If life deals you lemons, make lemonade.

For those of you who’ve been on one of our courses, you’ll know that we are particularly partial to lemons and the clenching thereof. (Confused? Give us a call and we’ll explain it all.)

The global economy is definitely sucking lemons at the moment and everyone is looking for ways to grow their business despite the recession. Here at Partners With You we know that the global downturn means that delivering sales is even more important than usual so this issue of our newsletter is dedicated to giving you some advice on how to sell more effectively.

And what’s even better, if you have 5 – 249 members of staff (including volunteers), you could get £500 worth of training for free thanks to the Train To Gain Leadership & Management programme: see below for more details.

We hope you enjoy reading our newsletter and we’d love to hear your feedback if you have a moment while you’re sipping your lemonade....

£500 WORTH OF TRAINING FOR FREE!
£1,500 WORTH OF TRAINING FOR £500!

Through the Train to Gain Leadership & Management programme, you can get funding to help develop your and your team’s skills if you have between 5 – 249 staff or volunteers. The bottom line is that you can get £500 of training free. The next £500 is matched - so £1,500 worth of staff development will only cost you £500 or £1,250 worth of sales training will cost you £375.

You can use it for any of our innovative training programmes to benefit you and your business. By using the skills of professional actors we can help you and your team sell more, manage better and work more successfully with each other.

If you and your team are thinking about how to stay ahead of the competition, consider signing up for one of our programmes:

Coaching
Presenting
Successful Communication
Assertiveness
Bespoke/tailored training
Team building

David Earp, Regional International Trade Development Manager at East of England International, has taken advantage of the Train to Gain funding to add in some training at the end of his financial year.  “It was a really simple and quick process to get the funding and we are delighted with the results.  The training was excellent and it has helped standardise the quality of presentation across my team of advisors, who talk to businesses wanting to expand abroad.  I have noticed a real difference in confidence levels and our presentations are now more interesting and engaging: we’ve met our annual targets in the final quarter and this was looking doubtful before the training started.”

For full details call us on 01923 842435 or e-mail sally@partnerswithyou.co.uk to see how we can help you receive this funding.  Previous beneficiaries of Business Leader funding are not eligible to apply.

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The proof is in the (lemon) pudding

MJP Architects

Imagine this situation: you know that your team have excellent skills and experience but are simply not natural communicators.  Your architectural practice is known for high quality design, creativity and prominent projects in housing, workplace and education. Your staff pitches regularly to potential clients and due to your company’s high profile and knowledge you are also asked to present at conferences, often at short notice. The content of your presentations is excellent but the delivery style needs refreshing and the presenters sometimes lack confidence when communicating their message.

So what made the difference to the team at MJP Architects and directly resulted in their winning a piece of work worth millions of pounds?

Answer:  a Partners With You coaching programme to help staff present successfully, biased towards initial meetings and competitive interviews, but also with tools and techniques to help build confidence in all presenting situations.

Jeremy Estop, managing director, wanted long lasting impact on the teams’ presenting styles so we ran a coaching programme for groups of five people over a period of several months. This provided MJP with the techniques they needed to help them win new projects, time to assimilate the new approach and the opportunity to re-visit areas that the team

found more challenging. The team also benefited from seeing their colleagues present so that they could support each other more effectively in future presentations.

The workshops gave the opportunity for the delegates to present both formally and informally and receive instant diagnostic feedback. As with all our Partners With You workshops, the sessions were interactive and hands on and each attendee learnt a wealth of tips and techniques focusing on helping to look and feel more confident and communicate successfully.

The sessions were so successful that the team took advantage of the Train to Gain funding programme and had a second round of sessions to advance their skills. The workshops have been expanded for other senior members of the company thanks to the funding available through Partners With You.

Liz Pride, director, explains, “We are a very successful practice and our teams are good at what they do - architecture.  In this climate, it’s crucial that we present our skills and experience effectively.  We looked for a training company who could help us stand out from the crowd and the actors at Partners With You were perfect for us.  Most significantly their techniques have helped us be true to ourselves, avoiding artificial ‘sales techniques’. We’ve been delighted with the results - everyone who took the course was enthusiastic about it.  It has boosted their confidence and has definitely had a positive effect on the long term success of the practice.”

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NB Real Estate

NB Real Estates are specialists in commercial property management, acquisitions, sales and property leasing and are placed in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For 2009 list. They have 100 million square feet of property assets under management for investors and corporate occupiers and collect £1.2 billion in rent.

The staff at NB Real Estate has had quite a lot of presentation training in the past as they need to create a presentation from their responses to tenders. These pitches have a distinctive feel to them, which reflects the company’s brand image, but the delivery style and word choice did not match the corporate tone of voice.

NB Real Estate had two specific presentations for the final stage of a tender process and each project was worth several million pounds. The two teams of eight people presenting wanted coaching to help them get the maximum impact from each point,  how best to 'stage manage' the whole meeting to work in non-presenting contributors, and how to make the listeners’ spines tingle.

