What's Happened to Customer Care Part 2

Last week I blogged (ranted) about Customer Care and how we don't know what has happened to it. That was the Customer Care we receive when dealing face to face with small local businesses like the green grocers et al.

But what about Customer Care on the telephone? Mostly, we experience this through Big Business; your mobile phone service provider; your land line phone service provider (this one could be Big Trouble, if you get my drift); your utilities provider; your bank/building Society and any other financial institution like your car insurance company or your pensions firm. And of course government organisations like the people you pay your Council Tax to - not forgetting Revenue and Customs.

Dealing with complex  'Call Centres'
has  become a huge frustration
for  most customers these days

Have you ever tried getting through to your mobile phone service provider? The first thing you notice is that nobody but nobody wants to speak directly with you. There are recorded voices all over the Big Business industry to stop you speaking to real people. I ask you, is that Customer Care? "Welcome to blah, blah, blah company. If you're calling about blah, press 1; if you're calling about blah press 2. And so it goes on. You can spend 30 minutes or more just pressing buttons or listening to music to kill yourself by and nobody gives a monkey's. To add insult to injury, the system tells you that your call is being recorded for security and training purposes, which means that if you stuff up in any way they have a record of it to be used against you later. Is this Customer Care? Not likely.

Why is Customer Care so poor, these days? Well you will have your own ideas but I feel that a partial answer is the creation of Call Centres. They are the bane of our lives. At their inception, training companies were falling over themselves to write courses for Call Centre Training; most, if not all of those courses have ended up on the shelf because it doesn't take long to train people on which buttons and icons to click on and to say "I'm sorry, the system won't allow me to do that". Luckily for me, I decided early on that I would have nothing to do with these latter-day sweat shops.

Well Big Business require a BIG rant, so see you next time for some of the rest!

What Happened to Customer Care

Do you remember terms like 'Customer Care?' Are you familiar with slogans like 'The Customer is King' along with 'The Customer is Always Right?' Where have all those fine sayings gone to? OK, the sayings might still be there somewhere, perhaps even on a dusty poster in the stock room, but the treatment and actions that these sayings should engender no longer exists, it seems.

A Timely Reminder of Service

I recently returned a faulty item to the local store and explained that it was not fit for the purpose for which it was bought. This scenario lent itself to some great Customer Care, don't you know. She could have apologised and offered me the choice of changing the product or taking a refund. You'd think. But no. She asked if I had selected the item myself, in which case it was my fault. My fault, you understand for walking into the shop to spend money.

The local fitness club was not much better when I approached the reception desk to make an enquiry. No fewer that 3 people stood talking among themselves while I waited. And when someone deigned to speak to me, there was not a word of apology - until I asked for one; and even then it was offered as if under duress. If you rely on customers for your survival you could do worse than to remind yourself of this important fact; you don't have a business without your customers so STOP taking them for granted and START respecting them and CARING for them.

All well and good; but why does Good Customer Care seem to be on the decline? Well obviously there is the lack of training but it is a bit more than that because your local high street shop owners don't usually go on customer care courses. No, it seems to me that we are incubating a culture of Fear and Loathing; no one seems to like anybody and we seem to fear everybody we don't know. Have you noticed that every single store has a security gate through which you must pass to spend your money? As if the gates weren't enough, there are guards as well. And security cameras.

Is this because we are a nation of thieves? No. In my experience most people are fine upstanding members of the public - and they don't steal. But if you came from a different planet you wouldn't want to let go of your ray gun whilst out shopping, would you?

So You Think That's a Presentation

I am utterly fed up to my back teeth with the so-called presentations I see these days. At best they are boring; at worst they miss the purpose of the presentation entirely. What is it that makes people think that just because they can create some PowerPoint slides they don't need training in this fine art anymore?

When will people learn that their slides are not the presentation? If I were to define 'presentation' I would say 'a presentation consists of the words you use to form sentences that convey ideas either to persuade or inform an audience'.

Even Bill Gates can't help Confuse and Over Do the PP

PowerPoint is great tool but it was never meant to be abused in this way. It was always meant to help the presenter convey information, which is difficult to present with words alone; but most people these days write almost every single word they want to say on their slides, thereby using them as speaker notes and the audience ends up looking at slide after slide after slide. Why they even bother to stand in front of people I don't know for they might just as well roll the slides and let the audience read them. Why not? In any case we are in for a 'presentation', which is dull, dull, dull; lifeless, witless and boring and insulting to the audience.

