Be polite, thankful, honest, respectful
5. Find a friend and experiment with them to start so you are familiar before you ‘launch’ yourself
6. Be moderately personal as well as business-like (people buy from people)
7. Do not be intimate
8. Do not ‘sell sell sell’ (be subtle)
9. Collect people with the same/similar interests
10. Don’t collect followers just for the sake of numbers
11. Check Twitter regularly – it is Real Time – things change very quickly
12. Only be a Twitterer if you are prepared to spend some time – it’s not marriage, but it is an engagement

Using Twitter as a networking tool can be extremely productive but only if you have very clear objectives and are prepared to commit to using it.

Twitter can build you a good contact network and provide a great forum for you to spread the news about the things you want to talk about providing (and this is a very BIG providing) that it is what your network wants to hear about too and that you return the favour regularly.

Collecting people with interests common to yours is important. Even if you have cross interests (for example mine are training, writing and music), this can still be productive as long as the mix of your tweets addresses all of your audiences. Many trainers are authors, and many people have an interest in music. And people like to know people – so don’t just be a faceless ‘corporate’ on line, be a living representative of the organisation.

You can play the ‘I’ve got more followers than you’ game if you want – but it is more productive to have 300 really relevant followers who are interested in what you say than 30,000 who ignore you because your output is not of interest. Let’s create a fictitious example:

MrCarWidget (I made the name up, apologies should anyone subsequently adopt this identity) sells Widgets for Car Mechanics. He finds lots of people on Twitter and follows them and, because they are curious, they follow him back. MrCarWidget advertises his fantastic Widgets nonstop. They are great widgets! But, for some reason, followers disappear... why?

1. Were the people he chose to follow and who are following him interested in Car Mechanics?
2. Was he doing anything other than ‘selling’ at them?
3. Did he provide valuable references and resources?
4. Did he bore everyone silly with what you ate for breakfast?!

If you were MrCarWidget, you would get best value from Twitter by:

1. Finding followers and following people with an interest in car mechanics
2. Creating interesting articles on car mechanics and offering links to them
3. Finding interesting articles on car mechanics from others and offering links to them
4. Make special offers to your Twitter friends, don’t just sell to them, give them a unique offer that they can take advantage of
5. Re-tweet your followers articles that will be of interest to your followers

This may sound weird, but once you have spent some time on Twitter, it will make sense. You will get used to terms like Retweet, Twitterverse, Following, Apps, # @ etc... but let’s not confuse you! Here’s some handy resources to start you off:

How to speak Twitter: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_64/s0904046705853.htm
The Training Zone Guide to Twitter: http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=197206
Top 13 Twitter Don’ts: http://shaunstanislaus.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/top-13-twitter-donts/
Mashable Twitter Resources: http://mashable.com/category/twitter-lists/
On Ramp 101: http://chep2m.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/ten-top-twitter-tips/
Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

And remember, it may be the ‘in thing’, but if you are not able to commit resource to it and take advantage of the opportunity it is, then perhaps you don’t need to do it. As well as an excellent business tool, it is quite possibly a very good way to waste a lot of time!

There are social uses for Twitter too – but that’s another story and one I certainly don’t have time for - I’m running a business!

Follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/completetrainer

Why you should update your skills as a trainer

2009-04-22T14:40:00.002+01:00

How often as trainers do we find ourselves telling people that in order for them and their company to stay ahead of the game they need to invest in their staff and give them training so they can stay on the cutting edge of new methods and working practices? How often do we apply that same thinking to ourselves, however?

It's very easy when we are busy to stick to the training methods that we already know and never find the time to look at what others are doing and how things have moved on. We use the same methods that we have used for years and a format we know is tried and tested. We often tell people that in order to move on and develop they need to stop sticking to tired old habits, break patterns and take risks, but do we tell ourselves that too, as trainers? Maybe it's time to take a little of our own medicine.

When was the last time you went on a course for your own CPD? Do you know where your strengths and weaknesses as a trainer lie? Do you know what skills you would like to develop further? Maybe you would like to increase your confidence in using interactive techniques or to enrich the depth of learning by using a more creative approach? Whatever you need, it's out there waiting for you. I always find it truly enlightening when I get together with other trainers and we pool our skills and learn from each other. It's usually a very positive experience and we need as much strength from each other as we can get, in these tough times.

