• 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?

How do I qualify?

There are a few simple criteria that apply, for a clear straightforward explanation please call Tim, Marina or Edward on 0207 234 0480.

How much is available?

The money available is match funding. So for every £1 you spend, the fund will put in £1, all the way up to £1000 (i.e. £2000 – worth of training)

What training can the grant be used for?

The training can address any aspect of Leadership or Management as long as it can be described as ‘enhancing strategic or people leadership skills with the aim of fostering business growth.’

Phoenix offers several open courses (for details click here) that would be suitable for this grant, or we can provide a tailored solution just for you. Typical topics clients are covering include:

• Creating & Communicating Vision, Values & Organisational Culture
• Setting Ground Rules & Expectations for your People
• Developing an Effective Leadership & Management Style
• Planning & Developing High Performing Teams
• Feedback & Performance Management
• Situational Leadership
  

The fund is finite, so we recommend you get in touch as soon as possible. We’d be delighted to talk you through the opportunity.

Image by krossbow via Flickr

In these challenging economic times, the importance of having commercially aware staff has been brought into sharp focus.  When I worked for Virgin Active (many years ago), the CEO would hold a monthly meeting in which he’d share with all his staff the latest facts and figures; milestones passed and targets yet to be achieved.  As someone with a background in sales I always appreciated this, but many of my colleagues would grumble about attending, believing that because they worked in customer service, or marketing they didn’t need to understand how well the company was performing, or what the current EBITDA was.

Unfortunately, this attitude can be found in many organisations, particularly larger ones, and can be hugely damaging.  Sales people lacking in commercial awareness may end up passing on goods or services at a loss to the company, whilst still managing to achieve their own targets.  Customer service reps may habitually give away more value than the company can really afford.  Developers may spend valuable time on a project that their employer will struggle to bring to market, yet all these staff may still wrongly believe they are doing what’s best for their employer; worse still, they maybe unwittingly creating unnecessary work for colleagues in other departments – especially in organisations where ‘siloing’ is the norm.  All this leads to inefficiency, and ultimately affects the bottom line.

Commercial awareness goes beyond just understanding the financial position.  It means ensuring that all staff understand their leadership’s vision and are working together to achieve the same goals.  It means each department engaging the others when making decisions.  It means working smart, for everyone’s benefit.  It means seeing the bigger picture.

Phoenix run a challenging, business specific and highly practical commercial awareness programme.  We can also help leaders and managers communicate their vision more effectively, and think more strategically.  For more information, please get in touch.

Image by Klearchos Kapoutsis via Flickr

“I’d rather be a boat with a motor than a cork on the water”.  So says the Global HR Director of a FTSE 250 company that I have had the pleasure of meeting on a few occasions.  After the crash of 2008 his company took a battering as some of its core markets declined, and newly arriving into the business he was clear that sales skills and particularly sales proactivity needed sharpening up: they could bob about helplessly on the tide of the global manufacturing market; or they could fire up the engine, set a clear new course and at least drive the business in the right direction, even if market forces made it tough going in the short term.

I’ve been reminded of his maxim lately as I have observed with admiration the joined-up corporate thinking of one of Phoenix’s Sales Academy clients – a business that has engaged with us to help instil a consistent and up-to-date sales approach in its people.  We have worked with this company for several months in the past year, tailoring and delivering workshops in core sales skills, negotiation, objection handling, and other key areas.  Senior management has embraced the project, and directors have involved themselves with enthusiasm in the initial stages, attending the core training personally so that they can understand exactly what the new approach entails, and how it differs from what they had before.

What has really impressed, though, is how they have taken responsibility for their side of our partnership, and come up with a truly interconnected approach to implementation of the learning they have invested in. By implementation I mean what happens internally in an organisation after training.  It’s the process by which learning is embedded into the team or the company once the training delivery is over, and it’s absolutely critical to the success of any training initiative, for without it the learning will not take hold systematically and sustain its effects.

The key people when it comes to implementation of sales training are the line managers who have responsibility for the day-to-day supervision of the sales team.  They need to recognise their paramount role in supporting the learning and providing the environment in which it can take hold – if they do that then this month’s innovation will easily become next month’s habit.  It’s often cited that a new habit forms in roughly 21 days; so you can see how it’s essential to keep the team on-track and practising what they’ve learned daily within that initial period until new best-practice techniques are embedded.

