There’s no reason for financial topics to be intimidating – this program helps managers grasp their company’s financial “big picture” in ways that are insightful and fun. We’ll go into the details of financial reports and concepts for a meaningful foundation in corporate financial literacy, and will also touch on the world of personal investments.

This program is designed to help individuals who’d like a better grasp of interpreting financial statements and is geared for those who have no prior training in financial analysis or accounting concepts. Its main purpose is to take the mystery out of accounting and finance, offering a practical approach to understanding how financial statements are created and what they convey.

Participants will explore:

• Basic Financial Concepts: Income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements…what do they mean, and how do they apply to your job?
• What Do All These Numbers Mean? Without understanding them, numbers are nothing more than that — numbers. Tools like Ratio Analysis can help you “get behind the numbers” and what they can tell you about your company and the competition.
• Understanding Your Industry and the Business Cycle: Comparative analysis and discussion of industry information will give you a better grasp of your industry, where you fit in and what financial structures mean.
• Budgets and Expenses: Understand how budgets are used in management and how to use them effectively. Learn the difference between fixed v. variable costs, capital v. operating budgets and take a quick, heuristic look at cost centers’ P & L numbers.

Everything turns on the yes-or-no decisions of sales. In this age, we’re all bombarded with point-of-sales in the form of billboards, TV, radio, direct mail, the Internet, person-to-person, stores and phones. The result for many is an automatic “no” in their minds.

What is the deciding factor in a customer’s mind when they do decide to retain a product or purchase an item? It’s the needs and desires in a customer’s life; they’re looking for more than a list of features and benefits. Participants will learn the sales skills they need to appeal to customers’ needs and present the appropriate answers based on industry and product knowledge. Participants will also learn techniques that will help them see that sales is more “science” than “art.”

Participants will:

• Gain a Better Understanding of Today’s Customers: In a changing sales climate, understand the principles that allow them to connect with customers, and how to avoid common pitfalls of selling.
• Explore the Selling Cycle: Every sale is comprised of several key components. Participants will learn the process for effective customer interaction and the basic selling points that come into play when closing a sale.
• Learn to Match Selling Style to Customer Type: Seeing sales as a one-size-fits-all proposition is a losing strategy. Close the selling gap by understanding customer types and what sales styles are the right fit, and how to view sales as solutions and not just products.
• Enhance Listening Skills: Participants discuss effective listening techniques, and how to improve their own listening abilities. A hands-on segment will put those skills to use through assessments and role-playing.
• Develop Presentations: Learn how to prepare the best presentations for groups.

Sales from a customer service perspective is a little tricky. It means being proactive to solve people’s problems, and today’s customers want more than just a list of benefits and features. Participants will learn to identify customer needs and put that knowledge (and their own product knowledge) to work to present solutions. Participants will also learn techniques that will help them see that sales is more “science” than “art.” The goal is to build customer loyalty in a competitive marketplace.

Participants will:

• Gain a Better Understanding of Today’s Customers: In a changing sales climate, understand the principles that allow them to connect with customers, and how to avoid common pitfalls of selling.
• Explore the Selling Cycle: Every sale is comprised of several key components. Participants will learn the process for a customer interaction and the basic selling points that come into play when closing a sale.
• Learn to Match Selling Style to Customer Type: Seeing sales as a one-size-fits-all proposition is a losing strategy. Close the selling gap by understanding customer types and what sales styles are the right fit, and how to view sales as solutions and not just products.
• Enhance Listening Skills: Participants discuss effective listening techniques, and how to improve their own listening abilities. A hands-on segment will put those skills to use through assessments and role-playing.
• Meet and Exceed Customer Expectations: Learn how to see things from the customer’s perspective, and explore the “7 C’s of Customer Service”
• Practice Managing the Customer Conversation: Find the best ways to direct the conversation, using the “P/R/C technique,” and use listening skills to really “hear” what the customer is saying. Learn about the 6-step process that takes the caller from their problem to positive solutions.