The downturn and the fact that we may not be as busy as we would like to be is giving us a chance to take a step back from putting our nose to the grindstone and an opportunity to review our training methods. There may be coaching and courses out there that are running a little cheaper at the moment and will give you a chance to explore new ways of working, meet like minded people and add new tools to your kit.

We all want to be able to say that we are on the cutting edge of current training practices and mean it. When the upturn comes I know that I for one will be ready to offer a higher quality of service having taken the time to take a spoon-full of my own medicine and develop my own skills.

By Hilary Lewis
www.creative-training.org

Hilary is running a train the trainer day on active and interactive learning techniques, at the Chipping Norton theatre on 5th May. For more information and to book, email Hilary at bespoketraining@yahoo.co.uk

Survey on presentations

2009-04-22T09:16:00.002+01:00

The results of the survey (you can take the survey here on http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=cYgIgDgzCT7XJbuy9LhcGA_3d_3d ) are proving interesting already!

I'm collecting data on presentations for the British Psychological Society - hopefully I will have enough data to do a credible article on web verus traditional presentation techniques.

So far people are very open to the idea, but I'm waiting till I have a certain 'critical mass' of data before I make any conclusions whatsoever!

Public Speaking and the Workshop Leader

2009-04-15T14:28:00.003+01:00

By Michael Ronayne

What is the key element of a good public speaker?

Answers will vary from; eye-contact; vocal variety, engaging manner, confidence, subject matter. However there is one element without which, even if everything else were perfect, interest would quickly ebb away. And I would even go as far as saying that if you had this element alone and nothing else, your listeners would forgive your failings and would still listen to your message.

The element? – Structure

Structure creates clarity. Clarity breeds trust. It is like being on a train journey, where each station is announced and so you know how many stations to expect before your stop.
Nothing loses an audience quicker than a sense of ‘Where am I?’ and ‘How much longer will this be?’

Good speech structure is simple and robust. It helps the speaker because it is easy to remember and it helps the listener because it is easy to follow. A strong opening, a clear message at the end and no more than 3 points in the middle is more than enough.

For the workshop leader or trainer, the same principles hold true.

The opening of a training session should have the same preparation as a speech.
I am not suggesting it should be delivered in a dramatic rhetorical manner, just that the same level of structural thought should go into it.

Starting a session with low energy and with either vague or too many goals for the day can cause the participants to suffer what Jerry Weissman refers to MEGO (‘my eyes glaze over’).

A simple clear opening, that reassures the participant that their attendance is going to be worthwhile, that gives a clear overview of what the training is going to cover, will go a long way to setting up a positive foundation for what is to follow.

First impressions are indeed lasting impressions and a lot of trust can be won by quickly establishing that you know in which direction you are leading your students, and that you are the right person to lead them there

Another speaking principle says that ‘How you deliver your message is often more powerful and memorable than the message itself.’

So as a trainer of workshop leader, delivering a clear strong opening to the session will gain the double benefit of giving clarity to the day both in words, and more significantly, in manner.

Once this level of trust is established, it then becomes much easier for the participants to dive confidently into the body or the training.

From then on all the trainer needs to do is occasionally come back up to the surface to introduce different sections of the training programme and then immerse the group in the next activity.

A training session can then become a series of ‘set pieces’ that the trainer uses to introduce or bridge between different activities. Each set piece, if approached from the stand point of a speaker, will then have a clear simple structure that highlights the key points to be covered and acts like a solid fence post, providing structure for the trainer and participants alike.

