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!

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!

Understanding People's Behaviour - Banging your head against a wall?

I just came home to find my 13 month old son giggling loudly to himself whilst banging his head against the living room wall. My immediate response was to say, "Son, you're an idiot." and only once I'd managed to distract him from this pain inducing activity did I consider the possible consequences of my words.

Maybe this one time I was right to call him an idiot. Certainly banging your head against a wall is not the action you would expect from a sound mind. However, let's consider I call my son an idiot consistently over the next few developmental years. The likely outcome is.......an idiot.

You see everyone's behaviour is driven by their own self-image, and that self-image is built around the adult influences they receive in their childhood. These influences come not only from parents, but grandparents, uncles, aunts, teachers, sports coaches and pretty much anyone that they have regular contact with.

It is these influences that create our attitudes and ultimately our behaviours. For example; somebody that has always been told that they should stand up for themselves may ultimately become aggressive when placed in a stressful situation. Or somebody that is encouraged to always share and make others happy may develop a need to please people and will display submissive behaviour at times. I experienced this last type of behaviour with an old colleague of mine. Whenever we held a meeting he would wonder why he always walked away with more action points than anyone else!

Think about your own experience. Is there something you believe about yourself, which has been influenced by others? You may find that hard to do, as these beliefs have become a part of you and are shaping your behaviour all the time. However, they are there in all of us in varying forms.

Now, these drivers are not in themselves a problem. We all need drivers in our life, without them we would not achieve anything. It is when these drivers become negative or destructive that issues arise. There may have been times in your own experience where a person’s behaviour has seemed out of control or perhaps it was just that their driver was conflicting with yours.

So what can you do?

One thing you have to accept is that every person’s behaviour makes perfect sense to them at the time. Nobody sets out to make their life difficult and often it is because they feel they have no alternative in the given situation. No matter how bizarre the person’s action seems, it is rarely something they have manufactured.

Now you know that these drivers exist. The best thing you can do is start to identify them in yourself. Realise when you are being driven by an inner desire to react in a certain way and prepare for it. Once you know why you might be acting in a certain way, it becomes a lot easier to adapt and understand the consequences in an effort to minimise their impact.

Next, be prepared to spot behaviour drivers in others. If you can tell that they are being driven by an inner belief, consider how you might be able to have conversations that will provide antidotes. Often we do not consider how we present a message before we do so. Taking a little time to consider how the message is going to be received can really save a lot of time in the long run…otherwise your just banging your head against a wall.

You can find training course materials that help you get the best out of people from our website www.trainerbubble.com.

Don't lose your marbles - Make a positive difference to your life.

I've never been one to get over losing easily. In fact, I distinctly remember pushing a marble up my brother's nose as a dirty faced 8 year old because he beat me at Ker-plunk. Not that I was any good at the game, I just didn't have the patience for it.

Maybe that's what makes losing so hard to take, knowing that you didn't really have the skill to win in the first place and you are just kidding yourself to even try.......

Of course the paragraph above is absolute piffle. However, it is the same message that is played in a lot of people's minds every single time they fail. The truth is, failing should be seen as a positive, a chance to grow, an opportunity. Losing just takes you another step closer to getting it right (as long as you learn from it).

That's a lot easier said than done, I hear you cry, and you're right, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. I can think of many things I've 'lost' throughout my life; football matches, card games, driving tests, job interviews and that special first date with Claire Martin in class 4c. At the time they all affected me in their own little way (particularly Claire Martin in class 4c, but I don't want to go into that right now), there was nothing fun about the loss and there shouldn't be. What matters is what happens afterwards.

Henry Ford once said "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right".

When I first read that quote I think I re-read it five or six times. It's not the easiest statement to make sense of, but it's one of the truest things I ever read. It sums up, for me, the fact that so many of us allow our beliefs to become our drivers and eventually these drivers become 'us'.

Stop and think about yourself and how many restrictive beliefs you have developed that are stopping you from really achieving what you want to in life. Go on, do it, stop, right now...and think.

Now consider where those beliefs came from. How much truth do they really hold? Now, now, don't start making excuses, or backing up the data with weak support...truly consider the facts of the matter. I would like to be so bold as to suggest there is not a lot of real factual evidence to back up your claims at all.

The good thing is, it's not too late to change, you just have to want to bad enough. So give it a go. It may feel uncomfortable at first, you may start to feel those old beliefs creeping back into your head. Blow them away, dust down the cobwebs of negativity and believe in yourself once again. I know you can do it and you need to know it too.

You see, I know that it works, I did it for me. I shrugged off my old beliefs and started afresh. I still fail, but I learn and move on and if people don't like the new positive me...I stick marbles up their nose.

Take a look at 'Make a Positive Difference to Your Life' a course developed by the Trainer Bubble team. The feedback from trainer's that have used it has been inspirational. It's only £53 for the complete course materials.

Team focus - How to re-set the sights.

I was at a training event recently and during the opening 'set the scene' intro the senior director in the company asked the group to list all the things that were stopping them providing a good service to their customers.

The team took great pleasure in listing all the concerns: Morale, time, work pressures, customer issues, the products etc etc.

The director gleefully added each and every comment to the flipchart and when no more issues were given he looked up and said.."I have only one problem with this list......." He let the question hang in the air for a few seconds and when the team's started to look around non-plussed, he said, "You're not on it!"

It may not have been what they wanted to hear, but Wow, did it have an effect.

Identifying a team members complacency is often the key to re-generating a workforce, it's a common problem and one that can have disastrous effects. In my experience, there tends to be two main reasons behind it.

1. The team member has been doing extremely well and has taken their eye off the ball.

2. The team member is not doing as well as his counterparts and so feel de-motivated and unable to achieve.

In both situations the key is to encourage the team member to 'buy-in' to the business once again. They need to appreciate the consequences of their action, or in-action, and learn to change.

So how do you do it?

The best approach is to identify the team member's drivers, that is, what it is that makes them want to succeed. For some, it will be the desire to get away from how they currently feel, for others, it will be the hope of reaching a better future state. Once you know what approach your particular team member prefers, you can encourage them to work towards, or away from it.

Of course it's not always easy to identify a person's drivers without asking them. So that's exactly what I suggest you do! You don't have to be so upfront with the question, using coaching as a method of understanding is a great way to achieve this.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that through a good use of questioning and an even better use of listening you will be able to not only identify your team's drivers, but also help them establish a need to change.

Why not re-focus your management team with our great one day training materials pack on 'Leading Effective Teams', or help develop your manager's coaching skills with 'Coaching Skills for Managers'. At just £53 each, they provide a perfect solution to your management team's development.