Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Employees Come First?

This article which appeared in the FT this morning brings a refreshing insight to the way some employees are being treated in the workplace. Whilst at Inspirational Seminars our credo is to train in communication skills, this presupposes that the management want to invest in their staff in the first place.

So where are the priorities in today's cash sensitve environment? Stephan Stern of the FT Writes;

The talk is all of hard-headed realism. So when I received some news about a corporate programme called “Employees First”, I presumed that it must refer to some sort of harsh but honest cost-cutting measure.

I was wrong. HCL Technologies, the Indian IT services company, takes pride in rejecting the “customers first” principle, instead putting its faith in what it calls an “employee first” approach, which “places the needs of employees before the needs of customers,” the company explains.

HCL says it has won both greater customer loyalty and higher revenues acting in this way. “By treating employees as partners and participants in the company’s success, every individual within the company becomes responsible for transforming, thinking, and providing value to customers,” the company says.

Among an array of progressive HR practices, HCL offers its employees the chance to take part in a weekly online opinion poll on key management decisions – those that have been taken already and those that are still to come. (The votes are unlikely to halt or reverse any decisions, but people do get a chance to register their views.) HCL has received a seal of approval from the technology research firm Ovum, confirming its view that “strong customer relationships start with strong employees”.

Hogwash, you may be tempted to respond. Who has time to consider employees’ finer feelings when cash flow is tight? If the staff want reassurance then they should work harder and do better. A greater sense of job security can only be achieved through a healthier commercial performance.

The sort of idealism expressed by HCL or, in the UK, by the John Lewis Partnership will strike many business leaders as bizarre. These businesses will surely have to consider cutting jobs too. Yet the JLP constitution states that its primary purpose is “the happiness of all its members through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business”.

That is all very well for a non-listed, employee-owned business, but can a public company survive with this apparently inverted order of priorities? One that has – for more than 100 years – is the US pharmaceutical and healthcare company Johnson & Johnson.

Its company credo, which dates back to 1943 and was written just before J&J went public, makes for a challenging read.

J&J is a “customers first” company. “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services,” it begins.

While “we must constantly strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain reasonable prices,” J&J also argues that “our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit”.

Employees come second. “They must have a sense of security in their jobs,” the credo states. “We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical.” The wider community comes next. “We must be good citizens – support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes ...We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment...”.

And only now, fourth, do we get to the small matter of investors. “Our final responsibility is to our stockholders,” the credo says. “Business must make a sound profit...Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times.” And the punchline? “When we operate according to these [above] principles, the stockholders should realise a fair return.”

Customers, employees, community, shareholders – in that order. Not the usual run of things. Not the rather simpler and more direct model that puts “shareholder value” higher than any other concern. Does the J&J order of priorities work? Last month this paper’s Lex column described the company as “typically reliable”, and “balanced” across several sectors.

When banks stop lending and customers are struggling to pay invoices, cash is everything. If you have too many staff and not enough revenue, something has to give – and it is almost certainly headcount. That much is clear.

But it is also clear that, right now, some businesses are better placed than others to see out the next couple of years, and not simply because they have a bigger pile of cash. They have long-term strength and resilience because of their market position, which they have achieved thanks to that costly balance sheet item, their people.

Management’s responsibility is not simply to slash and burn to achieve short-term survival. It is to lay the foundations for future success. You will need to pull off both these tricks to get the cash flowing healthily again.

Thanks to Stephan for this bit of refreshing news. Investment in People is not just a slogan, it needs commitment from managment and input from training professionals to effect the sort of cultural change that this article is suggesting. Management and staff both need training to achieve these goals.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Expensive Business Training Needs to be Good, but Good Training Needn’t be Expensive

A new type of training seminar offers the high quality companies are used to but at a truly affordable price. Inspirational Seminars Ltd is using the medium of seminars, which they have branded ‘Quick & Dirty!’ Instead of asking companies to book their staff on a 2 or 3 day programme, they have encapsulated the ‘real meat’ of these programmes in seminars just 3 hours long.

