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Happy New Year!

A new year, new challenges, but also new opportunities - which is exactly where this newsletter can help!.

Chris Barrnard, Managing Director, P-tek Development Solutions Ltd

Robbie Spencer - a disarming man

The founder of 'Disarm From Within', Robbie Spencer is a qualified anger and conflict management facilitator, and also works as a counsellor. With a graduate certificate in counselling from the University of East London, he is trained and qualified as a prison service nursing officer, occupational health service first-aid instructor, ethical care controller, and a de-escalation and restraint instructor.

Robbie has written and facilitated many training programmes for both the public and private sectors, and has been involved in training and conflict reduction and personal safety for over 20 years. It is from this background that his desire to help people work more safely was born.

For more information, contact P-tek Development Solutions Ltd on 08448 011 733 by fax on 07092 029439 or by e-mail

Top tips for January

Ari Galper: Lessons from Toby... timeless wisdom for the New Year!

In the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on an important part of my life that has taught me some lessons I wanted to share with you.

This holiday season really began for me and my wife Michelle on 14 December – our son Toby’s second birthday. We had a party for him with about 15 other little kids aged from about two to five.

It was a great afternoon. Some of the kids played together, while others played on their own. And there in the middle of it all was Toby, riding his little red-and-yellow car around the room and climbing up his climbing steps just like all the other kids – doing his own thing, but obviously feeling connected to them.

Except that he is a bit different. You see, Toby was born with Down’s Syndrome. Some children with Down’s Syndrome have serious physical disabilities and developmental problems. We’re fortunate because Toby is physically healthy except for some low muscle tone. And he learns and does things more slowly than other kids.

But what hit me during his party was how naturally he seemed to fit in. Although he’s a little boy who’s ‘different’, on his birthday, he was just one of the other kids and they treated him like anyone else, just as Michelle and I do.

The party made me think about a lot of things – for example, how we all have expectations about how life is going to be and what happens when things don’t turn out the way we thought they would. When Toby was born and we discovered that he had Down’s Syndrome, I suppose it was natural for us to feel overwhelmed at first.

But, as I was watching him playing at his party, I realised how much I’ve learned since he came into our lives. Here are some of what I’ve started to call ‘Toby’s Lessons’ that may help your new year get on the right track:

Live in the present moment

Although Toby is different, he’s also just like every little kid before they start learning to spend most of their time in the past or the future the way we do as adults. At his party, he wasn’t wondering when it would be over or what would happen next. He was just in the present moment with the other kids – riding around, eating his cake, enjoying watching them.

So one of the most important things I’ve learned is that, when I’m with him, I have to let go of my other concerns and just be there. I really value being with him – seeing his delights, his upsets, how he sees things and interacts with them – and I’ve realised how much I miss if I’m not in the present moment too.

Slow down and focus

Because Toby does things more slowly, I have to listen and pay close attention to him. If I start speeding on ahead, the connection between us gets lost. So he has taught me to focus and slow down. Remember the ‘good old days’ before we all got used to the idea that we should be multitasking at every moment? Well, Toby can’t multitask. He does one thing at a time and more slowly than other kids, but he does everything with total focus. That’s been such a valuable lesson for me.

Don’t let things get to you

Toby has also taught me to not let things get to me so much He seldom gets upset, he laughs at everything and he basically loves everyone he meets. He somehow seems to intuitively respond to them as whole human beings because he’s too young to do any judging.

Stop judging – none of us is perfect, but we’re all unique

Toby’s openness and lack of judgment has made me think a lot about what we tend to think of as ‘normal’ – how our expectations and preconceptions sometimes blind us to what’s there in front of us. I know that sometimes other people may see that Toby looks ‘different’ and perceive him as not being ‘capable’, when in a lot of ways he just does things more slowly. But people who don’t know him may judge him as ‘less than. . .’ rather than someone with special, unique qualities.

This is ironic because aren’t all of us vulnerable to being judged as ‘less than. . .’ in some area? After all, as human beings we all have our ‘imperfections’. We want other people to be open to learning who we are, just as I want to be open to learning who Toby is, and I hope that other people will be open to that too.

I guess the main point I want to make is, maybe it’s time for us to let go of ways of thinking about how we view the world and other people that may be holding us back.

At his birthday party, Toby was just like all the other kids and also as unique as they all were, and as we all are. Maybe if we can learn from him how to be a little more in the moment, with more patience and openness, and to recognise that we’re just like everyone else – and also uniquely ourselves – we’ll find it easier to reconnect with the best parts of ourselves as human beings.

