So can you create a great culture or does it just happen? Great things don’t just happen; they need to be shaped and nurtured.  You have to define your culture and most importantly you have to live it. Living it begins at the top, it’s easy enough for executives to communicate what an ideal organisational culture looks like but if people don’t see executives living and displaying the corporate values why should they be expected to live and breathe them?

Culture is so often misunderstood and often discounted as a ‘touchy feely’ component of business that belongs to the HR function of an organisation. In reality however, the opposite is true; culture is one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long term, sustainable success. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand either thrives or dies a slow death. So think about nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured – It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty.

A view shared in the world of coaching and amongst many behavioural therapists is, that in order to realise a goal, it is essential to focus on small achievements and things that will eventually form the parts of an overall success. In other words it can be looked at that there are two parts to the process; firstly we need to have a good idea of the end goal, the vision or aspiration, then it is important to put that aside while you get on with doing other stuff, small chunks that will positively contribute to the larger achievement. Things such as, knocking an important item off the to do list, having a difficult conversation you have been putting off or even something as simple as cleaning the bathroom are all things that, once complete can create an enormous sense of success and achievement and lead to proactivity in the next thing.

The point here is that if you concentrate on getting small things done well, the bigger stuff will take care of itself.

Create momentum…

This sort of activity is to be applauded, as a key component of sales is “leg work” but the old adage of working smarter not harder has never been so relevant.  Chasing business day in day out can be a complete waste of time and a thoroughly miserable experience if a bit of care is not taken deciding who to chase and why.

Recently a client asked me to help with a short “masterclass” (his words not mine) on the subject of qualification.  Interestingly not a subject we get asked about on a regular basis and I was slightly surprised that he had chosen this for his team, rather than go for a more obvious element of the sales process, such as questioning techniques or closing skills.  However after thinking about it, I actually thought that this was clearly the best place to start and rather than try to improve sales skills, let’s look at the skills needed to make sure that any techniques are used on the clients most likely to buy.  In current environments, sales people need to do all they can to “shorten the odds”.  Sell to those who fit your desired buyer’s profile.  Increase the likelihood of a sale.

My client’s view was his team were spending a lot of time chasing business that they were never really going to win or if they did there were spending a lot of time and resources securing it for a relatively small return.  In short they were being attracted by the wrong characteristics of potential clients.  Sales people generally fall for the same trap.  They simply look at one characteristic of a business and forget all other factors.  Typically sales people chase business from those who look like they spend a lot of money, the blue chip clients.  Or they chase a business that operates in a sector where they have had some previous success.

This can often be a mistake.  Blue chip clients can be great for the right suppliers.  They can also swamp suppliers or providers with high demands and pay low rates.  Having success in one sector does not necessarily mean that you will have success over and over again in the same sector.  It is the characteristics of the potential client that need to be examined.  Do they have the characteristics that match your “best” clients? In order to answer this question, the sales person needs to have a good understanding of exactly what those characteristics are.   To do this one needs to have a look at their existing best clients and look at them closely.  Identify key characteristics that they have.  These could be anything from their location, their size, the point of contact you have with them or how many offices they have.  It is important to think in basic terms.  After looking at the characteristics of three or four top clients you will recognise common traits.  Do the same for your worst clients.  Clearly any client is a good client but some will come under the banner of “not quite ideal”.  It doesn’t mean you don’t want their business but it might mean that you don’t actively chase more of it and will spend more time chasing those who look more like your best clients.

This process is a client profiling tool used by many sales strategies and does not need to be over-complicated. Miller Heiman use it in their strategic selling process and I have seen other versions.  The point is that time spent working out who really fits the profile of likely good clients is time extremely well spent.  Dashing around the country or calling those who look like they have money or are in a sector within which you had some success in the past, is really not good use of a sales person’s time.  I have met a lot of sales people recently who claim to do a lot of client profiling.  The reality is that they have chosen an area or a sector and plunged in.  It is the characteristics of the business that is more important.  Think of the diversity within sectors or geographical regions.  Once you get used to using your client profiling tools and really knowing what potential looks like, you will become far more efficient as a sales person.

I have now been working in Sales for 10 months and one thing that has surprised me the most is the similarity between sales and carp fishing, this may sound stupid but let me explain…

I believe that in carp fishing the most important thing is to never stay in the same place for too long. If the fishing is good carry on and stay put, however, it won’t stay like this forever and once you have either caught all the fish in the area or disturbed the area too much that nothing comes close then it’s time to move on.  The same thing can be said within sales, if you stay in the same area e.g. speak to the same clients or potential clients all the time you will eventually sell to everyone that wants your product or get told to never call back again because you are bothering them too much.  It is very important to move around and speak to as many different industries and potential clients as possible.