As a 4 times Finalist and UK National Public Speaking Champion for the ASC (Association of Speakers Clubs) and with a background as a professional musician, Michael Ronayne has developed a profound understanding of the different aspects of speaking and public performance. He is a Director of the College of Public Speaking: http://collegeofpublicspeaking.co.uk/

Presentation tips

2009-04-06T12:15:00.007+01:00

I asked my trainers about good presentation practice; here's a summary of the 80+ replies and some great comments too (this article is also available as a free pdf download ):

Top tips from twenty trainers for live presentations

If using slides, use simple, clean slide design
Do not have too many slides
Make sure the change of slide in live presentations is appropriate to the pace of the presentation
Don’t rush through slides
Don’t leave the wrong slide up when you have changed subject
Use YouTube/videos where appropriate
Do not use too much animation except for ‘slide build’ of complex graphic ideas that have to be illustrated
Don’t be too clever!
Consistent animation/transitions if used
Use relevant quotes from inspirational figures
Use shortcuts to turn screen black or white between important points so there is no visual distraction to what you are saying
Never fill your screen with words so that people are reading instead of listening to you
Use an off-white background
Use quality original or royalty free photographs not clip art
Do not use photographs, questionnaires or other proprietary information without permission
Original cartoons or illustrations
Not too many colours
Restrict number of fonts used
4 x 4 rule: maximum 4 lines per slide, four words per item (if possible)
7 rule: never more than 7 objects (bullets, pictures, logos, headers) on any slideBe interactive, don’t talk ‘at’ your audience
Accelerated learning – use ‘toys’ to stimulate brain activity
Use audio where appropriate
Use mood uplifting music for atmosphere setting (ensuring the venue has a music licence)
Use shortcuts and hyperlinks to navigate around the presentation quickly
Consider using alternatives to PowerPointTM such as mind mapping software
Consider using the MACTM alternative KeynoteTM
Consider NOT using presentation software at all
Use clear language and avoid jargon (unless technical training – and even then make sure the terms are known to your audience)
Deliver with enthusiasm and passion
Know your subject – be able to answer questions
Have Q&A as you go, not at the end
Each section of training should be no more than 20 minutes long
Have breaks so that people can absorb information
Use recaps to embed learning, reminding of key points
Have useful handouts that are not just printouts of the slide show
Be interactive – use exercises and get your delegates moving
Use the environment (outside, other rooms, etc) to stimulate your delegates
Use tools appropriate for the audience and the learning (flipcharts, games etc)
Make eye contact and watch the body language of your audience
Use storytelling and anecdotes to illustrate relevant points
Use interactive whiteboards if appropriate
Make sure the content is targeted to your audience level
Use samples/objects (physical) to illustrate points
Avoid jokes unless you know your audience very, very well
Build rapport with your audience
Learn your material, do NOT read your slides
Watch Barak Obama – see how he presents/talks to his audience and learn from him
Rehearse, practice, don’t just ‘read the script’ – have live rehearsals with an audience if possible
For your handouts you can use different artworks such as clipart etc to make valid points
Put case studies first not last (let the audience know they’re in good company)

Tips for Web-based presentations

Make sure you have a thorough technical brief and know what is expected of you
Make sure your delegates understand what is expected of them
Get a good camera angle
Avoid any facially-related habits (hair flicking, frowning, other extreme expressions that work fine live but not on cam)
Make sure your graphics are engaging
Use plenty of slides but do not make over complicated
Do not use too many words on screen
Do not use clipart on screen
Use photographs to illustrate points
Do not use photographs without permission
Use audio to enhance the vocal contribution (music, soundbites)
Use video to enhance the presentation where appropriate (YouTube etc)
Ensure anything you are broadcasting you have permission for
Know your subject
leave it too long to answer questions (flagged by your system) – the system is real time and your delegates should be treated as if they were live in the room with you

What trainers say about presenting

What's in - Be punchy, dynamic and captivating. Leave the audience wanting more. Have your own unique selling point. Use the following
format:

1. Tell them what you are going to tell them - capture interest from the outset 2. Tell them - deliver the content of the presentation in a non-verbose and interesting way (don't bore them to death with power point or ohp's) 3. Tell them what you have told them - summarise briefly what has been covered

What is out - don't deliver long winded, high powered presentations to people who don't really have an interest. Boring lengthy presentations send everyone into a coma - make it short, snappy and punchy.

Be prepared to answer questions (was recently at a presentation and when questioned, the presenter was clearly out of his depth). Know your subject or get someone else to deliver it.

Lin
http://www.brookfield-associates.com/

What’s in? A presenter who knows their subject, does not read what’s on the slide and is not a distraction to the slides or vice versa. Slides with fewer words on.