In this company which is currently flying I have been particularly impressed by the Sales Director: as soon as he understood what our expert sales trainers were going to be delivering to his people, he put enormous energy and thought into designing processes that enshrine the new sales methodology at the heart of everything his team does.  For example, he and his Sales Manager take the time each month to listen to half a dozen sales calls made by every one of the team, and evidence is noted on the key elements of the sale (attitude, knowledge, structure, and questioning) and a ’score’ given for each accordingly.  He and his Sales Manager then give feedback and coaching off the back of these observations, in order to keep the sales people focusing on what will make the greatest difference to their results in the long term.  In addition, he has overseen the creation of Product Sheets that lay out information for the sales team to reference, all reflecting the language & structure of the training. Negotiation grids have been created which make clear which variables are preferable to use when striking a deal for each product.  And they are helped and incentivized on a daily basis to apply it, with a newly formulated commission structure that rewards 50% on the right behaviours and not just the results.  As a result he is seeing a powerful consistency of approach which is creating a virtuous circle, with each sales person constantly reminded of best practice by simply hearing their peers around them.

And as expected, this has all had an immediate positive effect on the figures: June 2011 was their best ever month, and the retention team hit over 125% of their target.

But there’s another element to this too, and it is that the organisation as a whole has embraced the new approach, and decided to weave it into the DNA of the company: from marketing materials to product discussions to customer service, the language and structure of their new sales method is constantly reflected and reinforced.  Thus, everything is pointed in the same direction, and there is very little friction or dissonance.

The motor’s running, they’ve set a clear direction, and they’re leaving bobbing corks for dead.  Exciting times indeed.

The problem with delegation is that it can be a slow process, especially in the early stages.  There are always concerns that you will actually end up much busier because you will need to spend additional time coaching and training your colleagues.  However, developing your staff is a vital part of your job which takes courage, patience and skill and in the long run, it will create great benefits for you and your organisation. For example, it will create valuable time for you to concentrate on those areas that are really business critical, it will motivate your staff and help them to take responsibility and it will also satisfy you on a personal level, seeing your staff grow and develop.

A great way to delegate appropriately is by knowing your people; once you truly know your people, it will help you to identify what to delegate and to whom. Make a list of all the things you can & cannot delegate, then identify the skills your team already has and match them against the tasks you would like to delegate. This way will also help you to create an individual development plan, knowing what skills already exist and what else needs to be learnt to enable your staff to do a specific job. Make people aware of your own standards and what is expected of them but be aware that mistakes do happen – it’s only natural and your colleagues will still need your support. Let go and teach your people to take responsibility.

You can learn much more about delegation in our Essential Management Skills open course which will give you a greater insight into how to handle any potential challenges and if you need any informal advice on this subject, please get in touch with me and I will be happy to help.

Marina Wirkner
marina@phoenix-training.co.uk

There is little doubt that to develop & design a comprehensive programme is more time consuming than when working on a one off event. However, by spending genuine quality time in accurately understanding and identifying your training requirements you will almost always guarantee higher returns for the business.

To get a clear understanding of your company’s behavioural and cultural background and the challenges you are currently facing, we recommend that the Learning consultant actually spends most of their development time on site – “embedded” if you like – so that they are almost viewed as part of your organisation. This not only helps them to see at first hand where the challenges are, but also goes a long way to achieving participant buy in.  In our experience, participants are much more likely to respond positively to the training if they feel their input is valued and they are familiar with the trainer and his or her way of working.  If you’re going to pay for development work – make sure you can see or hear what you’re getting!

Once delivery begins, any effective ongoing programme should ensure a much more sustainable learning experience. We recommend that each module is delivered every 4-6 weeks, which allows enough time to put into practice what has been learnt back at work whilst still being close enough to keep the momentum and motivation going. We also encourage participants to keep a learning diary in between modules which helps them remain focused, as well as providing great points for review (successes and failures) at the next session.

Before committing to such a major investment, it’s always worth considering how will you actually support the programme internally? One way of doing this really effectively is by conducting a Senior Management Master Class before the programme actually begins.  This will not only provide this key group with an overview of the tools & techniques used on the programme but will also provide them with some clear guidelines on what they can do before, during and after each event to help their colleagues get the most out of it.  In our experience, doing it in this way makes a massive difference.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that we’ll also support you at every stage, ensuring that you get exactly the results you were aiming for.  It takes a bit more planning, but for the right type of organisation, a management or leadership development programme can deliver the most effective learning experience.

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At Phoenix we always place a great emphasis on understanding exactly what it is our clients are trying to achieve.  This part of the training process is so valuable and yet it is so rarely done as effectively as it might.  At best, it involves a meeting with a selection of key stakeholders, whereupon broad objectives are agreed and content is designed around these.  In many cases it is simply based upon managerial observations and anecdotal feedback which does not always get to the root of the real development issues.  What’s more, the participants themselves are rarely involved in this process which is also not ideal.  By consulting with at least some of those who will actually be attending the training, you not only get a better chance of designing something relevant but also of establishing participant “buy-in”.