During one of my week long fishing sessions I make sure I always have 3 rods with me. These will all be fished at the same time.  The reason I do this is to ensure that I cover as much ground as possible, covering different depths and in different areas of the lake.  Again this is very similar to sales as it is very important to have as many existing and potential clients in the pipeline as possible and not just focus in on one area.  If the area isn’t producing or that rod isn’t in the right place you will leave with nothing. Make sure you have as many rods in the water as possible!!!

Another very important thing is to ensure that you have a variety of different baits in your tackle box, you would be surprised how fussy carp can be.  Something that worked one day could very easily not work the next. In sales make sure that your tackle box is full of different baits/products as this makes it much easier to relate the right features, advantages and benefits to the client’s needs.

Finally, patience! This is crucial – don’t pester people to try to make a sale as this will only lose you potential customers.  If you’re not patient in fishing you will end up scaring anything that comes close, or you’ll probably give up before the fish have even had a chance to find your bait.  There is also no harm in getting back in touch with people after a few months to see if they have any requirements – if it was a need once it will more than likely be a need again.   Just be patient!

However it’s a fair question that has been debated much over the last decade since the advent of e-learning and the various other blended learning solutions.

I remember well the time when e-learning was supposed to be the answer. The organisation that I worked in at the time invested heavily in e-learning as a blended learning solution, moving many of the ‘traditional’ face to face development interventions to this exciting, time and cost efficient method of learning.

This was the first time I heard the phrase “the days of traditional training are well and truly over”. As Alan rightly stated in his article, the advent of e-learning has enabled individuals to learn at their own pace, reduce time away from the office and eliminate the associated costs of trainer time, travel and accommodation. It has an impressive list of benefits that convinced many, both inside and outside of the L&D arena, that the future was already here!

But what many people forget is that human beings are fundamentally social creatures. The majority of us live in groups either in villages, towns or cities – huddled reasonably close together – ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’ anyone? As a society we are prone to consider people who lock themselves away and have little or no social interaction as a bit odd.

Blended learning utilising  a variety of delivery methods is absolutely here to stay and rightly so, but as the title suggests, it is about making the most appropriate use of the options available, which includes face to face sessions. If you don’t consider all the options you may be one of the many who fall into the trap of picking the wrong solution, based solely on price. Let me give you an example.

Many organisations that I know use e-learning as a way of training compliance or regulatory requirements i.e. health & safety where, in order to remain compliant, employees need to complete annual online assessments and achieve a percentage pass. What often happens with these annual assessments is that they are completed as tasks, with the correct answers being passed around the office ensuring people pass & the compliance box can be ticked with little or no learning actually taking place.

There is also the added danger that rather than its intended outcome of developing learners’ skills, knowledge, competence and commitment, it turns other learning and development interventions into tick box exercises in the eyes of the participants.

In my experience e-learning is an excellent way of transferring knowledge but much less successful at transferring and embedding tools and techniques. Until there is a way of effectively measuring confidence without the benefit of human interaction, face to face training will always have its place.

As the “is classroom training out of date?” question has remained a relevant one over the last 10 years since it was first asked maybe we need to start looking at other factors that cause people to ask it?

Apart from the name, which I hate – I for one don’t have especially fond memories of the ‘classroom’ from my youth – the issue actually lies not in the environment e.g. the classroom, but in how the learning is being delivered. If you need an example of what I mean by the traditional classroom approach have a look at the classroom scene from ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’.

Today’s skilled facilitators and learning & development professionals deliver group learning sessions that engage people in challenging debate and discussion whilst exploring ideas and theory and most importantly translating the ideas and theory into practical tools and techniques. So in conclusion, if you do it right, face to face training will ALWAYS have its place!

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“What’s the dress code for tomorrow’s meeting?”- A question that I now hear on a regular basis as my sales team prepare to meet with potential clients across the UK.  It’s also a question that I had seldom heard before the start of 2011.

Until recently, we always wore business suits to any meeting, irrespective of what sector the client we were visiting worked in.  Looking back it was inflexible, but it was safe.  “You can’t go wrong with a smart suit” my old boss always used to tell me, and I never even thought that this mantra could be wrong.  Like putting on a school uniform, we therefore donned our smartest suit and boldest tie and headed off without a second thought for what the client might think of our attire.

