Building an Effective Pipeline

  • Understanding Marketing, Sales and Business Development
  • What Do You Need to Know?
  • What Are You Currently Doing?
  • Who Generates Referrals
  • Sources for Networking
  • Creating the Best Value Proposition
  • Gaining Referrals through Partnerships
  • Making Referrals through Organizations
  • Filling and Tracking the Pipeline

10 Soft Skills You Need

  • Discuss how soft skills are important to success in the workplace
  • Understand the 10 key soft skills everyone should have
  • Use soft skills to relate more effectively to others in the workplace
  • Understand how to use soft skills to communicate, problem-solve, and resolve conflict
  • Apply soft skills to specific situations

Strategically Networking for Success – The Right Way

  • The Benefits of Networking
  • Why Networking Skills are Crucial
  • Success All Starts with Your Attitude
  • Using Your Energy Wisely
  • Tips for Working the Room
  • It’s More Skill Than Natural Talent
  • The 30 Second Introduction
  • Tips for Working a Table
  • Great Ways to Maximize Your Networking
  • Strategies that Work in Any Room

Client Review Process – Gaining More Referrals from Clients

  • Looking for New Business
  • Determine Your Niche
  • Making a List
  • Prospecting Databases
  • Industry Directories & Publications
  • Introductions vs Direct Contact
  • Looking for Introductions
  • Asking Clients for Referrals
  • A Proper Introduction Please
  • Client Relations Program

Communication Strategies – Connecting with Others

  • Identify barriers to communication and how to overcome them
  • Develop non-verbal and para-verbal communication skills
  • Listen actively and effectively
  • Ask good questions
  • Establish common ground with others
  • Use email introductions for new business
  • Follow up with people you meet while networking
  • Maximize one-to-one meetings with referral sources
  • Reconnect with people periodically to keep in touch
  • Serving clients as a trusted advisor, not just a service provider

Closing More Leads – Table to Close

  • Common Sales Approach
  • Four Levels of Conversation
  • 7 Ways to Listen Better
  • Asking Good Questions
  • 7 Ways to Make People Feel Important
  • 9 Acts of Strategies for Sales Success
  • 7 Steps of a Sale
  • The Five Buying Decisions
  • Handling Objections
  • Closing the Deal

Time Management for More Business

  • First things first, setting goals
  • SMART goals
  • Prioritizing goals
  • Planning Wisely
  • Chunk, block and tackle
  • Why we procrastinate
  • Organizing your workplace
  • Setting a ritual
  • Meeting management
  • Scheduling your time wisely

Roadmap to Success – Developing Your Plan

  • Wheel of Life
  • SMART Goals
  • Core Values
  • Purpose
  • Niche
  • 10-Year Target
  • Growth Strategy
  • 3-Year Picture
  • 1-Year Plan
  • Rocks

Delivering Constructive Criticism

  • Understand when feedback should take place
  • Learn how to prepare and plan to deliver constructive criticism
  • Determine the appropriate atmosphere in which it should take place
  • Identify the proper steps to be taken during the session
  • Know how emotions and certain actions can negatively impact the effects of the session
  • Recognize the importance of setting goals and the method used to set them
  • Uncover the best techniques for following up with the employee after the session

Business Ethics

  • Define and understand ethics.
  • Understand the benefits of ethics.
  • Create strategies to implement ethics at work.
  • Recognize social and business responsibility.
  • Identify ethical and unethical behavior.
  • Learn how to make ethical decisions and lead with integrity.

Call Center Training

  • Define and understand call center strategies
  • Identify different types of buying motivations
  • Create SMART Goals
  • Familiarize myself with strategies that sharpen effective communication
  • Use proper phone etiquette
  • Set benchmarks

Employee Recruitment

  • Defining recruitment
  • Understanding the selection process.
  • Recognizing the GROW model and how to set goals
  • Preparing for the interview and question process
  • Identifying and avoiding bias when making offers
  • Discovering ways to retain talent and measure growth

Virtual Team Building and Management

  • Know the keys to establishing a virtual team
  • Learn how to hold effective meetings and group sessions
  • Learn effective ways to communicate with team members
  • Use tools to build trust and confidence among employees
  • Know how to handle poor performing employees
  • Know how to manage a virtual team during any project

Work Life Balance

  • Explain the benefits of work life balance
  • Recognize the signs of an unbalanced life
  • Identify employer resources for a balanced lifestyle
  • Improve time management and goal setting
  • Use the most effective work methods for you
  • Create balance at work and at home
  • Manage stress