Before PowerPoint, the training company I worked for used to run 12 presentation skills courses per year in the London venue plus 4 per year in Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham - that's 28 courses each year with a maximum of 12 people per course and they were nearly always full. With the advent of PowerPoint, these courses have dwindled to around 2 per year in London only with at times only 4 people attending - even with sales people covering the UK.

Please listen business people; if you must give presentations as part of your work, you owe it to your company, your audience and yourself to be properly trained in this area. People are often too polite to tell you that your presentation is crap, so you walk away thinking you were OK - you were not, PowerPoint was.

I have promised myself that unless I am training people, I will never sit and waste my time watching a slide show masquerading as a presentation ever again. I am going to walk out because there is absolutely no excuse for a poor presentation.

Investing in People first and last

Small business owners are doing everything they can to avoid making people redundant as a strategy for surviving the recession, an independent study claims.

Cutting overheads, increasing sales, developing new products and refocusing on a core activity are all bigger priorities than cutting staff, according to the survey of 500 small business owners by Continental Research.

George Hadley, managing director of Direct Access Systems, a specialist consultancy employing 30 people, is among those who believe redundancy should only be tried when all other options have been exhausted.

His business, which has no debt and turns over £1.3m a year, has been hit by clients delaying project start dates and dragging their feet on settling bills.

Mr Hadley, who owns 85 per cent of the business, notes that recently he has been putting his own money into the company to ensure that he does not have to cut his workforce.

"I have done everything within my power to make sure we don't lose people," he said, adding that removing jobs would be a false economy given that he will need the manpower for contracts that have been won but are yet to start.

In spite of the aversion to job cuts, one in 10 of those asked by Continental Research said they were planning to make some staff redundant as a result of the economic downturn. The larger the company, the more likely it was to support job cuts. Companies employing fewer than 25 people tended to favour a reduction in working hours rather than cuts in staff numbers.

Small business groups have reported a sharp increase in calls to their legal advice lines about the rules governing redundancy. Such issues made up more than one in five calls received by the Forum of Private Business's member helpline in January.

Vince Caldicott recently cut four of the 43 jobs at his Hampshire-based business, Premier Contract Supplies, which provides bathrooms to builders and decorators.

However, he claims that he has felt unable to cut as many jobs as he would have liked because of the fear of breaking employment laws.

"I do need to make more people redundant, but I don't know how to do it," he said.

Stephen Alambritis, spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said his organisation had also seen a rise in inquiries about redundancy, but stressed that most companies were making sure they were aware of the rules rather than planning job cuts. "The last thing they would think about is redundancies," he said, adding that job losses from small businesses only tend to come when they file for bankruptcy.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has forecast that 600,000 people will lose their jobs in the UK this year. However, the FSB claims that only a quarter of these redundancies will come from businesses employing fewer than 250 people even though these companies account for 99.9 per cent of the UK's 4.7m businesses.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Customer Care means Just That

Why is a top-flight European business school devoting its considerable resources to teaching French railway staff how to improve customer service?

Thierry Grange, dean of Grenoble Ecole de Management, answers the question with passion. “It is about cultural change,” he says. “It’s about changing from being a public service to serving the public.”

Prof Grange and his colleagues are not just trying to give rail passengers a nice ride: they see their role as helping transform France from a producer-led economy to one that is customer-led.

It is a project that many French citizens would argue has defeated their governments for decades. Yet, as Prof Grange points out, the evidence of successful cultural reform of state institutions is all around.

France Télécom, for example, another former state monopoly and Grenoble client, is now a privatised and competitive international phone operator.

For 20 years, Grenoble EM has been building an executive education practice specialising in helping the staff of state institutions embrace change – to the benefit of those they serve.

The five-year, €1m ($1.3m, £880,000) contract with SNCF, France’s biggest train operator, to run the Majélan training programme to equip customer-facing managers with the right skills is just the latest among many. For, in spite of the appearance of immobility, European Union directives and French state legislation have transformed the structure of French railways, along with those of other state institutions.

French rail tracks are now owned by a separate state company, Réseau Ferré de France; many SNCF trains are operated by private sub-contractors; and next year, SNCF will face competition from other European train operators.

As Prof Grange remarks, SNCF has become a travel brand. With increasing numbers of tickets bought online, the ticket inspector may be the only staff member customers meet. Dealing successfully with travellers’ problems and service delays is a tough job. Yet good service has become critical to SNCF’s success.