The solution was to run a bespoke training session driven by the individual needs of the delegates.  This session covered a wealth of tools and techniques around body language, voice control, thoughts, attitude and word choice, which aimed to help build confidence, create rapport and add impact to their presentations:

• Analysing the image we portray
• Making a positive first impression
• Using the full range of the voice
• Encouraging the listener to listen
• Dealing with mistakes
• Creating rapport
• Transferring enthusiasm
• Being focused and in the moment
• Painting pictures
• Storytelling and anecdotes
• Building confidence
• Being yourself
• Inspiring others and being inspired

 The feedback from the course was extremely positive:

“Fantastic! 10 out of 10.” GD

“Well worth attending and “going with the flow” to see what your personal abilities are, understand weaknesses and improve skills.” MJ

 “This is unlike any other presentation course you will go on as you will be shown techniques that will stick because they were such fun to do! 10 out of 10.” MS

Juliet Bray, director, comments “We felt the coaching workshop had a real impact on our team and certainly boosted their confidence to deliver our messages in a way that our potential clients would really listen to.”

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Profile – Paul Ryan

Here at Partners With You, we work with a group of professional actors to teach business people across all industry sectors a few tricks of the trade to help you communicate successfully.  We’d like to introduce you to one of our top trainers who, when he’s not playing  one of the leading roles in Mama Mia in the West End (he plays Harry - Colin Firth’s role in the film), can be found helping our clients squeeze their lemons.

You may have spotted Paul on the box in Family Affairs, The New Adventures of Robin Hood, Casualty, The Bill and the Inspector Lynley Mysteries or on stage as Kenneth Williams in Round The Horne, Lucifer in The Mystery Plays, and Widow Twanky in Aladdin amongst many others.

Paul not only acts and trains, but he’s also a writer.  He wrote the highly acclaimed musical Sadly Solo Joe performed at the Greenwich Theatre and Come To Papa at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London. His latest play is a one woman show called Hooker.
Paul’s also turned his hand to directing having performed and directed many of the live shows at Legoland! Most recently he directed Mozart’s first opera: Zaida.

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Squeezing more from your sales

Making a sale boils down to convincing the other party that your offer is the best available match to their needs.  You can have the best deal in the world with a top class customer service package to back it up but if you don’t communicate these facts successfully and quickly build a rapport, you won’t close the sale.

Telling a story and creating an image are two powerful tools to help make your business communication more successful.  Having a point of difference in a competitive market place can be invaluable and helping sales people come across as natural communicators talking as one human to another is a simple way to achieve this. After a one day workshop, your team will be able to view their pitches as a journey telling a story which they describe to their customers rather than as a presentation of a jigsaw puzzle of information.
Along with the rest of the team, Partners With You director Neil Roberts uses his thespian skills to help business people communicate successfully and has the following advice for making a successful sale:

Tell it from their point of view: If you tell your story as an experience from the other person’s point of view, then they not only intellectually understand your message, but hear, see and most importantly, feel it. As a result they buy into the message more effectively.

So what?: The “so what” factor is critical. Not what you do but the difference you will make. Start from where they are now and show them where you will take them. This is the so what factor: the value you bring.

Images: Many studies suggest the visual image is remembered longer. If you paint pictures and tell stories with your words the same thing happens. The listener remembers the pictures and stories. They then remember the facts associated with them and retain the information for longer. 

Congruence: When you go into detail and paint pictures you find your gestures, your voice and your thoughts all work in unison – congruence.  You have none of that feeling of “what do I do with my hands?” or “my thoughts just don’t match my body language and voice”. You have natural variety, are focused and are ‘in the moment’ when you have images of the things you’re talking about.

Rapport: Build immediate rapport by subtly matching and mirroring. We do mean subtly – you do not want to mimic the other person’s actions, but to mirror their style of behaviour. 
Match and mirror gestures, body posture, tone of voice, volume of voice, pace of voice, word choice (florid or succinct language for instance) and any other observable behaviour.

Passion: Enthusiasm is infectious! If you’re not passionate about your subject then those you’re speaking to won’t be. Find something you’re passionate about – even if it’s “the money I’ll make from the sale”! 

Double & Triple: Different words evoke a different mood and feeling in the listener. Some words are more powerful than others.
Choose words you use often when you make a pitch or talk about your business and double or triple them: think of two or three words that are different but mean the same. It not only expands your vocabulary stopping you from being repetitive but the new words can also be more powerful and have more impact on the listener. This is a great exercise for rehearsals and for when you’re sitting waiting to go into a pitch.

Unique voice: We are all innate storytellers – when you’re at your most relaxed, you tell anecdotes and stories and can remember other people’s stories and retell them with your own unique voice.  Presentations are no different - tell a story!

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Forthcoming public courses 2009

If you’d like to find out about what you can do with a lemon to help you relax and communicate more successfully, come along to one of our open courses held in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, just off the M25 and on the Metropolitan line tube line from London, these courses are both effective and enjoyable

To find out more and book online click here...

What else can you do with your lemon?

If you feel the need for something a little more bracing than lemonade in the current economic climate, try this zesty Lemon Vodka (with thanks to Henry McNulty’s Vogue Liqueurs & Spirits).

Lemon Vodka
Grate the rind of 3 lemons, cover with vodka and allow to stand for 4 days (you know you can do it!)  Make a syrup of 2 cups each of water and sugar.  Strain the rind out of the vodka and pour both the lemony vodka and the rest of the bottle (about 4 cups) into the syrup while still hot.  Strain the whole thing again, bottle and store for at least a month before swigging.

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Contact Partners With You

If you’ve any questions about communications training or if you would like to give us some feedback on anything you’ve read, please contact us at:

19 Sandy Lodge Road, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, WD3 1LP
t: 01923 842435  e: info@partnerswithyou.co.uk

©2009 Partners With You