Performance management involves a great deal from both manager and employee. Effective performance management requires both to be active participants, working and communicating together year-round and not just at review time. Participants will learn the best ways for ongoing feedback and communication, how to prepare for  a performance discussion, how to direct the discussion, and how to follow up on a sustainable basis.

Participants will learn to:

• Coach Others For Success: Performance management is much more than just annual review time. Learn how to coach and manage year-round.
• Prepare for the Performance Review: Look at several approaches for goal-setting and getting others involved in the process. Learn how to gather needed information and prepare yourself and your employee ahead of time.
• Conduct the Performance Discussion: Use an eight-step process through the discussion, from setting tone to feedback to developing the employee’s strengths, setting roles and expectations and clarifying goals.
• Follow-Up, the Key to Success: Learn how to make communication and feedback an ongoing process and explore the skills needed to manage difficult situations and give corrective feedback. Gain an understanding of legalities and record-keeping.

Competitive Intelligence is defined as “the process of enhancing marketplace competitiveness through a greater, ethical understanding of a firm’s competitors and the competitive environment.” It’s what leaders use to stay ahead of the competition, and protect their companies from becoming a target. This program will explore different methods of gathering competitive information and ways to use this information to move your company ahead.

Participants will explore:

• What Is Competitive Intelligence: Learn what this term means specifically, how a company can benefit from it and why it’s so important for all leaders to leverage CI. What happens to companies that don’t take advantage of CI?
• Collecting Information: Examine the best tools for gathering, analyzing and presenting CI, while preserving the integrity of your own company.
• The CI Cycle and How To Use It: CI is an ongoing cycle. Review the steps of this cycle and how you can learn from changes in your competition and the market, for a competitive advantage.
• Appropriate Applications Within Your Company: Find out how every employee can be engaged in a CI plan, what business areas have the biggest stake in CI and how other areas can contribute.
• Counter-Intelligence and What You Need to Do: What is counter-intelligence, and why is it so important in a hyper-competitive business climate?

Knowing how to perform interviews well is vital to finding the right fit between candidate and position, and can save wasted time and money. Learn how to plan for an interview, how to build rapport, use effective listening skills, how and when to provide information, how to get the candidate to feel at ease and open up, and how to direct the whole process.

Participants work through:

• What To Do Before The Interview: the lead-up to the interview, clarifying what you need to know and how to best prepare.
• Establish Rapport and Get To The Information You Need: Why it’s so critical to make your candidate feel relaxed and at ease.
• Effective Questioning Techniques: Know the right questions to ask to get the honest, informed answers you need.
• Maintain Control of the Process: Be sure of what information you need, and what information to give. Outline the process and drive the conversation.
• Balancing Pros and Cons: Learn how to make calls on candidates so that you end up with the best people. Specific techniques can allow you to compare all types of candidates.
• Evaluating Resumes: Consider the implications of what you read, get to the important questions, and learn how to make effective reference checks.

Continuous improvement is how organizations stay ahead of the competition. Participants will explore the five disciplines of Peter Senge’s “Learning Organization,” and will discover ways to apply those principles to themselves and those they work with.

Topics include:

• What Is Learning Organization: Its five disciplines include systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning. Teams can dramatically enhance overall performance by putting these principles and continuous learning to use.
• How Will Continuous Learning Help? In today’s business climate, failing to support continuous learning will result in being less competitive. A focus on developing people means staying ahead of the competition.
• What Is My Learning Style? Find out what your learning style is and how to best use it for the benefit of yourself and those you work with.
• Using Creativity and Systems Thinking to Build Capacity: It can be hard to balanced the big picture with our specific jobs. A set of tools can enhance creativity, teach from mistakes and help others view their actions in the context of the entire business.
• Learn Areas of Need for Yourself and Your Work Force: To move forward, it’s critical to know strengths and weaknesses. Find ways to gauge your learning needs and those of others around you.
• How To Foster Continuous Learning: You need to be able to make this process your own. Find how others have succeeded, and how to adapt their models to your organization.

Understanding the root causes of issues and not just the outward symptoms is essential to your effectiveness with clients, both internal and external. Find ways to keep clients aware of the big picture, and techniques for managing changing deliverables and expectations. Learn to adapt to your clients’ needs as you manage the overall relationship.