This is a particular concern when designing content for telephone sales workshops.  We are often told that the participants need help on a particular skill – for example, closing, negotiating or questioning.  No problem – we’ll design something around these and in many cases, what we design will work pretty effectively and provide the participants with some key tools and techniques that will improve their results.  But how much better could it have been, had we been able to do some real analysis and actually listen to the quality of calls that the participants have been making to their potential or existing clients.

Call recording equipment has been around for many years, however, it is expensive to install and has usually only been utilised at larger call centre operations.  Improved technology has however now made it very easy for any type of organisation to benefit from call recording and here at Phoenix, we have really begun to see just how useful it can be.  Phonecoach provide a very straightforward system which enables call recording simply by adding a prefix to the number dialled – there’s no hardware involved and all the recorded calls are automatically saved as MP3 files.

By being able to listen to exactly what is being said, by both sales person and customer, we are in a much better position to identify what’s working and what skills need further developing.  From a design point of view this “reality check” enables us to focus only on those areas that really need it, ensuring that the training is lean and extremely relevant.  Where appropriate, we can even use the recorded calls to illustrate key learning points during the training itself – which can also be very powerful for the participants.

For just £24 + vat, we can record up to 500 minutes of calls, which is usually enough to get a good selection of a team’s telephone sales activity over a week or so.  After some thorough analysis, we report our findings back to the client and only then, will we design a course based on what’s actually happening.  This ensures that any sloppy techniques can be instantly identified & addressed, leading to a direct impact on an individual’s sales performance. Which is, after all, exactly what any high quality sales training should do.

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I’m often asked by potential customers, what exactly are the key differences between open and tailored training. This got me thinking that it might be useful to develop a quick reference guide that will help you make a more informed decision.

Open Courses

1. Open courses provide the participants with a brilliant overview of their chosen subject – whether it’s Introduction to Sales, Essential Management or Inspirational Leadership.
2. Open courses enable you to work alongside individuals from different industries but often with very similar concerns. They also provide you with great networking opportunities!
3. Open courses provide an off site learning environment to discuss openly challenges & concerns which in some cases individuals feel more open to talk about when not in the company of colleagues.
4. Open courses represent a highly cost effective solution where only one or two individuals require development in a particular area.
5. Open courses give individuals a new set of skills and the opportunity to practice them in a ‘safe’ environment and build their confidence to apply the newly learnt skills back in their own workplace.

Tailored Training

1. Tailored training provides you with a comprehensive training needs analysis conducted in advance of any events we deliver on your behalf.
2. Tailored training enables us to include a wide range of disciplines within a single given event.
3. Tailored training will meet a specific requirement through the unique design to match the objectives of the individual or group.
4. Tailored training offers the possibility to design a specific programme for the whole organisation where everyone will be involved, this enables lasting change which is encouraged and supported internally & externally.
5. Tailored training can be designed specifically to a given company and industry with a choice of ‘best fit’ Learning Consultant
6. Tailored Training allows more flexibility with training dates and location.

I hope this was useful and if you would like to discuss either option in more detail please get in touch and I will be delighted to help.

This was no doubt partly due to the fact that we couldn’t really offer our clients anything along these lines, but more so due to my belief that this type of training was the very antithesis of everything that makes Phoenix special.

Our focus has always been on delivering practical, results based training where the emphasis is on what gets done differently once participants return to work, not on how many credits they have been awarded or what type of certificate they will receive.  In my experience, too much training is simply commissioned on the basis of what form of recognition the participants get.  Traditionally, this is meant to provide some form of motivation but if the training is not up to scratch, then no matter what they receive at the end, participant levels of engagement will still sink very quickly.

Having said all that, we have often wished for some kind of independent recognition for the quality of our delivery and content and who better to provide this than the Institute of Leadership & Management – the world’s best known accrediting body.

Through their endorsed award scheme, the ILM have provided us with the ideal solution.  Phoenix have been able to retain all the best aspects of our programmes’ content and delivery, whilst adding an assessment section that ensures the participants put into practice everything that they have learnt on the course.  In many ways, the additional assessment has really strengthened our offering and it fits perfectly with our results focussed training.  Now participants and their colleagues will see exactly how the learning has been used, as it has to be documented on a regular basis over a six week period.  A 500 word case study is also required which again will indicate the participants’ understanding of the content and how best to use it.