What’s out, slides with graphs etc you can’t read, incompetent presenting which no matter how good and flashy the slides are ruined by the presenter.

I don’t agree about using many slides, using 80 slides and running out of time to get through them all so whizzing through the last 20 like a person possessed is terrible.

Anne
http://www.advantage-gb.co.uk/

There is no “in” and there is no “out” in training. It does not matter if you use one dimensional PPT from 1998 or 11 dimensions with sound effects. The only thing that matters is to tell a good story, and to do it with passion. Being boring is out. And being boring can be accomplished in so many ways, including using photos and fast slides. My classes at The Academy of CI are all based on interactive case study with a Socratic method by which students discover the answers themselves. And I use a white board, on which I WRITE. Can you believe it? Write, as in 19th century.
Ben
http://www.giladwargames.com/

The message my colleagues and I are getting as we deliver presentations training around the world is that the following are back in fashion:

No slides - No PowerPoint
Oratory - rhetorical techniques such as the 3-part list and juxtaposition
The voice as a tool to persuade
(and for native English speakers) Offshore English

Barack Obama's oratorical skills have had a huge influence.

Richard
http://www.canning.com/

In the coaching/people management circles that I have contact with, PowerPoint presentations are definitely out. Interactive presentations are very much in (as you indicate), and lo-tech pre-prepared flipcharts are coming back.
Also coming back are hand-drawn visuals and cartoons and hand-drawn story-boards (as in old-fashioned advertising). My partner is a graphic designer/visualiser and - to his surprise - has had quite a lot of story-board and 'magic marker' work for corporate presentations lately, as opposed to Mac-designed work.
Melanie http://www.melanieallen.co.uk/
Interesting that all your in's and outs revolve around PowerPoint, whereas my preference and instinct is that PowerPoint if definitely "OUT" (especially for training)

For presentations I would say that "in" is: personal story telling, handouts and workbooks for the audience to follow, examples for them to touch and experience, questions.

"Out" is PowerPoint, scripts, selling and over-branding.

Andrew
http://www.tenminutetrainer.co.uk/
Lecture is out and performance-based training is in (It has always been in but there are so many companies that aren't on board.)

Process information is out and results and best practices are in. Who cares what was done if it didn't produce results valued by the organization.

Dan
http://www.advancedjobaidsntraining.com/

The very word “presentation” when used in conjunction with “Training” fills me with horror. I know it shouldn’t but it does. I also know that some presented information is necessary but it should be minimal. It goes back to my fundamental beliefs - no I am not religious. Those beliefs dictate my behaviour as a trainer. Starting at the top:Purpose. “People make profits” so training is set within a framework of the purposeOutcome. “Change of behaviour” the only output of training that is meaningful is when people can do things that they could not do before or they can do better that which they could do before.

It follows from these two limited beliefs that any ‘Presented’ information comes from the needs of the ‘practice’ to ‘implant’ or ‘improve’ skills. In this context skills are a complex set of behaviours. So what goes into a presentation and how it is presented is determined by the needs of the ‘practice’. My experience is that presentations provide information. Some information is required to enable the ‘practice’ but to often presentation is wrapped up in the word training as if it was synonymous with training. Then a “training course” becomes a series of presentations and in effect no real training actually occurs; just a presumption of one.

The thinking of the “trainer” becomes focused on how to present information in order that the learner can recall the information presented. It means the behaviour change achieved is the ability to respond to a question with an appropriate answer and not actually be able to do anything that meets my first belief.I must emphasise that I believe that presentations are a great tool to convey information, such as occurs in sales, or background information or direction for business and in this latter case may be a precursor of training. For me a flip chart diagram or a few words given to me by the learners have always been the most powerful “presentations”.

Barry
http://www.learningpartners.co.uk/

My view is that when using PowerPoint the graphics should act almost as a tease/ aid memoire and should not be a bullet-pointed script.

They should be colourful and stimulate interest rather than being something which will distract the learner from the oral message the trainer should be communicating. Any handout should perhaps be written in a different style so that the PowerPoint is not simply transferred to the Notes/handout style, even to the extent that any PowerPoint may be unintelligible as a learning resource, only of use to the presenter/ trainer.