Overcoming Sales Objectives

  • Understand the factors that contribute to customer objections
  • Define different objections
  • Recognize different strategies to overcome objections
  • Identify the real objections
  • Find points of interest
  • Learn how to deflate objections and close the sale

Social Intelligence

  • Be aware of our own behaviors
  • Learn to be empathetic with others
  • Know tools for active listening
  • Effectively communicate interpersonally
  • Recognize various social cues
  • Determine appropriate conversation topics
  • Know various forms of body language

Customer Service

  • State what customer service means in relation to all your customers, both internal and external
  • Recognize how your attitude affects customer service
  • Identify your customers’ needs
  • Use outstanding customer service to generate return business
  • Build good will through in-person customer service
  • Provide outstanding customer service over the phone
  • Connect with customers through online tools
  • Deal with difficult customers

Assertiveness & Self-Confidence

  • Define assertiveness and self-confidence, and list the four styles of communication
  • Describe the types of negative thinking, and how one can overcome negative thoughts
  • Explain the difference between listening and hearing, and understand the importance of body language and questioning skills in communication
  • Define the importance of goal setting, and practice setting SMART goals for assertive behavior
  • Utilize methodologies for understanding your worth — and the use of positive self-talk
  • List reasons why a pleasing appearance and body language are critical for creating a strong first impression
  • Practice sending positive communications phrased as “I-Messages”
  • Use the STAR model to make your case during a presentation challenge

Business Etiquette

  • Define etiquette and provide an example of how etiquette can be of value to a company or organization
  • Understand the guidelines on how to make effective introductions
  • Identify the 3 C’s of a good impression
  • Identify at least one way to minimize nervousness while in social situations
  • Understand how to use a business card effectively
  • Identify and practice at least one way to remember names
  • Identify the 3 steps in giving a handshake
  • Enumerate the four levels of conversation and provide an example for each
  • Understand place settings, napkin etiquette and basic table manners
  • Understand the protocol in ordering in a restaurant, handling alcohol in a business meal, paying the bill and tipping
  • Understand basic guidelines when it comes to the proper form of address, grammar standards and use of acronyms in e-mails
  • Understand basic guidelines in the use of the telephone, voicemail and cell phone
  • State the difference between a formal and an informal letter
  • Create an effective ‘Thank You’ note
  • Understand the meaning of colors in dressing for success
  • Differentiate among the dressy casual, semi-formal, formal and black tie dress code
  • Understand basic guidelines in international etiquette

Business Succession Planning

  • Define business succession planning and its role in your company
  • Lay the groundwork to develop a succession plan
  • The importance of mentorship
  • Define and use a SWOT analysis to set goals
  • Create a plan, assign roles, and execute the plan
  • Communicate to develop support and manage change
  • Anticipate obstacles, and evaluate and adapt goals and plans
  • Characterize success

Business Writing

  • Gain better awareness of common spelling and grammar issues in business writing
  • Review basic concepts in sentence and paragraph construction
  • Know the basic structure of agendas, email messages, business letters, business proposals, and business reports
  • Know tips and techniques to use when deciding the most appropriate format to use for agendas, email messages, business letters, business proposals, and business reports
  • Know tips and techniques in writing agendas, email messages, business letters, business proposals, and business reports
  • Gain an overview of Request for Proposals, Projections, Executive Summaries, and Business Case.
  • Define proofreading and understand techniques in improving proofreading skills
  • Define peer review and list ways peer review can help improve business writing skills
  • List guidelines in printing and publishing business writing

Coaching and Mentoring

  • Define coaching, mentoring and the GROW model
  • Identify the steps necessary in defining the current state or reality of your employee’s situation
  • Identify the steps needed in defining options for your employee and turn them into a preliminary plan
  • Identify the steps in developing a finalized plan or wrapping it up and getting your employee motivated to accomplish those plans
  • Identify the benefits of building and fostering trust with your employee
  • Identify the steps in giving effective feedback while maintaining trust
  • Identify and overcoming common obstacles to the growth and development of your employee
  • Identify when the coaching is at an end and transitioning your employee to other growth opportunities
  • Identify the difference between mentoring and coaching, using both to enable long-term development through a positive relationship with your employee

