Cheltenham

Members reported that this event saw a major breakthrough for the STA.  We surpassed ourselves with both the organizing and the content.

This was a special event for the STA - much bigger audience and a great speaker.

Neil Rackham entertained almost 100 members and special guests and gave us with brilliant insights and inspiration on the role of marketing and sales for the 21st Century.

• Value propositions untangled and explained for use with all sales.
• The future role of sales
• Consultative selling versus transactional selling

A truly informative and excellent day

Hellidon Lakes

Joyce Parkinson conducted a very interesting and thought provoking presentation on analyzing handwriting.  Here are some uses that members found for this intriguing session:

Company Use:

• Recruitment – Providing a unique insight into the true Personality, Behaviour, Intellect and Working Qualities of short listed candidates.
• Team Building/Workplace Relationships – identifying personality types and how they interact with each other, e.g. Leader, Persuader (Sales/Training type), Team Player, Perfectionist and Creative Thinker.
• Training – e.g. identifying strengths/weakness and potential for development.
• Corporate Entertainment – a unique way of entertaining guests at social events as everyone likes to learn a little about themselves. It gets everyone talking and a queue is soon forming. A great way of breaking the ice!

Individual Use:

• Vocational Guidance/Personal Development – Providing an in-depth personality assessment to help individuals understand their strengths and weaknesses. An ideal way of helping individuals choose a new career and make the most of their true potential.
• Private parties – an ideal way of sampling handwriting analysis with a group of friends.

For more information about handwriting analysis and the services I can provide, visit www.jpanalysis.co.uk

Dunchurch Park

Miller Heiman has a fine reputation for providing research information and we are pleased that we are able to hear from them on some recent research findings. Their presentation is based upon the data generated from the ‘Global Sales Leader’ research completed earlier this year. Whilst not labouring through the full report we are going to be introduced to the more salient observations for the group around why some organisations are winning and why other aren't !! Isn’t this something we would all like to know? Ian Irving from Miller Heiman is going to lead this session for us.

As always we are going to start the day with an interactive Ice-breaker, include a report back on our own survey of members and have an interactive session picking up on the key themes from the main presentation.

Siemens, Siemens House, Bracknell

Sales Coaching with Frank Salisbury

It is a well recognised fact that if you want star performers in Sales it is not enough to just equip them with the tools of the trade and then expect the results to fly in. Coaching is playing a greater part in the ‘normal’ learning environment, so what do we need to know to both support and equip those who have the responsibility to coach?

We all enjoyed Frank Salisbury's energetic presentation on sales coaching.  The principles governing the application of this unique approach to the understanding and acquisition of sales-coaching skills have been drawn from extensive research into the professional coaching methodologies used by successful coaches in the fields of sports, music, dance and acting. In these professions, coaches have a clearly defined system and they stick to it.

In the afternoon, another interactive session bought it all to life and allowed us to apply the learnings to our every day jobs.

A brilliant day

Hellidon Lakes

A highly interactive day was had by all.  John Andrews and Andy Dernie allowed us to experience a unique sales training game called the Sales Challenge.  We were able to take the part of a key account salesperson operating in a global business.

Making sales based decisions, meeting with champions and coaches within companies and experiencing a realistic sales challenge.  An ideal activity for yoru hard nosed salespeople we are often asked to provide training for.

And to cap it all, a Christmassy presentation at the end.

A good day

Tewin Bury Farm

How many times have you got to the end of a protracted argument and found agreement only to find yourself saying ‘Why didn’t you say that at the beginning?’ ‘When you put it like that, it’s obvious!’

What is ‘Obvious’ and ‘Common sense’ isn’t obvious to everyone and is not as common as most people think.

The complexities of human relationships and communication mean that we will have great relationships with some and lousy relationships with others. However there are some relationships that we can’t afford to leave to chance – we need to apply some effort to make them work more effectively.

After lunch, Val Heritage and Mike Turner shared some aspects of the research carried out to look at ‘What’s Driving Sales Performance’. This was a very interactive session and we all learnt lots of valuable insights into the approach taken within our profession.

Tuesday 13th June 2006

Dunchurch Park

Our first session was led by Terry Kendrick who showed us how to find free information from the internet on companies and markets. Useful for people checking out potential clients or briefing themselves before going out on a sales visit to an existing account. Terry looked at sources accessible via search engines and those internet business information sources that search engines cannot find.

By the end of this session we had an overview of what is possible to find on the net and a few key strategies to make our internet research quicker and more efficient.

Terry was a breath of fresh air in the way he presented.  Fun, expressive yet full of content and time saving ways of getting just that piece of information you need from Google.

Terry's PowerPoint file is available on the member's resources page.  Definitely worth seeing

The second session was run by our own Cheryl Harding based on raising our awareness of a topic which is vital to the future growth of companies (whether those we are employed by or those which contract us in).

Cheryl's session was packed full of information that she has been researching over the last few months.  Recognising the four main generations, she helped us to explore the differing ways these people need to be managed, coached and trained.

Extremely thought provoking and very well presented.

Tewin Bury Farm

This is always one that the training world is interested in and this was reflected in the response from everyone.

Woodside, Kenilworth

First up we had a new icebreaker from Jane Tredgett which had everyone up and acting out what Christmas really means to us.  Great fun

Actors in Industry were our main speakers of the day who enthralled us for almost two hours on how we could use actors in our training events. They demonstrated forum theatre, role play and coaching. They showed us how they train impact and presence and gave us the Rudi Shelly Triangle

Our actors Lorraine Brunning and Carry Club had us experimenting space and physical presence and ran exercises to warm up our bodies and voices. Excellent development and a big thank you to Actors in Industry. For more information go to www.actorsinindustry.com

After a splendid 3 course lunch, we enjoyed an interactive session which drew out how we are going to apply everything we learnt in the morning and Richard shared with us all a new exercise we could use in our training.

All in all a brilliant day.

Hellidon Lakes,
Hellidon

Some very interesting facts came out which will help all of us in keeping up-to-date with sales training trends.  Did you know that the majority of buyers don't like sales people contacting them on their mobile phones?

The afternoon had it's usual mix of interactive sessions and idea generation which members gleaned lots of benefits from.

Dunchurch Park, Dunchurch

In fact we all played the game and had a thoroughly good time which just proves that training and fun go together.  Rob was generous enough to put £60 on the table for the winning team to give to a charity of their choice.  The winners donated this to the MacMillan Cancer Trust

After lunch we enjoyed an Interactive session led by our very own Mike Hill who drew out some great ideas surrounding coaching and a bonus session led by John Andrews summarized dozens of the key skills for excellent coaches.

Tuesday 15th March 2005

Tewin Bury Farm

Our guest speaker today, Tony Sharpe, worked for Huthwaite for 22 years and was latterly the International Director. Tony will be talking about how Huthwaite has responded to the changes in the sales training environment.

Huthwaite has the world's largest database of research into selling and is the creator of the SPIN model, amongst others, which cover all aspects of selling. We are delighted Tony can join us at this event.

In addition to our guest speaker slot, fun icebreaker and afternoon session we will also be running a brief AGM to bring you all up to speed. The current committee have all agreed to stand again, however, this is not a closed shop and if you would like to be part of this merry band of volunteers, please let John and myself know before the meeting.

We will also be introducing, for the first time, a member’s hot spot where an STA member will have 30 minutes of time to ask for your help with a particular issue. On this occasion, Adrian Logan will be asking for ideas on setting up a Sales Academy. I have no doubt that with the wealth of experience in the STA, we will all go away with some inspiration from this session.