Training staff and management in the ‘Soft-Skills’ is seen as an investment in people however when the economic outlook is bleak, what was previously thought of as an investment becomes seen as a cost. But how can a company be fit to weather the storm if for example they stop motivating their sales people and line managers with good training? Companies shouldn’t be as much concerned about the economic outlook, as much as they should be on the look-out for good training that will continue to build their business.

Inspirational Seminars is a training company that is offering companies a new way to continue development of their staff but at a very affordable price. The ‘Quick & Dirty!’ concept allows organisations to continue with the essence of vital training whist allowing them breathing space to recover. When the budget allows, more in depth face to face training can take place using the same world class trainers and course writers to maintain continuity.

In recent years, the training industry has seen quite a lot of seminars that are really only vehicles to sell companies and individuals longer and more expensive courses; they contain very little in the form of usable information. The ‘Quick & Dirty!’ seminars offer people a stream of ideas during the 3 hours that people can go away and use immediately. These seminars will be rolled out over the UK and Europe after a series of pilot schemes starting in Oxfordshire.

John Burke, a director of Inspirational Seminars Ltd says; ‘the benefits to companies who take advantage of this type of training is that they get high quality training with low investment, they do not lose people from the office for more than half a day and there are no hotel costs involved. But perhaps one of the most important benefits is that both the material and delivery are of the highest quality because the seminars are run by very experienced, world-class trainers of international acclaim. Another benefit that companies find is that this type of training fills a gap until they are in a situation whereby they can undertake more in-depth training’.

He continues, ‘since people are the ‘life-blood’ of any company it is of course important for companies to continue the learning and development of people within the organisation. Most HR Departments are inundated with information from training companies and so the process of making decisions as to which company to use can be very much like a minefield these days. What companies should bear in mind is this: although expensive training needs to be good, good training needn’t be expensive’.

For additional information on the availability of these seminars, please send your email to info@inspirational-seminars.com or visit http://www.inspirational-seminars.com and visit the ‘Quick & Dirty!’ Seminar text at the top right hand side.


About Inspirational Seminars Ltd

Inspirational Seminars (ISL) is a consortium of trainers who have all worked with well established training companies over the last 20 years. These are people who have worked closely with each other and have now come together to provide unsurpassed quality training programmes to companies in the UK and Europe. Some of their trainers are psychologists, some are NLP Practitioners and all have personal experience in every subject in which they train.

Inspirational Seminars’ team of dedicated professionals aim to bring to companies first class, world-class results-oriented ideas that will improve the performance of individuals thus improving the overall performance of a client company. This is done with well developed and established methodologies and close working relationships with customers.

Inspirational Seminars offers Public Courses and Seminars throughout the UK and parts of Europe covering a wide range of sales, management and personal development. And because these programmes can be adapted for individual customer needs it means ISL can provide around 80% of most companies development requirements.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Gaining Appointments on the Phone

As experienced sales people you have a list of people that you can contact on a regular basis. You have a relationship with them and they are likely to give you business. However we all know that natural wastage can occur and this can happen for any number of reasons none of which have anything to do with you. For example, in my world, natural wastage is more often the result of my contact moving on and the ‘new broom’ likes to ‘sweep clean’.

Needless to say that it makes good business sense for us to be continually on the look-out for new business. Obviously there are many ways we can do this but a quick way is to pick up the phone and make some ‘cold calls’ with a view to filling up your diary with appointments. Sometimes even the most experienced people fear this process. Here are some tips that might prove helpful for such individuals.

1. GET READY
Preparation is the key to success in all that we do in life – try getting married or taking a holiday without it! First, clean up your list. Make sure that those companies, telephone numbers and people still exist. You can do this by making a call ‘just for a little information’. I often say “I don’t want to speak to anyone now but could you tell me…? And then I ask my questions and thank people for the information.

When you are ready to make your call, you might find that if you are dealing with corporate clients, sometimes at switchboard level you will be asked the purpose of your call. In your mind you should have a ‘ready reason’. For example, ‘they used you, your company or business sometime ago’, or ‘you sent information recently’ or ‘you want to inform them of something new that could help their business’. If you have any concerns about calling to make an appointment, then having in mind a reason to call makes you feel comfortable in making the call. Next, decide on your objective. To determine your objective, ask yourself ‘what do I want to happen as a result of making this call?’ Next, have EVERYTHING you need to hand and then MAKE THE CALL!