Teaching methods

The first one-year programme for SNCF “service management agents” of every kind, now running on the Grenoble campus and at SNCF’s in-house Université du Service in Paris, has therefore prompted much thinking about teaching methods as well as messages and education.

Among the first challenges, Prof Grange says, is the need to convince SNCF staff that change will benefit them and the institution they work for.

Some of the solutions have been developed in the school’s Académie du Service (a joint project with the hotels group Accor).

One approach to build confidence and demolish barriers is the use of theatre. “Everyone can tell a story,” Prof Grange says. “Soon other participants will laugh in sympathy at your mistakes. It is a way of reducing stress and pressure.”

Once a learning atmosphere has been created, participants are taught skills ranging from practical tools, such as English and law, to marketing and strategic management. Candidates for the courses, which open the door to management grades for participants, were chosen through a competitive process within SNCF.

The 26 participants alternate between classes and the workplace, where they must complete a service-related project for assessment.

Valerie Cléry-Bernard, of the SNCF Académie du Service, says management schools were invited to tender to run a course designed as a management fast-track that would also equip participants for a more commercial business climate.

Innovative teaching methods, strength in service management and experience in developing comparable programmes were the criteria that led to the selection of Grenoble EM, she says.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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!

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 Håkon 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

The Venue is SO Important

A little series of episodes has occurred over the last few weeks which highlights just how important the venue and the organisation of the facilities is for any professional presenter.

A very large financial institution who shall remain nameless seems to have got it into it's head that when running courses you should have an events organisation AND a training organisation to put on courses.

And guess what, its a mess every time. The trainers arrive to find the venue staff have little or no idea of the number of rooms, the layout and equipment needed or that the trainer will need a little time to set up. So we find ourselves arranging matters the night before with the venue staff who have been left in the dark.

The event organiser and trainer either need to work closely with maybe some co-ordination by the client training manager (part of their role?) or we can loose the event organiser to save money that would be better spent on keeping highly experience presenters and trainers happy!

Too much delegation I think.

Training the Trainers

Sylvia Modu has just returned from the first (of many to come) train the trainer sessions at Shell UK. Now these were all highly experienced trainers who have been on the job for years. The sort who "have seen it all", and a potentially worrying prospect for the inexperience trainer.

But Sylvia had come prepared with her "unstructured structured" approach to provide these guys with a challenge and worthwhile experience that will benefit them all. With providing presentation skills training, knowing your audience is paramount. But even the best trainers can improve.

The course was so well received that a round of applause was initiated at the close of business. A telling compliment indeed.

Successful Monaco Trip

Inspirational Seminars Ltd, in the guise of Sylvia Modu, has been training senior staff at the Single Buoy Mooring Company in Monaco since 1998. Up to this trip over 80 staff from Monaco's biggest employer have benefited from Public Presentation Skills Training, even though the majority are French speaking, but presenting in English.

Single Buoy Mooring had booked 4 days training last week where a further 22 staff, including directors, were tutored, video'd and assessed. Feedback was excellent.

Whilst Sylvia was training, John Burke held exploratory meetings with the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) in the region and met up with Mike Lorimar (President BCC) and Carl Henry (Committee Member) initially at the renown Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo, opposite the Casino.

Inspirational Seminars will be joining the BCC in the region and will provisionally give a talk in November or January about the merits of better public speaking skills for most businesses. The intention for Inspirational Seminars is to have a base in Monaco and to build a core of regular clients with whom we can work. Carl Henry also introduced us to some very interesting contacts with whom we expect to be working shortly.

At the time of our visit Monaco was in the middle of its preparation for the world famous Monaco Grand Prix, and barriers and new road markings were being set up. In addition some of the world's finest motor cars were being casually driven around the Casino square, including a Ford GT40, and beautiful examples of Lambourgini, Ferrari, Porche, BMW and Mercedes!

Web Site Nearing Full Functionality

The website at http://www.inspirational-seminars.com is now almost fully functioning.

It has events for public/open courses being listed now with the ability to make on-line bookings for these events, including seeing how many places are left.

The newsletter service is ready to roll, with a series of training focussed articles that should benefit any training manager or director.

The site also has a small range of tightly focused courses available on CD, on web marketing that are available to buy via the secure Paypal system.

