One of the responsibilities those in a supervisory position have is to pass their knowledge and experience on to their team members in order to develop them. Many supervisors are not very good at doing this. They fall into the trap of telling people how to do something. But as any good developer of people…
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Consultative Selling and Identifying Customer Needs
Consultative selling is about as far away from pressure selling as it is possible to be. Consultative sales people are professionals who help their clients solve problems. It therefore follows that one of the most important skills for the consultative sales professional to learn is that of gathering information from a potential client in order…
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Making Better Decisions
A good decision is one that solves the problem and to do this we need, as managers, to be open to ideas and suggestions from our team. However, the way in which we phrase our own suggestions can negatively influence our reaction to ideas and suggestions from others . (more…)
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Can I Have a Holiday?
Under the 1998 Working Time Regulations every UK worker is currently entitled a period of paid annual leave. If you are a manager then it is your responsibility to ensure that this can happen without the work output of the rest of your team or department suffering. Without holidays your people can become stale and…
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Managing Pay Rise Requests
Managers may be unaware of their employee's thoughts toward their pay until they receive a knock on their office door and the request that “I want to talk to you about a pay rise”. This situation needs to be carefully managed, so consider these five tips which will help you handle a pay rise request…
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The Seven Stages of Delegation
Delegation skills are needed by all managers who want to be successful. Delegation, unlike work allocation, involves the transfer of responsibility for doing a task or project the manager would normally perform to one of their employees. However, many managers struggle with delegation, particularly with the transfer of responsibility. (more…)
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Understanding Body Language
All sales people must be trained to understand the body language signals that can be given off by their clients. These signals can reveal useful information that may not be fully verbalised by the client - either intentionally or unintentionally. (more…)
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Mentoring Your Future Leaders
Many organisations are using mentoring to help develop talented managers into future leaders. If you are considering introducing a mentoring programme then there are a number of factors to consider to ensure that it successful delivers the changes required. (more…)
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Using Coaching to Develop People
There are many ways to develop people: from classroom based group training and self-study using e-learning, to one-to-one coaching sessions. All have their place and help to create a truly blended approach to learning. However, with the focus on meeting individual needs, the use of one-to-one coaching is becoming an increasingly popular developmental tool in…
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Should You Invest in Training Your Older Employees?
Many of the government led training initiatives are focused on the skill development of younger employees. But with 9.4 million people in employment over the age of 50 in the UK, representing 30% of the total workforce, should we ignore our older employees when it comes to providing training and development opportunities? (more…)
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