Friday 30 March 2007

Leadership and Football - a worrying survey

A recent Franklin Covey Harris Poll surveyed 23,000 people in key industries and the results were staggering.

If the results from the poll were for a football team, you would end up with the following scenario:

  • Only 4 in 11 players know what the objective of the game is
  • 7 in 11 players don't know which goal is theirs
  • 9 in 11 players don't care
  • 9 in 11 don't know what position they play in the team
  • Only 1 player feels that the players would be held accountable for the team's performance
  • 1 in 11 are actively trying to score goals for the other team

These are truly sobering facts. The resulting organisational cost doesn't even bear thinking about.

If you want to ensure you are providing your leaders with effective training, take a look at our course 'Leading Effective Teams'. It's only £53, even Leeds United can afford that!

Thursday 22 March 2007

Achieving Sales on the Telephone - Effective outbound calls

The key to making effective outbound calls is structure. The most effective telephone sales person will have a set process for contacting customers and will stick to it, no matter what the temptation to alter their methods. Most outbound call agents will use a ‘working list’ to contact customers, it is important that you approach this list methodically and the following approach will help you to remain effective.

Define your ideal customer – The best way to predict who your future customers will be is to understand who your past customers have been. For instance, if by looking at your past client base you realise that the majority of your orders have come from the 18 – 30 year old bracket, then this would likely be the best people to focus your attention on. Of course age isn’t the only consideration to make. You may also want to look at geography, past buying patterns, interests etc.

Develop a good ‘script’ – A good script or series of specific questions is the most important thing you can do to improve your effectiveness when selling on the telephone. This becomes even more important when you are making outbound calls.

Some people resist the idea of using a script. They argue that it is better to sound natural and this will help build the relationship with the customer. The trick is to use the script as a series of prompts or reminder of what to say rather than reading it verbatim. This way you can concentrate on how you say things as opposed to what you are saying. More importantly, it allows you to focus on what the customer is saying and helps you tailor your conversation to suit.

The script should be seen as a method of allowing you to be flexible in your approach as opposed to being a restraint.

Eliminate – The trouble with making outbound sales calls is you usually have absolutely no idea of the level of interest of the recipient until you have called them. It may be that the first ten people you call are all interested in what you have to sell. Alternatively, it may be the last ten! You role is simply to find those people that are interested and temporarily eliminate those that are not. It is useful to methodical in your approach to calling customers.

It is tempting to disregard the customers that you couldn’t reach or did not show an immediate interest. However, a good salesperson will ensure that they follow-up on all of these opportunities. In order to ensure you keep track of the customers you have previously called, it is useful to create a system of note-taking. If a customer is not available then you should make a good clear note of this next to their contact details, or you could mark their level of interest from 1 – 3. By using this system you will ensure that you are fully prepared when it is time to call them again. Although this may seem tedious, it is a lot better than having to call a prospect ‘cold’.

Persist – A good telephone salesperson will develop a thick skin throughout their career. You will need to accept rejection as part of the job and consider each new call as a new opportunity. Even the most hardy individual will get despondent at times, it is useful to set your expectations early on and realise that you will not be able to convert the large majority of calls you make. This does not mean that the customer will never buy from you, just not today.

By making clear notes on your call list, you will be able to re-work an old list and even convert some previous rejections. The key to outbound sales is to never give up!


You can find valuable training material on Achieving Sales on the Telephone on our website Trainer Bubble. These course materials include everything you need to develop your sales team and can be downloaded instantly.

Tuesday 20 March 2007

Free Training Course Material Offer for Charities

If you are a training representative for a UK registered charity or charitable institution, Trainer Bubble are very pleased to offer you one free training course pack from any of our current collection of training resources from our website Trainer Bubble. If you would like to apply for this offer, please contact our sales team, head your email Charity offer and inform us of which training course you would like for free.

Please note: We will require proof of your UK charity status to provide this offer.

You can view our full list of materials at Training Products.

Sunday 18 March 2007

Communication - A common problem

Communication is one of the key problems areas for businesses today, but hopefully things don't get as bad as the story below... (click image to view full size).

Sunday 11 March 2007

Continuous Improvement - One small step...