On successful completion of both the course and the assessment, participants are indeed awarded an ILM certificate however, for most participants this is only a subsidiary benefit.  The real prize is becoming a better manager and leader and being able to demonstrate this to their colleagues.

Phoenix currently deliver ILM Endorsed open courses in Essential Management Skills & Inspirational Leadership and are about to offer endorsed modular programmes in both Management & Leadership Skills.  Our unique approach, style of delivery and focus on results will remain as strong as ever, but with the ILM’s Endorsement our products are now even more attractive to a wide range of clients & participants across the world.

I will always believe that good training should be about improving performance and delivering results, but if you can achieve this and also provide participants with some kind of appropriate recognition then perhaps we have an ideal solution.

Written by Oliver Osmond – Sales Director

Our broad experience has taught us much, but today I’d like to focus on one key area – Buying Training.

Many organisations make the mistake of buying training as a reactive response to a perceived problem – i.e. arranging sales training if the figures have dropped off, or management training if staff morale is low. The problem with such reactive training is that it tends to be generic or (to coin an awful HR phrase), ‘sheep dip’ in nature, the kind of training that tackles the symptoms and not the cause. Typically this approach to training results in a short-term lift but changes nothing in the long term, effectively offering very little return on investment, and in the worst case, actually disengaging staff and hindering their development.

With that in mind here are four things to think about when arranging training:

1: What are you trying to achieve?

Before arranging any training, it is vital to have an understanding of what you want to achieve, and why. Put simply, the training must be designed to address the requirements of the participants. Sending sales people who struggle to close deals on a ‘closing skills’ course, may appear to be logical at first sight, but what if the underlying reason for their difficulty lies elsewhere – for example in poor questioning skills, or in the way they are managed? So talk to your staff, and talk to training providers, be open to new ideas and be ready to have your assumption challenged.

2: Train the right people!

You’d be amazed how often our trainers hear the phrase ‘my manager needs to go on this course.’ When thinking about training, you need to make sure that you are focusing on the right people. For example, if a sales team are underperforming, then it may mean that they need some help, but what about the sales manager? Is the team’s performance down to them? Perhaps the manager lacks the skills to motivate and support their staff effectively. If this is the case, then all the sales training in the world will not address the root cause. The same goes for middle managers, ask yourself, can any of their issues be traced upwards? What behaviours do the senior management team display, and are any of the negatives trickling down. Senior people can find it hard to admit that they’d like some support, but there’s nothing remedial about good training, personal development can only be positive.

3: Make the training relevant!

Sadly we often meet clients who have previously suffered poor training. Sometimes this is down to weak delivery, but often the cause is simpler – the training was not participant relevant. If participants cannot see how to link what they are learning back to their own roles, then at best they may find the training interesting, but not particularly useful, and at worst they may be bored and irritated. In order to be effective, training must be made relevant on a personal level. In practice this means effective pre-course consultancy – ensuring the provider understand participant requirements as well as organisational ones. By keeping group sizes small you can ensure that participants are able to fully engage with the trainer, and understand how to apply what they are learning to their workplace.

4: The importance of support.

Before embarking on any training, whether it be a one day course or a full blown programme, we’d recommend that you think very carefully about how you plan to support the training. Effective support is absolutely key to the success of any training event; without support it is almost impossible to embed learning and sustain any long term improvement in performance. Staff should come back from any training event feeling excited, motivated and eager to put new ideas and skills to the test. Invariably not everything new they try will work first time, they may meet resistance from colleagues, lack the confidence to make changes, or just struggle to transfer classroom learnt skills to the reality of the workplace. If there are no systems in place to support newly trained staff, then the vast majority of them will lapse back in to old habits, effectively rendering the training worthless. On the other hand, well supported staff will maintain momentum and continue to improve and develop. There are many ways of providing support, but in our experience there are two broad methods which prove particularly effective when combined:

Firstly, ensure that management are fully aware of what the training entailed. This may mean just reading the course agenda, arranging a debrief with the provider, with the stakeholders, or just pending time speaking with their staff about the training. Only by understanding what the training entailed can managers hope to provide valuable support. There’s nothing more damaging to training effectiveness than a manager who appears disinterested, or simply expects their staff to improve post-training, without offering to support them!

Secondly, ensure that staff take responsibility for their own development. At Phoenix we ask participants to complete a personal action plan. This doesn’t have to be anything major, just a commitment to trying out some new ideas or making a few changes on the back of the training. Ideally these plans should be shared with line managers and followed up on – if the participant has met their goals then this is an opportunity for praise (and a great indicator of success), if they are struggling then it’s an opportunity to provide further support and encourage development.

James Ashburnham, Client Manager, Phoenix Training