John
http://www.yale-wrexham.ac.uk/

I aim for the "WOW" effect in the training, and how to get it. You get it when there is some form of magic involved in the process, i.e. astonishment that learning was so easy, and that an INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION is taking place during the course. This is realized especially through use of tangible tools and practical techniques, e.g. SWOT, SMART, PIN, 5 WHYs etc. You get it when exercises are relevant to the field of work of delegates, and when training is fun, interactive, and they can talk (everyone loves talking), and people do not forget what they practiced for a long time (When they talk and participate in group exercises and use tools the topic is not easily forgotten). It is nice to hear that "the course has changed my life or career". There is WOW effect when you become a different person after the course!

Another matter is to facilitate practice of the tools and techniques outside the course, i.e. at work, this during the course period. Hence one should provide some gadgets and tools for the delegates to carry with them and which will help them practice, such as small pocket manuals.

Another incentive and which produces the WOW effect is to give prizes to all delegates, and some three special prizes for top performers if there is a final test, as appreciation of their contribution. Prizes can be obtained free from different suppliers as promotion for their products.

Stephen
http://194.116.254.30/index.asp?profile=3261&req=people

I can add this – I coach people every day in presentations and speech-making and right through from my early days in TV and radio I’ve found the same thing: people assert that they are going to be brisk and clear and involving, but then they get up on stage and the usual droning dullness happens!

I encourage all my coachees and trainees to practice – REALLY practice! Not just go through it on the train, or in the office before the meeting: but to actually talk it through, speak it, rehearse it. It’s a performance, like it or not, and the truth is despite most conventional presentation training – the stuff everyone has had (and which is rarely if ever given by people who actually know how to hold an audience!) – the vast majority of presentations are BORING!

So – practice – really!!

Tony
http://www.tonyharecom.com/

There are only two ways we learn as human beings – through trial and error or by copying. Remember this when you are training or delivering a presentation. You need to get interactive or your delegates will not learn.

I’m not convinced that there is an in and an out – it’s all down to the presenter being able to USE the content as a VISUAL AID – not a visual crutch!

As the old song goes it’s not what you do but the way that you do it…. That’s what gets (learning) results…

Next big thing – appropriate use of what is on screen rather than a fad for content!

Mike
http://www.rapidbi.com/

In my industry, the popularity of SlideShare means that presentations are becoming simpler so that the slides still work after being exported to SlideShare. As a result, I'd say that fewer slides and static pictures are still very important; SlideShare struggles with any sort of animation in particular.

I'd also say that the rise in webcasting means that interactive web-based training is mostly used as a post-sales tool, with webcasts still dominating the pre-sales arena. But it's still not all that common; face-to-face training still dominates in my industry at this time.

And I don't know any serious presenters who are still struggling with PowerPoint. Keynote has almost completely taken over the field.

I don't know about "the next big thing", but Kosslyn's "Clear and to the Point" book has become the basis of my own presentation work, allowing me to make hugely successful presentations at major industry conferences in the last five months. It's far more practical than Presentation Zen or competing works.

Stu
http://www.stuartherbert.com/

...think about small group sizes also being beneficial - but this is where there is a difference between a presentation and a training session, the later needing to be much more interactive.

The current big focus is on 'learner centered deliver' - which is basically recognising that each delivery needs to be tailored to your audience and that different people have different learning styles...ie some like to do workshop activities, some like to learn visually ie photographs and pictures, some like to read information ie slides etc! Be careful of having too many slides as this can turn into death by Powerpoint. There is quite a lot of info on the internet on different learning styles so have a bit of a trawl through if you need more details.

As for the next big thing.... not quite sure to be honest, because of the variety of learning styles I think there will always be a call for a mix of delivery styles and I think that is the key, no matter what the length of the training session.

Sarah
http://www.envirofocus.co.uk/

Instead of complete and very wordy handouts I remove key sections, cover the learning objective and then provide time for the learners to complete the gaps in their own words. Similarly I give out handouts of my presentations with again, key elements from each slide (as appropriate) missing so the learners can complete and add their own dimensions as they see fit. So, I guess my addition is interactive handouts which, I have found very popular with my groups and adding value during student lead segments of the sessions.