There's a true story about a group of Japanese managers of a steel manufacturing plant that visited a UK plant. Both plants were very similar only the Japanese one was making profit and the UK one was losing money.

At the end of the visit, the owner of the UK plant turned to the Japanese boss and said, "There's obviously something you've got right, that we haven't. What 's the big difference?"

The head of the Japanese steel plant politely turned and said, "There is not one big difference, but we do have one or two suggestions..." He then proceeded to list 124 ways the manufacturing plant could improve! An example was this...

When the blast-furnace doors opened to let a steel ingot roll out, the Japanese doors opened two inches less than the UK doors. So less heat was lost and it took less time (and money) to heat the furnace back up again. It wasn't much, but over time the saving was worthwhile. Added to the other 123 examples, the changes made a profit.

The moral?

Stop looking for the one big thing that's wrong with your business or even your life and realise that sometimes it's the little things that make a big difference.

Wednesday 7 March 2007

Training Game Idea - Coming up trumps!

I'm always on the look out for new training games to add to my training courses and I just recently had a great idea for helping participants learn a topic that includes technical data or a lot of information to it.

You probably remember the popular game Trumps. Well this training game is based on that theory. The instructions are as follows...

1. Cut out 20 or so playing card sized pieces of white card (you may create more or less as needed).

2. At the top of each card, write the name of the topic you wish participants to learn about (we will use the mythical 'Peculiar Bank' Credit Card as our example)

4. Write the categories shown below on each of the cards and place the 'facts' next to each category. For Example:

5. Create a card for each topic you wish the participants to learn about (in our case we would select different companies credit cards)

6. Introduce the cards at the correct time of the session.

7. Shuffle the cards and hand at least one to each of the 'players'

8. The first person should pick a category and read out their score

9. Moving round the group, each player reads out their score for that category. The person with the highest score wins the round and collects all the losing cards. They then put the cards to the bottom of their pile and select the category for the next round.

10. The winner is the person who ends up with all the cards.

Getting across a lot of information can often be difficult during training and it is easy to fall into the trap of just 'telling' the participants. This training game will add a bit of fun and help the participants get the learning in a relaxed way.

I hope you have fun playing!


You can find many other free training games and tools on our website. Click the logo at the top of this page to visit us.

Thursday 1 March 2007

Achieving Your Goals - Keeping things on track

Apparently when riding the underground people look up at the map and check their progress on average every 40 seconds. Most of these people know exactly where they are going and when they will get there, so why do they do it? I suspect the answer has a lot to do with the need to track advancement and ensure that they are indeed reaching their destination, which is a bit strange considering they are on a rail and the likelihood of them not getting there is pretty much zero.

Now let’s translate this to our own goals, whether they are in life, work, sport or whatever, we are consistently told how important they are and I am sure that most people set them in one way or another. However, the question is this…

‘How often do you track your progress and ensure that you are indeed reaching your destination?’

Individuals, businesses and even parents have become great at developing goals and targets, whilst not only ensuring they are smart, but also placing them in a gorgeous laminated folder and filing them under ‘G’. The same can also often be said for business strategies. People seem to enjoy setting them (or more likely feel they have to), but when it comes to implementation something falls down.

Let’s go back to that underground journey. Imagine you realise that you’re on the wrong train and are not going to make your destination. What do you do? Well of course, you would get off and find the next available train that gets you to your stop. Maybe you would need to adapt your journey a bit and perhaps even get more than one train, but it’s far better than staying on the original train and ending up somewhere you don't want to be.

Seems obvious really, doesn’t it? Yet, in business and in life we continually fail to do this very thing. It’s as if we set our goals and then forget we ever did them. Only once we’ve reached our destination (the wrong one) do we turn around and look for someone to blame.

You see it couldn’t be your fault; you set the goal, so the hard part was done, surely? Well no, just as the driver is not to blame for the fact you are on the wrong track, your team, your friends, your enemies are not to blame for your failure to achieve your goal. If you didn’t check your progress, it’s your fault you end up in the wrong place.


Visit Trainer Bubble, where you can download complete course materials on Commerciality, which focuses on developing business goals. At just £53 you can't afford not to!