2. GET THEM LISTENING
This stage is crucial because people are not waiting for your call. So plan a good opening to get the ‘prospect’s’ attention. This opening statement needs to have some benefits built in so they can see why they should talk to you, which in turn earns you the right to continue speaking. Here are some reasons why people might want to talk to you: you can save them money; you can save them time; you can help to increase profits. Once you start to look at what you or your business can offer you will find information to help you create a good opening. But the best way to create a powerful opening is to put yourself in their shoes and ask this question: “if I was this person about to receive a call from someone like me, what would I want them to say that would make me want to listen?” Plan your opening until you are happy with and then hit the phone.

3. FIND OUT WHAT THEY WANT
The only way to get into people’s minds is to ask them questions. Don’t assume that because your product or idea is good you should simply talk about it. Try to find out about people and their business before making suggestions. Because what you want is an appointment, you don’t need to ask more questions than is necessary to ‘qualify’ the prospect, but the few questions you ask need to be carefully crafted. To find the best questions to ask prospects about their business, ask yourself this question: “what do I need to know about their business to determine whether or not my product/idea will suit their company?”

At this stage, many people having established that the prospect company could indeed use their products and services are tempted to start TELLING the prospect about the wonders of their products. Try to resist the temptation because remember, you want an APPOINTMENT, which is the PRODUCT you are selling right now. So the next stage is to:

4. ASK FOR THE APPOINTMENT
The words you use here are very important. If you FEEL that you have built good rapport with the individual you might simply ask ‘would you be happy for us to meet?’ But more often than not the ‘asking’ needs to be dressed up a little; the following example works extremely well for attendees to the one-day course on this subject: ‘it seems from what you say that it might be a good idea for us to meet because we can help with... Do you have your diary handy?’ The rest is about fixing day, dates and times that are suitable to you both.

2 HANDY HINTS

The job of Gaining Appointments on the phone requires momentum. This means that you need to make call after call to a) find the prospect available to speak and b) to actually get an appointment as (unfortunately) not everyone will agree to seeing you

Set mini-goals. This is where you determine that you will make X number of calls before having a second coffee, bun or Mars bar! Or that you will speak to 5 decision makers before doing the same


Good luck and see you next time!

Presentation Skills and Introductory Sales Skill Courses also on offer
.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Five Fabulous Tips for Cold Calling

Sylvia Modu presents her 5 tips to help with cold calling and telephone sales.

I remember as if it were yesterday, joining a company that had been looking for people to make cold calls. I was the first one to walk through the door; they gave me a huge box of cards with names of companies and telephone numbers, which nobody had touched in years and now I was expected to ‘cold-call’ these companies and sell them my (new) company’s products.


Was I scared?! Yes, I was but I ended up being the biggest producer of sales by telephone. I eventually grew the team from 1 (myself) to 10 and became the telesales manager. I learned from experience and have since gone on to train hundreds of people in the subject. Here I offer you 5 tips, which you might find useful. You will see that they are very much ‘skills-based’ this time. Next time we’ll look at how to create a positive mind-set to help keep you on track when the going gets a bit rough!

1. GET READY
Preparation is the key to success in all that we do in life – try getting married or taking a holiday without it! First, clean up your list. Make sure that those companies, telephone numbers and people still exist. You can do this by making a call ‘just for a little information’. Next, find a reason to call. A reason to call could be ‘they used your company sometime ago’, or ‘you sent information recently’ or ‘you want to inform them of something new’. A reason to call makes you feel comfortable in making the call. Next, decide on your objective. To determine your objective, ask yourself ‘what do I want to happen as a result of making this call?’ Next, have EVERYTHING you need to hand and then MAKE THE CALL!

2. GET THEM LISTENING
This stage is crucial because people are not waiting for your call. So plan a good opening to get the ‘prospect’s’ attention. This opening statement needs to have some benefits built in so they can see why they should talk to you, which in turn earns you the right to continue speaking. Here are some reasons why people might want to talk to you: you can save them money, you can save them time, you can offer security or your products can massage their ego. Once you start to look at what your company can offer you will find reasons for calling. Plan your opening until you are happy with and then hit the phone.