Change Management

  • List the steps necessary for preparing a change strategy and building support for the change
  • Describe the WIFM – the individual motivators for change
  • Relate the five dimensions of the ADKAR model for understanding change on an individual level
  • Use needed components to develop a change management and communications plans, and to list implementation strategies
  • Employ strategies for gathering data, addressing concerns and issues, evaluating options and adapting a change direction
  • Utilize methods for leading change project status meetings, celebrating a successful change implementation, and sharing the results and benefits
  • Describe the four states of Appreciative Inquiry, its purposes, and sample uses in case studies
  • Use strategies for aligning people with the change, appealing to emotions and facts
  • Describe the importance of resiliency in the context of change, and employ strategies the change leader and individual change participant can use to bolster resiliency
  • Define the importance of flexibility in the context of change, and demonstrate methods the change leader and individual change participant can use to foster flexibility

Conflict Resolution

  • Understand what conflict and conflict resolution mean
  • Understand all phases of the conflict resolution process
  • Understand the five main styles of conflict resolution
  • Be able to adapt the process for all types of conflicts
  • Be able to break out parts of the process and use those tools to prevent conflict
  • Be able to use basic communication tools
  • Be able to use anger & stress management techniques

Creative Problem Solving

  • Understand problems and the creative problem solving process
  • Indentify types of information to gather and key questions to ask in problem solving
  • Identify the importance of defining a problem correctly
  • Identify and use four different problem definition tools
  • Write concrete problem statements
  • Use basic brainstorming tools to generate ideas for solutions
  • Use idea generating tools, such as affinity diagrams, word chaining, the box method, the six thinking hats, and the blink method
  • Evaluate potential solutions against criteria, including cost/benefit analysis and group voting
  • Perform a final analysis to select a solution
  • Understand the roles that fact and intuition play in selecting a solution
  • Understand the need to refine the shortlist and redefine it
  • Understand how to identify the tasks and resources necessary to implement solutions
  • Evaluate and adapt solutions to reality
  • Follow up with solution implementation to celebrate successes and identify improvements

Emotional Intelligence

  • Define and practice self-management, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation and empathy
  • Understand, use and manage your emotions
  • Verbally communicate with others
  • Successfully communicate with others in a non-verbal manner
  • Identify the benefits of emotional intelligence
  • Relate emotional intelligence to the workplace
  • Balance optimism and pessimism
  • Effectively impact others

Facilitation Skills

  • Define facilitation and identify its purpose and benefits
  • Clarify the role and focus of a facilitator
  • Differentiate between process and content in the context of a group discussion.
  • Provide tips in choosing and preparing for facilitation
  • Identify a facilitator’s role when managing groups in each of Tuckman and Jensen’s stages of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing
  • Identify ways a facilitator can help a group reach a consensus: from encouraging participation to choosing a solution
  • Provide guidelines in dealing with disruptions, dysfunctions and difficult people in groups
  • Define what interventions are, when they are appropriate and how to implement them

Generation Gaps in the Workplace

  • History behind generation gaps
  • What are traditionalists
  • What are baby boomers
  • What are Generation Xers
  • What are Generation Yers
  • Differences between each type of generation
  • Finding common ground among the generations
  • Conflict management
  • Leveraging the benefits of generation gaps at work

Meeting Management

  • Planning and Preparing
  • Identifying the Participants
  • How to choose the time and place
  • How to create the agenda
  • How to set up the meeting space
  • How to incorporate your electronic options
  • Meeting Roles and Responsibilities
  • Use an agenda
  • Chairing a Meeting
  • How to deal with disruptions
  • How to professionally deal with personality conflicts
  • How to take minutes
  • How to make the most of your meeting using games, activities and prizes

Interpersonal Skills

  • Understand the difference between hearing and listening
  • Know some ways to improve the verbal skills of asking questions and communicating with power
  • Understand what is ‘non-verbal communication’ and how it can enhance interpersonal relationships
  • Identify the skills needed in starting a conversation, moving a conversation along, and progressing to higher levels of conversation
  • Identify ways of creating a powerful introduction, remembering names and managing situations when you’ve forgotten someone’s name
  • Understand how seeing the other side, building bridges and giving in without giving up can improve skills in influencing other people
  • Understand how the use of facts and emotions can help bring people to your side.
  • Identify ways of sharing one’s opinions constructively
  • Learn tips in preparing for a negotiation, opening a negotiation, bargaining, and closing a negotiation
  • Learn tips in making an impact through powerful first impressions, situation assessment, and being zealous without being offensive