In that way, maybe Toby is the way we all ideally could be.

Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Game™, makes cold calling painless and simple. Learn his free cold-calling secrets even the sales gurus don’t know. To receive your ten free audio mini-lessons, visit www.UnlockTheGame.com.

For more information, contact Ari Galper on 020 8150 6147 or by e-mail. His website is another good source.

Bernadette Doyle: How to avoid feast or famine

Let’s rewind the clock to 1995. I was working as a salesperson for a telecoms company, selling a service that competed with BT.

I was responsible for opening new accounts, which meant picking up the phone and appointment setting, presenting the offer at the subsequent meeting, and then closing the sale on the spot, or following up until I did.

The importance of constantly prospecting for new business was drilled into me by my managers. Most of the sales team HATED this aspect of the role, but, in all honesty, I didn’t find it too difficult. I understood the link between having a full pipeline of prospects and achieving my sales targets, so I spent at least one full day each week just focused on prospecting for new business.

Fast-forward 18 months and now I was my own boss, aiming to sell sales training to corporate clients. Many people warned me that the hardest part of my new role would be finding new clients, but I wasn’t daunted – after all, I had won awards for generating new business in my previous role. I knew how to get in the door and I knew how to close the sale when I got in there.

I was quickly brought back down to earth with a ‘bump’!

Overnight, the rules of the game had changed.

My prospecting skills had not deserted me, nor had my willingness to pick up the phone. But now I had three hats to wear. I had to prospect, close the sale AND deliver the training.

Now, whilst I had the skills to do all three, the time was a different challenge altogether. The main problem was that I only got paid for the time I spent DELIVERING training, whereas previously my employer had picked up the tab (via my salary) for the time I spent prospecting on the phone.

The other challenge I encountered was that, whilst my prospecting efforts did yield appointments, I had a fair degree of resistance to deal with once I got ‘in the door’. Sales directors are not noted for their open mindedness towards sales trainers and at just 26 I did not have a bulging testimonial file. This didn’t mean that closing the sale was impossible, but it took a lot more effort than simply signing up a new customer at a first meeting. Writing proposals and then following them up was time consuming, and, once again, was not time that I was paid for.

So, all in all, striking a balance between time spent prospecting and selling and time spent delivering paid work was quite a challenge indeed. And it’s a challenge that every self-employed service provider can relate to. It’s the main reason why people struggle with ‘feast or famine’ when it comes to marketing themselves. When you’re working with a client, you’re not marketing and selling, and that means that when the contract comes to an end, you can find yourself in a very sticky situation indeed.

The good news is that there is a way to avoid this ‘feast or famine’ syndrome.

It starts with recognising that ‘traditional’ prospecting methods are not suitable for the self-employed service provider. They simply cost us too much in time and energy.

As an employed salesperson, I relished sifting through a list of ‘suspects’ and uncovering the real prospects within that list, but, as a self-employed person, this was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford. I needed to find a way of sifting prospects WITHOUT it taking hours or days of my time.

As an employed salesperson, the techniques I was taught for prospecting were what I now describe as ‘one-to-one’ prospecting techniques. I needed to replace them with ‘one-to-many’ prospecting techniques which enabled me to simultaneously reach large numbers of prospects.

I quickly realised that, when a prospect calls YOU first, you don’t encounter the scepticism and resistance that you get when you call them, so I needed to learn how to position myself in the marketplace in such a way that my target audience could easily identify me and seek me out.

And I learned the hard way that, when you ‘chase’ business as a self-employed service provider, if you’re not careful, you can come across as desperate and needy. As an employed salesperson, it was considered acceptable for me to make follow-up calls after a meeting, but those follow-up calls were received differently when the service I was selling was ME! Understandably, the prospect couldn’t help but wonder, ‘well, if she’s as good as she claims to be, how come her calendar isn’t already full?’

It took me time, but I discovered a whole new way of marketing and selling that today forms the foundation of the ‘Client Magnets’ approach.

And it worked. Within a matter of months, I received a call from the director of an international company – with over 70 offices worldwide. He wanted to hire me and pay me to visit five of his offices around the world to deliver my training.

From starting out with no track record, little credibility, I ended up attracting clients such as BT, Norwich Union, Sony and AIG.

And, in every instance, THEY called me first. When I heard other training consultants talk about ‘feast and famine’ I was genuinely puzzled because I didn’t experience it.