3. FIND OUT WHAT THEY WANT
The only way to get into people’s minds is to ask them questions. Don’t assume that because your product or idea is good you should simply talk about it. Try to find out about people and their business before making suggestions. To find the best questions to ask prospects about their business, as yourself this question: ‘what do I need to know about their business to determine whether or not my product/idea will suit their company?’

4. PRESENT YOUR IDEAS FAVOURABLY
If you have established by good questioning that this company could use your product or service, the next step is to present your ideas favourably. This means using the benefits of your offer. There are 3 key ingredients that will help you to do this: what it IS, what it DOES and what it MEANS. What it is – it’s made of metal; what it does – it’s strong; what it means – it will last a long time. So for example ‘it’s made of metal so it is very strong which means that it will last you a long time and save you money’.

5. ASK FOR THE BUSINESS
That’s right; go ahead and ASK. People rarely say ‘you’ve done such a good job, I would like 10 of those’. There comes a point in your conversation with your prospect when you know you have asked enough questions, you have matched your products to their requirements as in idea 4 and you know that this is a good time to ask for the business. Try words like ‘shall we go ahead on that basis?’ Or ‘which would suit your company best, the metallic or the plastic?’ Don’t be afraid to ask for the business – the worst thing that can happen is that they say ‘no’ and nobody ever lost family or friends as a result.

Good luck and see you next time!

Monday, June 23, 2008

Winning in Monaco on Presentation Skills Training

Sylvia Modu has just returned from success in Monaco!

Not for the Monaco Grand Prix however, but for 10 years service in
presentation skills training to a single client who has their head office in Monaco. Single Buoy Mooring are a multi-billion dollar operation in Oil and Gas off loading.

So successful is this milestone that we have had our article picked up as a presentation skills training press release in the UK
.

See the full article on our website regarding Presentation Skills Training

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Technorati Link

Technorati Profile

Its all about cross networking and interconnections!

Or is it just to get Technorati up the google rankings by inward links? So to balance things here are a list of my blog and web interests with lots of great partners and projects: No particular order.

G8way
Jamie Lawrence Football Academy
JLFA Blog
Refill Food
Cherrie Box Media
Emerging Markets Investor Services Ltd
Watersons Marketing Group
Inspirational Seminars Ltd
Inspirational Seminars Blog
Sylvia Modu
Faye Klein Lingerie
DMR Ltd
Bevin Fagan (who sadly died in April 2008)
Gold Investments
Property Investment and Credit Crunch
Business Start Ups
Yorkshire Network
Gold Bullion Trading
Click4Marketing
Affordable Seminars
Barbur Realty
Canal Craft
Management Resource
Unique Sounds

Plus a whole load of ongoing projects in Africa to build Solar Tower Power Stations, renewable energy systems and exploding the myth of global warming and the great carbon tax con.

I am also very keen on lean government along the lines that Hong Kong adopted and not the over-bloated British Model!





Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Closing Major Deals

Consultative Selling

Many thanks for the authors of this article; Thomas Kratzert is vice president in A.T. Kearney’s communications and media practice. Michael Broquist and HÃ¥kon Tanem and associated consultant Frank Robert for their invaluable assistance in preparing this article.


The most successful sellers don’t focus on specific product attributes or even solution superiority. Rather, they present a solid business case and compelling opportunity (see figure 1).

Because the focus is on solving significant business issues, the consultative seller wins favour by presenting a convincing business case and truly differentiating its offering from the competition’s. The value proposition typically includes a significant amount of partnering, and for equipment suppliers, a large services component.

Sales Strategies


The process runs through three major phases:
All these phases presuppose that the delivery team is able, competent and highly skilled at presenting to groups and in the psychology of sales techniques. These aspect are often overlooked in the excitement of a pitch, but to make it a great pitch these skills are as necessary as all the technical and business competencies that your team possess. [Inspirational Seminars]


The rest of this article is on the web site: CLICK HERE