Best regards

Iain
ihwilson@btinternet.com
I’m not quite so black and white about presentations as “in versus out” because if it was “in” before and “out” now that must have been “in” for a good reason. We are no smarter than we were yesterday so what has changed (in fact according to biologists we are no smarter than we were 12,000 years ago either) – have we learned something of value or it is just fashion (i.e. we are technically able to do more “in” stuff now). I find that in my work I’m varying the presentation style to the scenario – and for small group one-to-many communication I’ve dropped PowerPoint almost completely and use flip charts and practical exercises. Much more fun and effective.

Simon
http://www.threewins.com/
It's a very subjective area.

For me, I was brought up in an era when we didn't have PowerPoint, but we did have OHPs and flip charts. I dreaded OHP because of the heat they generated. But you could do a lot with flipcharts, OHPs and quality handouts.

Personally, I never use PowerPoint except to demonstrate what a mess you can make with it.

Good visuals are incredibly useful when you consider that the majority of people have a predominantly visual learning style. Clipart is so 1980s and should never be used.

In training, doing is everything, it's how the skills are transferred. Too much theory is a killer. Hands on is key.

If you have access to web based interactive media, give it a go. It might work for you, but it definitely doesn't work for everybody.

When you're the trainer, the trainer's job is to bring the subject alive for the learners in a rich variety of ways.

Most people will remember the trainer for many years to come if they produce a top quality learning event.

It's the trainer that facilitates and takes responsibility for the learning. Different mediums are merely sideshows.

That's my subjective opinion.

Vince
http://www.collegeofpublicspeaking.co.uk/

The presentations I work with are more for teaching purposes than business or sales. Most of the "in" list I agree with, however whilst Interactive web-based training and seminars are extremely cost effective, many users find them to be a waste of time that teaches them nothing because the interaction that you would get with a face-to-face presentation is not there. In addition, the "many slides" preference has never been the case. I would expect there to be just enough slides to do the job; I'd be more interested in what the facilitator has to say than looking at masses of slides.

This is particularly the case when doing a rolling presentation (e.g. at an exhibition). I once did a rolling presentation on the dangers of drugs and alcohol for a school exhibition and people loved the presentation because it told them what they needed to know without going on forever. I think I had 8 slides in total.

Finally "pictures" photographs are preferable to clipart cartoons (which have always been a bit iffy or naff), however both static pictures and interactive graphics serve a purpose depending on the topic of the presentation and the audience. People should create their presentations based on the feedback from previous attempts and/or the content and message to be conveyed. They are very much like websites. Flash based websites might look impressive the first time they are viewed, however the viewer soon gets annoyed with them and the attention is lost. Presentations are a supplement to the message contained or the message the presenter, facilitator or teacher is giving.Soniahttp://www.yourwriter.org.uk/

Have you seen my little YouTube video on Pecha Kucha, a different way of thinking about slideshows? Here's a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGaCLWaZLI4

Alison
http://www.spiraltraining.co.uk/

1. It really depends if the training is developed to change knowledge or behaviour or a bit of both
2. Behaviour change training really ought to be more interactive
3. Cleverness with technology is not always best – it can be distracting or mask what are the really important points/messages
4. The use of Visual Materials should really relate to the Style of Audience you are training (consider ‘direct CEO type , versus Creative type , versus Heavily Technical folk , etc)
5. There is definitely a set of differences and requirements between Training & Presentations

It is probably not a good idea to develop rules for such things but as guidelines I’d say less beats more in terms of PowerPoint slides , Clip Art is a bit dated and over used and too much technology (unless it a presentation about technology) doesn’t always work

Kevin
kevin.simms@xtra.co.nz

For me presentations are about, interpretation rather than dictation. A photograph, or an animation, can be interpreted so many different ways and therefore you get lots of input. Words can simply be dictation, a one way conversation.

Personally, I believe that presentations should be about inspiration, emotion and imagination. For example, I attach a photograph my friend’s son took at the Dublin Marathon in 2007 – my friends and I are way back in the group but doing it never the less.

At the front you can see a young man with his arms out – number 10343.
The future winner is just behind him. It is the front line – the elite starter group.