So my message to you in this article is that you can break free of ‘feast and famine’. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself, are you trying to use prospecting and selling techniques which aren’t appropriate for YOUR business? If so, it doesn’t matter what the sales experts say, you need to drop them. As the old saying goes, ‘if what you’re doing isn’t working, do ANYTHING else’!

And, if you’re ready to discover a new way of attracting business, which doesn’t drain your time on ineffective prospecting techniques, then check out my Masterclass ‘How to Magnetically Attract Corporate Clients’.

Bernadette Doyle publishes her weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then get your free tips now at the Client Magnets website.

If you liked this article, then you’ll love Bernadette Doyle’s Marketing Mastermind group for regular intense spoonfeeds of her personal marketing and success strategies.

For more information, contact P-tek Development Solutions Ltd on 08448 011 733, by fax on 07092 029439 or by e-mail.

Kevin Condon: The knowledge crunch: communication is key

Is there a need, now more than ever, to communicate with your staff? As unemployment soars and the credit crunch bites, Kevin Condon warns of an impending ‘knowledge crunch’.

We are all aware that it’s gloomy out there at the moment; business is tough, so I hate to jump onto the bandwagon and be the harbinger of another ‘crunch’ – the ‘knowledge crunch’. I define the knowledge crunch as the threat which commerce faces through the loss of its intellectual capital, its knowledge.

Second only to cash flow, knowledge is of immense value; at a fundamental level, it’s what differentiates one business from another. More often than not, the larger part of this knowledge is stored in that most sophisticated of computerised jellies; the brains of the employees.

So why am I predicting a knowledge crunch and why should you take action to avoid it?

Well, all the ingredients to cook a ‘knowledge crunch’ are currently in abundant supply:

You need a population of influential Baby Boomers who are close to retirement, a breeding explosion which took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s
You then need to add mass redundancies to the recipe
Then sprinkle on some job insecurity
Finally, add in early retirement options and, hey presto, you’ve got a flow of vital knowledge and experience haemorrhaging from the business.

Barring any unforeseen medical breakthroughs that allow us to miraculously halt or reverse the aging process, the Baby Boomer generation is set to retire over the next five to 10 years.

You may recall the war for talent, whereby the government challenged firms to fill the Baby Boomers’ high-ranking jobs when they started retiring in the late 1990s. Some larger corporations may have put succession planning strategies in place, but Baby Boomers are a defiant and powerful breed, and, when they retire from their offices for the last time, I can assure you they will be carrying a treasure trove of experience, expertise and relationships that will not have been passed on.

The effect of this knowledge crunch is set to hit just as the UK recovers from the credit crunch. But things could get worse. As firms implement their restructuring strategies to prepare for the downturn and heads continue to roll, many of the Baby Boomers will flee to the fairways, five years early than they anticipated. This could leave a gaping knowledge gap, which exposes businesses to a distinct competitive disadvantage.

Businesses should be implementing a structured strategy for knowledge transfer and succession planning. Organisations must not only retain the knowledge held by the ageing Baby Boomers, but ensure that the new generation of workers benefit from the old-timers’ experience and their skills are passed down.

The further risk that I have witnessed during these troubled and turbulent times is that employers are placing so much emphasis on streamlining their businesses, making cost savings and managing cash flow, and what that they are forgetting about is the importance of their employees’ welfare.

Right now, the majority of employees don’t feel great. Many workers feel insecure about their future. On top of this, their prime assets (their houses) are not worth what they were a year ago and they couldn’t sell them if they needed to.

It’s a sad statistic that stress-related illness is becoming ever more common amongst UK workers, with an estimated 442,000 workers expressing that they were experiencing work-related stress at a level that was making them ill (Labour Force Survey 2008). As fears regarding job security escalate, the potential health impacts will be wide ranging; this in turn will affect workplace performance and sickness absence rates.

During these uncertain times, it is vital that businesses retain their best employees and their knowledge. Any employee that feels threatened and insecure will test the market and potentially seek employment elsewhere. They may even seek assurances with competing firms, further compounding the risk of a knowledge crunch.

Communication

The first thing that any business owner should do is communicate, communicate and communicate again – don’t be afraid of telling the staff that we are in difficult times. The staff will know this already, but it will give them reassurance that the business owner is concerned for the well being of the staff. If they feel that the workforce does not trust them, then bring in a third-party professional source to explain all the good and bad things that are happening. You will be surprised at how good a picture can be painted. Explain to the staff the full range of benefits, starting at the basics from car-parking facilities on site (saving them money) and free coffee and tea-making facilities right through to the bigger benefits, such as the pension scheme. Once again, you will be surprised how many of the staff do not appreciate or even realise they have such benefits; it costs nothing to communicate this.

