Blogs & Articles

Sometimes it is quite difficult to discern between the two and there are occasions when we can walk away from a sale because we have taken the objection at face value and not sought to dig into whether it is real or not. Usually when it’s not, it is because we have somehow created doubt in the buyers mind and they are nervous about committing. Whilst there are many reasons for this, it can be as simple as we have not explained our proposition clearly enough or perhaps even the pricing structure.

Industry shows and trade exhibitions can be a great way of getting in front of a large number of prospective clients in a short space of time. Whether you are selling B2B or B2C, these events can effectively bring buyers to you. But it’s not simply a case of rocking up on the day with your wares and expecting to meet your annual sales target by the time the event closes. It’s important to properly plan if you are exhibiting at events and in doing so you should consider the following:

The learning and development industry is saturated with different approaches, models, tools and techniques that are aimed at leading and inspiring others to achieve great things.

Keep Growing Developing, growing and improving ourselves = healthy interactions What is also important is what you think of other people, especially in your relationships at work. Thinking positively about others and building relationships and trust is important, it makes us feel connected and ourselves. Research shows there is also a clear link between putting you aside, building positive relationships with trust and business performance

The shift towards digital learning is becoming inevitable. The convenience and cost-saving of learning taking place ‘on demand’ at the learners own desk or home is the biggest driver. It is highly likely that there is an element of online learning already taking place within your organisation – quite possibly done by individuals using their own initiative because of the growing wealth of content that exists on the Internet.

In our experience, when asked to score out of 10 (with 10 being high), people generally give their positivity 6 out of 10. The vast majority of people that we work with have some degree of negativity and tend to be unconsciously negative, often in denial of it, and unaware of how much we let the negativity of others affect our mood.

How we communicate with others sometimes has a dramatic effect on how we are perceived as a person, generally determining what others think about us within those first impressions. This can have an effect on most things that you do within your workplace, speaking to customers, and colleagues. The way they perceive you can have complete control of how they view you as an individual and what they are willing to do for you in effect.

How many times have you been chairing or attending a meeting to discuss a specific topic / project and attendees start talking at cross purposes and before you know it personal conflict arises and initial objective for the meeting is lost.

The introduction of GROW into coaching conversations has provided a clear, structured process that pretty much anyone can follow with a bit of guidance. The coaching conversation using GROW has 4 components:

“E-phem-what??” is something I imagine many reading this are currently thinking. If I’m being honest, it’s a word that I have only just discovered myself. So what does it mean? We live in a World where social media drives our lives and ephemeral content is something that is short lived and after that it disappears forever. Think Snapchat – the photo and video application with over 10 billion views every day and no content lasting more than 24 hours. Because of that deadline, there is the urgency to see it and share it before it is gone forever.

Recent insights and discoveries in neuroscience have shared the importance and given credibility to the role of intuition in leadership, especially when it comes to decision making. What is intuition? It's what results when we piece things together, information, experience etc., to come up with something different or new that a single observation or thought may not have identified.

Someone said to me recently that although they knew we delivered leadership and management training as well as commercial courses at Maguire Training and it was clear at to what these are, they were less clear about, ‘What exactly does personal development mean?’ and it prompted me to think carefully about the answer because I had previously thought it to be obvious.