Demonstrating such inflexibility is strange really, especially when one considers that a key part of Phoenix’s approach is based on understanding our clients and designing solutions that really reflect their culture and values, as well as their learning objectives.   Equally, we put a great emphasis on preparing for every meeting and finding out as much about the potential client’s business and yet no matter what we knew about them, we never thought to change the way we were dressed.

One of my first experiences of ill-matched dress codes arose when a colleague and I turned up at a Computer Games company wearing suits.  Within seconds of meeting our t-shirt wearing hosts, I could detect some clear indifference and there was a distinct feeling that we were ill matched in every way.  No matter what we had to offer from a learning & development perspective, it was a battle we were never going to win.  Needless to say, we didn’t get the business.

Now, the decision on what we should wear is an important part of preparing for any meeting.  Where guidance is needed, we’ll ask the client who are often surprised by the question but are equally very pleased that we’ve taken this level of interest in them.

So while a suit is still a safe option, I’d urge you to take the time to consider who you’re meeting and reflect their culture and values at the earliest opportunity.  Of course, the suit still has a key role and can really make you look the part but dress codes evolve like everything else and you don’t want to be left behind. After all, how often do people wear bowler hats to meetings nowadays?

Know anyone that loves the sound of their own voice?

I recently went away on a trip of a lifetime & during the backpacking stage of my travels I met some incredibly interesting people.  One guy in particular gave me real reason for blogging.

A superb story teller, incredible intonation and engaging to say the least. The problem was that others rarely got the chance to speak for any longer than a few seconds, because every time they tried, said guy would quite quickly visualise his own related experience and take over with an “oh yeah, I’ve done that or I’ve been there too” and proceed to interject telling his own story.  You can imagine the eyes rolling, signalling the degree of annoyance.

Fair play to the guy for his self-confidence, however the moral of my story is if you don’t demonstrate a certain amount of self-awareness, you could quite easily have the direct opposite effect to what you are trying to achieve i.e. instead of engaging your audience, you disengage them.

We all do it, the point is to recognise it and strike that balance between talking and listening.

My first two weeks consisted mostly of learning all about Phoenix and their ethos. From the programmes we had done for clients, the different trainers in the company and most importantly, the three open courses I would soon be responsible for… I don’t think I had ever taken in so much information in such a short space of time. Consequently I was in bed by half nine every night!  Slowly but surely, I began to use the information I had learnt during the many practice role-plays I did with Ollie and my brain began to retain it all.  My confidence was growing and I began to see progress. During this time, I also attended the Sales Essentials open course (one of the courses I would be selling), which helped me in two ways. Firstly, getting first hand experience of the course I would be selling and secondly giving me great insight into what the course actually had to offer and what my clients may be looking to gain from the experience.  The learning consultant Nickola Cooper really helped me understand how to structure the information I had learnt with Ollie and helped me realise the importance of effective questioning. Even more importantly, when (for a blabber mouth like myself) to shut up and listen to the clients requirements! I finished the course and couldn’t wait to make my first live call.

The first call went so well I thought it was a set up & was half expecting my colleague Ruth to come round the corner on the phone to me laughing. Unfortunately I didn’t make the booking following this call, as the client couldn’t make the dates being offered but I was feeling pumped & I couldn’t wait to get back on the phone. The difference that two weeks of practice and learning makes was amazing.

I have now been at Phoenix for 6 months and I am constantly looking to improve my techniques and skills through spending time with the Learning and Development team (one of the bonuses of working for a training company). I now have the monthly challenge of finding participants for our Inspirational Leadership, Essential Management Skills and Sales Essentials open courses and I am very much looking forward to my next 6 months.

My short term goals are to continue to understand more about the subject of learning and development in order to be able to work with my colleagues in designing bespoke and tailored training programmes. I also want to make the leap into face to face meetings, networking and presenting – a scary prospect but one that I’m sure I’ll achieve with the right levels of training and support.

• Deliver – Do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it.

My flooring supplier missed five delivery slots in the space of two weeks; one of the missed slots was promised as a personal delivery by the company owner.

• Get it right! – Make sure you have all the information you need to fulfil the customer’s request.

One of the excuses used by my flooring supplier, after the fifth missed delivery, was that they had the wrong delivery address even though I had confirmed it with them on, at least, four separate occasions

• Take Ownership – Inevitably things sometimes go wrong, take responsibility and personal accountability for putting things right. Do everything you need to do to turn customer dissatisfaction into delight.

