• The meaning of excellent customer service - roles and purposes
• Communicating with care: discover the secret powers of assertion; 4 easy steps to achieve win/win; how to say 'No' without losing the customer
• Professional Telephone Behaviours: essential do's and don'ts; call control
• Dealing with 'difficult' customers
• Delivering bad news
• Practise in the skills
• Valuable feedback session - leave the course feeling confident, empowered and ready to take on the world!

• What happens in a typical export office - sales, finance and logistics functions and the four key contracts
• How a typical order flows, from enquiry to successful shipment and payment
• The core documents and where they fit in
• Who is there to help - the part played by the banks, freight forwarders and insurers
• How to use INCOTERMS to your advantage - EXW, FOB, CIP, DDU etc - where you must deliver the goods, how you prove it, what costs you must include in your quotation to maintain profits
• Getting paid for exports - advantages and disadvantages of the four main international methods of payment
• Group exercises to show how much you have learnt

• The definition of news
• How to recognise something that is newsworthy in your business
• Understanding and identifying who you want to get your messages to
• Planning the campaign
• Top tips for writing and sending a news release
• Writing for social media
• Increase your chance of publication by including photographs

• Defining the role
• Shaping success including avoiding common pitfalls, trusting the team, prioritising and agreeing tasks, setting standards, establishing authority and gaining commitment
• Leadership in action
• Applying leadership skills such as coaching and monitoring, encouraging good performance and how to say ‘no’ without losing friends
• Managing better performance, confronting unsatisfactory performance and using praise to transform contributions
• My strengths
• Learning review and action planning

• Why anyone can learn to be assertive
• Understanding assertiveness including common misconceptions and how it differs from aggression and passivity
• How to be more assertive
• Simple steps and behaviours that help
• Using assertion at difficult times, saying ‘no’, handling criticism and confronting conflict
• Practising the skills
• Raising confidence and self-esteem

• The origins and growth of Social Media and Social Networking and why this is no fad
• An overview of the academic research into human behaviour and our need to socialise
• The latest business research into the growth and trends
• The critical role social media plays in Search Engine Optimisation and generating web site visits
• The rise of the Club Penguin generation – those 8 – 15 year olds who will be your employees and customers in the future
• Case studies on what other people and organisations have done, why and what they found works – the really practical and valuable bit!
• How to integrate social media communications alongside traditional tools and the added value in this

• Common financial terms explained
• Concepts and Conventions explained: Capital v Revenue, Profit v Cash, Accruals & Prepayments, Depreciation, Amortisation & Impairment
• The potential impact of Value Added Tax
• Financial Statements and Reporting Structures: The Profit and Loss Account (Income Statement), The Balance Sheet (Position Statement)
• Managing working capital and its importance: debtors, creditors, stock, short term financing
• Interpretation of financial information
• Action planning

• Set up, organise and use various systems to develop good habits for managing information using folders, tasks, journals, contacts, calendar, notes, files, categories and sending/receiving emails
• Improve your personal productivity by creating and maintaining a personal planning system for daily planning and prioritising
• Personalise Outlook using Custom Toolbars, Outlook Today, Desktop Alerts and colour categorise
• Reduce information overload
• Tips, tricks and time savers for managing your email and projects
• Be more productive; evaluate how much time you spend on projects, time wasters and unnecessary emails
• Write effective emails

• manual handling hazards, risks and controls
• how manual handling operations can cause injury and harm
• the scope of legal requirements and where guidance can be found
• the process for assessing manual handling risks
• the value of risk assessment and how it applies to safe manual handling practice
• manual handling techniques – lifting loads from low levels/working at low levels/lowering from height/pushing loads/pulling loads/carrying/team handling

The tutor for this course is nationally recognised international trade specialist Janet Phillips.

Price £197 + VAT  and includes course handouts, a certificate, parking, lunch and refreshments.

This course will be held at Hampden House, Monument Park, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire.


Incoterms 2010 update version - Half day course - Book here
18th November.  1.00pm to 4.00pm

Course outline coming soon.

The tutor for this course is nationally recognised international trade specialist Janet Phillips.

Price £197 + VAT  and includes course handouts, a certificate, parking, lunch and refreshments.

This course will be held at Hampden House, Monument Park, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire.
 

Professional communication skills for managers - 1 day course - Book here
25th November.  9.00am to 4.30pm

In any business, effective communication between different people, departments and parts of the operation is a critical success factor.

This course explores the vital role that managers have to play in the process and focuses on methods that work.

It is part of our comprehensive portfolio of management courses including 'make the team you lead the best'.

Programme

• Communication: why it’s easy, why it’s hard
• Communicating what you want including a performance management cycle and agreeing clear goals and objectives
• Written communications
• How assertiveness can help
• Setting people to work, delegation and task allocation
• How do we help people get things right, understanding behaviour, dealing with ‘attitude problems’ motivating by praise, constrictive criticism
• Practical exercises

• Enthuse customers to buy - Positive Mental Attitude
• The structure of a sale
• Communication skills - questioning techniques, listening skills and body language
• The real reasons customers buy - selling benefits and USPs
• Be more effective at selling - call planning
• How to deal with sales resistance - handling objections
• Get results - identifying buying signals and closing

• What do you write for your business including promotion, PR, Sales & Marketing, social media, newsletter copy, web text, proposals/pitching for work, raising funds
• Your key messages and selling points
• Sending by email or by post or going online
• Writing for when things go wrong
• A review of best practice examples
• Practical Session: promotional copy, pitching for work, press quotes, looking for funding, social media
• Checking your copy – the dos and don’ts

• Excel: shortcut keys, conditional formatting, text to columns, data validation, applying filters, using edit and replace, spreadsheet protection
• Sharepoint: how this file and content management system can speed your business processes
• OneNote: what are the benefits and how to do use it effectively
• Groove: how your teams can use it to share information and work together on projects

• Word: shortcut keys, applying styles, inserting Excel sheets into a document, setting up document contents and indexes, tracking changes.
• PowerPoint: creating your own slide templates, adding animation and graphs and charts from Excel.
• Silverlight: making the most of this powerful platform for creating engaging, interactive applications.
• InfoPath: creating interactive forms for easy use and data compilation.