As you can see the young man is having a great time – this is his moment! He has quickly run to the front to get in the picture – a bit like a streaker. I show this picture as part of my confidence and talent workshops. I ask the group how long did they think it took him to finish, or whether or not he finished at all. Most people say that probably didn’t finish, or that it took him about 5 hours. After all there is always one really isn’t there – the one making a fool of himself!

Then I tell them that his name is Robert Treveen, he’s Irish, and he finished in 2.38 – an elite runner. In fact he could run marathons for his country. He came 32nd out of about 10,000. We should never take anyone on appearances, although his pictures nearer the end are quite a different story. An amazing young man!

Christine
http://www.cstraining.co.uk/

In:

Interactive whiteboards (used properly)

Appropriate short, punchy, video clips

More movement (by presenter AND audience – because if your body don’t move, your brain don’t groove!)

Out:

Long “corporate training” videos

See this TEDTalk on the Sixth Sense for a glimpse of what’s coming (I want one!)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Kimberley
http://www.kaizen-training.com/

In – video and id add clip art as there are so many issues using Google images or any free images from websites Getty are suing people left right and centre and most packages you buy Microsoft etc give you quite a lot of pics and photos that certainly do for presentations,

Check out Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds http://www.presentationzen.com/

Jeremy
http://www.realitytrain.co.uk/

I’m doing some work at the moment looking at traditional construction training, with a focus on toolbox talks. They are very much still in fashion, but are there any learning objectives or any demonstration of learning, apart from the “pass this signing in form round”.

Generally I’m seeing a real mixture of teaching styles in industry, ranging from the extremely tedious lecture with PowerPoint excesses to some very good work based sessions.

I think the “next big thing” I’m hoping (and I’m pushing) will be a shift from delivered training to operatives, to more focused and targeted briefings, with some confirmation of learning. Also I think as money becomes limited, more value is needed from existing competence training, where specialist training, such as environmental can be gleaned from existing training at no extra cost.

David
http://www.diemltd.co.uk/

the one thing I do consider when thinking about any aspect of learning, and that is the degree to which new techniques are more 'whizz-bang' than truly effective, and will always think through the relevance and applicability of any aspect of what I present in the context of the specific learning aims and objectives of whatever session I am designing.

To that end, some of your 'outs' will always have been so - many slides when few will do, interactivity as opposed to passivity, and so on. Some 'ins' are there because they were unavailable before, and can really add value - such as the swift transitions from slide to slide, and the use of photographs rather than the often twee cartoons available on clip-art.

The danger areas are where technology offers things that look tempting and sexy, but which do not present information or ideas better than more simple options. An obvious example is the 3-D presentation of block charts or pie charts, which, in most cases are better presented in two dimensions, the third adding nothing but frills.

In a nutshell, I would tend to write an article on this topic from the point of view of a yardstick for learning, and evaluate each option on that basis. This means that your 'ins' and 'outs' are backed up by the ways in which each of the pair add to or detract from the desired learning outcomes, and you can give reasons other than what might be seen by some as 'fashion' for the inclusion or exclusion of each technique or element.

Keith
http://www.lcsacademy.com/

I note that quotes are making a bit of a comeback – one liners with attributed names also on IT training they are now giving delegates the criteria for a presentation – content, must have points etc and getting them to construct a presentation to present back to the class.

Shortcuts are important too – e.g. pressing “B” on the keyboard turns the screen black. Press “B” again and the presentation resumes. (The same happens when you press “W” except the screen goes white). If you have 40 slides in your presentation and you press “8” then “enter” your presentation will go to slide number “8” – this happens with any combination of numbers. e.g. “3” & “2” then “enter” takes you to slide 32.

Finally I would also suggest that any presenter has a remote that can be plugged into the USB of the computer and can then be worked from a distance – companies are currently into hiring the smallest room possible for training & presentations and without a remote it can severely restrict a presenters positioning. If you are using a remote and it has a laser pointer attached, whilst this is useful, if you are travelling by plane, it cannot be taken on board as hand luggage and it may be confiscated.

Peter

http://www.coachingformore.co.uk/

And finally:

How to give kick-ass presentations with a hangover:

http://www.pubcon.com/blog/index.cgi?mode=viewone&blog=1187123220

Death by PowerPoint

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cagxPlVqrtM

This article is also available as a free pdf download