There are also details on the impressive range of courses and training available which cover communication skills to customer relations training. At Inspirational there is the belief that we can compete in the marketplace with any other training organisation, due to our ability to call upon the services of over 30 of the most experienced trainers int the business.

We also have a test site at http://www.inspirational-seminars.co.uk which is available for registering interest.

Be "a finely tuned, precision honed, presentation machine"!

We are fortunate to get another satisfied customer, who because of the benefits we bring are only happy to thank us.


Sylvia

Apologies first on the late sending of this email - since our in-house
course recently we've all been swamped with work!

I wanted to say, on behalf of myself, John and Mike, how much we enjoyed the

course which you delivered and, indeed, how much we got out of it.

Both Mike and I have done important presentations since which have gone very

well, far better than before your course.

So, thank you and congratulations on a brilliant job in turning us into a
finely tuned, precision honed, presentation machine!

Steve


Steven Blewitt
Sales Manager
Sandtoft Roof Tiles Ltd
01427 871226

You too can be "a finely tuned, precision honed, presentation machine"!

Thanks for the help so Far-Give Me More

Thanks - I've already actioned some of your suggestions on preparing presentations - and have been congratulated by my clients! How can I book a place on a course you'll be running?

Even the Best Need Mentors

Ask anyone at the top if they need advice, and it's more than likely that they already have their own "mentor", even a few mentors. Why is this so? Well only the utterly arrogant will feel that they cannot improve their current level of performance, in what even field they consider.

Therefore, most competent speakers within an organisation can benefit from a mentor, who has the depth of experience to assist them to excel! With public speaking, a mediocre performance is considered a failure, worse still if you cannot get your message accross, what do think will happen?

Lets say your audience is made up of city analysts and such like who can influence the share price. Or made up of shareholders?

These situations can make or break a presentation, speaker or even the company.

Therefore even competent speakers can be improved, and their technique refined. Public Speaking is in practice a self development process rather than an acquired skill. It's something to be worked on for life, as the audience itself becomes more "sophisticated" and public opinion changes upon a variety of issues.

10 Things to Guarantee a Successful Speech

From our Guest Contributor from the US
by Tom Antion: to get more detailed material from contributors like Tom
click here

RESEARCH YOUR AUDIENCE

It amazes me how some speakers will show up for a speaking
engagement and really not know anything about the audience they
are speaking to. Many speakers just get lazy and feel that their
message is so important.

PRACTICE

The only way to look polished while speaking is to practice. This
is one skill you cannot delegate to anyone else. It is you that
is on stage with the microphone and it is you who will look
either great or terrible. You are sadly mistaken and egotistical
if you think the Powerpoint slides that either you or someone
else created will make you a dynamic speaker.

TAKE CARE OF HECKLERS

This is my famous asterisk technique I use to make sure hecklers
don't interrupt my presentation. I get people in the group to
identify potential trouble makers BEFORE I get to the event. I
phone these people and interview them to give them the attention
they are craving.

USE EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE

Boring old facts rarely move people to action. Learning to use
words that evoke emotions in people will make a much greater
impact when you speak. There are many emotions you can trigger in
the audience just by your choice of words. Happiness, anger,
sadness, nostalgia are just a few. You must pick the words that would mean something to
your audience.

REVEAL YOURSELF

Some people have trouble implementing this idea because they like
to remain aloof and private. This will hurt their chances of
making a good connection with people in the audience.

USE PROPS

A prop is worth a thousand words. People can really anchor a
thought in their minds when it is connected to an object that
relates to the point you are trying to make.

USE HUMOR

Even Shakespeare used humor in the middle of the tragedies he
wrote. Humor is a powerful and effective tool that gives the
audience's mind a chance to breath in the face of heavy material.
It also makes you more likable and fun to listen to. Humor is
also much more likely to make your information more memorable.

MOVE 'EM TO ACTION

If you are going to bother taking up people's time to speak to
them, don't you think it would be a good idea to get them to do
something positive because of your presentation? Even if they do
something negative, it's still better than doing nothing because
they will at least get a chance to learn something from their
mistake.

BRING SOLUTIONS

One of the best ways to make sure the audience loves you is to
bring solutions to their problems. If you have done a thorough
job of researching your audience, you already know what their
problems are. It's your job to bring ideas for them to try.

PAY ATTENTION TO LOGISTICS

All the best preparation, practice and audience research could be
ruined if you forget to pay attention to all the details
surrounding a presentation. You want to know what is happening
before you speak, and what is happening after you speak.