Having a healthy, productive workforce is essential to business performance, particularly during these hard economic times. Good businesses need to become ‘employers of choice’ more now than ever. To remain competitive in a downturn, employees must be at their best: they must be delivering full value and working a peak performance.

The key to achieving this is to understand that workers are an asset to be enhanced and in which to invest. Businesses that take notice of their responsibility to look after the health and welfare of their staff will not only reap the benefits of a happier workforce, but also enhance on their business capital.

One of the main ways to achieve a happier and healthier workforce is to ensure that employees understand the real value of their benefits. Now more than ever it is imperative that businesses review their employee benefits schemes to ensure that they are delivering a maximum return on investment.

As with all investments, employers are currently looking to reduce expenditure. To reduce the cost of their employee benefit schemes, business owners should talk to their staff and organise a staff survey; you will be surprised how many staff do not value the pension scheme, but would rather purchase extra holiday entitlement. They are probable doing this already by taking extra sick days. Sick days cost all businesses an average of £700 per person per annum; multiply that by the workforce number and it is costing business owners a fortune! Businesses should offer the flexibility of purchasing holidays to not only reduce sick days, but also reduce the salary and national insurance contributions their employees make.

To ensure that businesses are getting maximum return on investment, business owners need to communicate with the workforce and ask them what they would value as a true benefit and then deliver that benefit. By benchmarking what they have now with what the workforce would like and appreciate, it can be surprising at how costs can be reduced; but, as importantly, businesses will be able to deliver the right benefits at the right cost for valued staff allowing businesses to become ‘employers of choice’ .

A business’s workforce represents 70% of the operating expenses of a company. Companies are right to be nervous right now; they are aware that they could lose their best people. Now more than ever, it is vital that employers take steps to reduce the impact of the ‘knowledge crunch’ and review their employee benefit schemes to ensure that they are employers of choice.

By following some relatively simple steps, such as safeguarding knowledge and benchmarking their employee benefits schemes, businesses can keep ahead of their competition and avoid getting crunched.

Kevin Condon is managing director of 3D Employee Benefits.

For more information, contact P-tek Development Solutions Ltd on 08448 011 733, by fax on 07092 029439 or by e-mail.

Business and management training at the University of Essex

Next month offers the opportunity to take the following specialist business and management training courses at the University of Essex:

Introduction to Management: 3 February (one day)
Project Management Overview: 5 February (one day)
Developing an IT Security Strategy: 9 February (one day)
More Creative Marketing: 10 February (one day)
Project Management – Part 1: 10, 17 and 24 February (three days)
Competitor Analysis: 11 February (one day)
Developing a Strategic Approach to Finance: 11 February (one day)
Effective Risk Management: 13 February (one day)
Motivation in the Workplace: 13 February (one day)
MS Project (Introduction): 13 February (one day)
PowerPoint (Introduction): 16 February (one day)
Sales for Non-Sales People: 16 February (one day)
Improving Effectiveness at Work (using NLP): 17 February (one day)
Appraisal Skills for Managers: 19 February (one day)
Introduction to Tendering: 19 February (one day)
Finance for the Non-Financial Manager: 20 and 27 February and 6 March (three days)
IT Project Management: 20 and 27 February (two days)
Credit Management Health Check: 23 February (one day)
Outlook (Introduction): 23 February (one day)
Personal Leadership Skills: 25 February (one day)
Coaching Skills for Managers: 26 February (one day)
How to Make Your Website More Profitable (Intermediate): 26 February (one day).

To find out more, including fees and booking, visit Essex’s Business and Management Training webpage, telephone 01206 872519, send a fax to 01206 874870 or e-mail them here

For more information, contact P-tek Development Solutions Ltd on 08448 011 733, by fax on 07092 029439 or by e-mail.

Need to book a room?

For conference room bookings close to Ipswich town centre, please call:
Rupal Patel, Business Centre Manager on 01473 381400, ext 1419, or go online here for more information. Alternatively, you can e-mail them here.

Taking it further

Did you find something useful in this newsletter? If so, why not forward it to a friend, and let them sign up for their own copy?

If anything in this newsletter is of interest to you or if you want any further information about P-tek Development Solutions Ltd and what we could do for you, please telephone us now on 08448 011 733 or fax us on 07092 029439.

Alternatively, you can e-mail us or visit our website. We'd be delighted to hear from you!