Topics include:

• Understanding the Client And Their Business: Do your homework and establish your relationship – it’s a critical first step that’s too often ignored.
• Evaluate the Current Situation Vs The Ideal: Needs assessments and cause analysis can move you past superficial problems.
• Perform a Gap Analysis: Where are performance gaps, and what can be done to remedy them? Proven techniques can help make sure all bases are covered.
• Derive and Test Possible Solutions: Review alternatives, and use the PDSA (Plan/Do/Study/Act) model to arrive at implementation plans.
• Get All Possible Parties To Approve: Clients need to approve in order to support any successful consulting efforts. Find ways to ensure this commitment at all levels.
• Follow Up and Gain Support: Results hinge on support and ongoing follow-up. Accountability is the consultant’s job – explore the steps needed to ensure everyone agrees.
• Interpersonal Skills: This is vital for any consultant. Explore active listening, feedback, handling resistance and presenting a professional image.

Whether it’s a factory or an office park, safety is a top concern that can be very costly in time, money and productivity. It affects everyone in an organization, from top to bottom, and is one of the most challenging tasks for managers and leaders. Safety is everyone’s job and responsibility.

Its payoffs include: Increased productivity, Lower operating overhead, Improved employee retention, Greater commitment.

Our method is to ensure that safety is a part of your company culture, rather than just education about safe practices. It’s important to remind people how safety affects both them and the organization – when they realize that, their level of commitment increases and the weight of safety enforcement is no longer on the shoulders of one person, such as a safety manager. Safe practices are the vehicle for an empowered workforce, less turnover, stronger teams and more-engaged employees.

Objectives include:

• Modeling Real World Situations: Participants will soon realize the impact of an accident or an injury to a business. Emphasis is placed on personal responsibility, prevention, awareness and managing the unexpected.
• Utilizing Each Other as Resources: Throughout this program, participants call on each other for solutions and support. This is not only crucial for solutions that fit your operations, but for carrying this knowledge back to the job.
• Finding Trust and Mutual Respect: Trust is a vital part of any safety initiative, or any team. Improved communication and teamwork are the result when team members realize these concepts are linked.
• Cultural Consistency: It’s our aim to ensure that our training lines up with your culture and management style – we want to be the authority on the topic and the team. This is key to building solutions that last.
• Practicing New Behaviors: All our work is interactive and hinges on learning-by-doing. Practice new concepts to build competence and confidence, and learn to adapt to and refine new ideas.
• Leveraging Safety for High Performance Teams: Find out for yourself what can result when you approach tasks as a team, and find out how teams can make better decisions than any one individual. Safety is the goal – teamwork is the byproduct!

In the real world, negotiation is much more than just trying to get your needs satisfied. To be truly effective requires a broader perspective. Through hands-on experience, you’ll learn what it takes at each stage of the negotiation process to be truly effective. Find out what you bring to the table, how to listen to what others need, and how to find creative ways of getting the needs of both parties met. Participants learn compromise, discover where they have flexibility, and how to find workable solutions.

• A Specific Negotiations Process: Conflicts will always happen. Learn a step-by-step process that leverages healthy conflict to increase productivity and creativity.
• Understanding And Using Different Negotiations Styles: Everyone handles negotiations differently. Evaluate your own style and learn how to best adapt to other styles.
• Negotiations Tips And Techniques: Discover a variety of proven methods and techniques for negotiation. We cover a range of situations, from merely trying to exert influence, to dealing with aggressive tactics, to arriving at creative solutions.
• Building “Emotional Bank Accounts”: With this model, “deposits” and “withdrawals” can increase understanding. Step-by-step, participants arrive at ways to build a high trust environment.
• Reaching Win-Win Agreements: Find out about the five dimensions of win-win agreements; this can be the key to successful negotiations.
• Using Creative Problem-Solving Techniques: There’s often a “the third alternative;” find out how to use other win-win tools.
• Practicing Hands-On Negotiation Using Real-Life Problems: Put your ideas, concepts and techniques to use through an actual negotiation.