If the company I’m referring to had bothered to do anything that they said they were going to do to put things right – I would have simply thought that it was one of those things and been satisfied, they haven’t!

• Communicate – Tell the customer what is happening throughout the process. The value of regular on going contact cannot be underestimated.

The flooring supplier that I used just stopped answering my calls (over 250 of them) deliberately dropping them only replying via email or text message with more broken promises! It got so bad that I was on the verge of contacting a solicitor to investigate how I go about starting legal proceedings to recover my money. Eventually, by text, I was told that the reason the supplier stopped answering my calls was that he was “profoundly embarrassed”. If he had just taken the time to talk to me the situation could have been resolved much sooner.

• Follow up – Find out if the customer is satisfied with the product or service they have received. Ask them what you could do better and what they liked/appreciated about your company. This data is vital in improving the product or service that you offer, differentiating you from your competitors.

Needless to say in my recent experience this has not happened in any way shape or form, except that the partial refund promise has, you’ve guessed it, been broken.

On a final note, think about how many people I’m talking to about my recent terrible experience. Trust me, I’m not just blogging about it, I’m telling anyone who will listen.  Research tells us that the people that I tell will tell between 7 and 10 others about my experience to ensure that they avoid using the same supplier. That’s a lot of feedback and potentially a lot of lost sales.  From a purely commercial perspective how can you afford not to offer customers goodservice?

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I travel quite a lot these days, delivering courses up and down the country and increasingly around the world.  When I find out where I am going or where the interest is from, I do what I think many people do and immediately form an opinion of what it will be like in that particular destination.

Recently I have been on business trips to Beirut and Milan.  When I told friends and family members about these two trips you will not be surprised to hear that most displayed envy and interest about my trip to the fashion capital that is Milan and a good degree of sympathy, shock and, for some horror, that I would be visiting Beirut.  Of the two, my first reaction was that Milan would be great opportunity to train a positive group of fast track graduates keen to learn and a chance to spend a few hours, at least, wandering around the Duomo, around San Babila and spending a few Euros on myself and my family.  Beirut on the other hand is a city that I had grown up hearing about on the news for all the wrong reasons.  Political upheaval, kidnappings, civil war and cross border shelling, have been reported from Lebanon for years.  A business trip to Beirut in my head was at best a long shot.  I consider myself to be an optimistic person and having met our business partner from Beirut, back in August, was keen to see what Beirut was really like.  However, if I am honest, my expectations were not quite as high as they were for my trip to Milan.

After travelling to the two destinations, I can now report that Milan was pretty much as I expected.  Decent hotel near the airport, great group of course participants who were all keen to learn and I had a chance to get into the fabulous city that is Milan, even if it was just for a couple of hours after the first day of the course.

Beirut however was not at all what I had expected.  It is an amazing city and it was an amazing experience!  It surpassed my cautious expectation.  We had four exciting business meetings with positive, optimistic HR teams all displaying an eagerness to learn and develop their staff.  The city itself is reborn after years of civil war and general repression.  Shopping malls, hotels, apartment blocks, beach clubs, marinas, restaurants and roof top bars are all emerging literally from the ruins of the old downtown area, creating a vibrant atmosphere and the back drop to a hugely enjoyable four days.

What struck me after this trip was is the link between this & the levels of expectation that surround training courses and providers.  At Phoenix Training and Development we hand out post course evaluation forms and ask the question “to what extend did the course meet your expectations/requirements”.  Participants often fill this section in by responding – “far better than what I was expecting”, or “way better than I thought it would be”.  I am now disappointed if I read “it met my expectations fully”.  This is the bare minimum we should be hearing.  Do participants attend a course with very low expectations and therefore any half decent course will exceed those low expectations.  I think that this was possibly the case five or ten years ago.  I think that courses used to be rather uninspiring at best and so anything that had anything about it would surpass expectations.  Nowadays the general level of training on the market is better than that but clearly there are many out there who still think that training is going to be a dull, boring and frankly fairly poor use of their time.

What it says to me is that we, as deliverers of training courses and programmes, have to recreate what Beirut did to me.  It can’t change its image immediately, but it must try hard to do so.  We have to create lively environments, create challenges by testing the participants but not making it bland and obvious, maintain high levels of enthusiasm and positivity, make sure that every participant gets what he or she requires in order that they view the training as an experience and not just a day out of the office.  I have a group at the end of the week that, from what I have heard pre course, are not expecting too much!  My role is to make sure that they leave the course blown away by the experience and with the fact that their expectations were totally wrong.

To see more pictures of our trip to Lebanon visit our Facebook page.