Training Programmes

FastStart is an exciting new breakthrough skills development package for a new generation of managers. It comprehensively covers the skills and knowledge underpinning commercial decision-making in a five-day modular programme. It is designed to meet the needs of organisations striving to achieve a competitive advantage through their relationships with their suppliers and customers and to reduce their exposure to commercial risk – fast!

FastStart provides an alternative and flexible approach to ad hoc training and skills development by addressing the commercial skill set as a whole. It draws together the most sought after commercial attributes and builds them into a holistic approach to commercial decision making. FastStart covers contracts, contract governance, risk management, financial management, negotiation skills, pricing, managing projects, and supplier management.

This is a high energy, stimulating and interactive modular programme which immerses participants in business case studies and exercises, providing extensive opportunities for debate, peer and tutor feedback and review, developing self-awareness and skills practice and improvement. By using detailed case studies across all modules we can help build the links between subjects and issues which can be hard to achieve in stand-alone one or two day modules.

Our aim is for participants to leave the programme with greater confidence and a step change in their thinking and approach to commercial decision-making. FastStart can be run as an intensive one-week residential programme or as a series of non-residential linked modules. The programme works optimally with 12-16 participants. This is a great group size for lively and varied plenary session discussion, and for participants to work in small groups for many of the exercises.

Being commercial is about understanding commerce – the buying and selling of goods and services, and the factors that influence success. It means understanding the processes, relationships, risks and costs involved in commercial transactions so that we can assess whether value for money has been achieved.

Commercial activity is no longer the remit of just a contracts or commercial function or department. Rather it is the process by which all individuals throughout an organisation operate to minimise exposure to risk while achieving corporate objectives.

Our commercial awareness programme is designed for a wide range of individuals in public, private and not-for-profit organisations who have a direct interface with suppliers or customers and who need to be confident commercial decision-makers. This two day programme covers the four key and interdependent areas where knowledge and skills are required if individuals are to become commercially aware: Legal environment: contracting, Financial environment: understanding cost, Risk: risk identification and management technique, Negotiation: persuasion techniques.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the nature of commercial behaviour.
• Know how legal relations are formed.
• Understand the basics of contracting and what drive costs.
• Connect the relationship between cost and price.
• Know how to identify, quantify and manage risk.

Contracting is at the heart of commerce. It refers to the process of reaching agreement with another party for the purchase or sale of goods or services. Those involved with reaching agreement with third parties (suppliers and/or customers) need to understand that they are involved with contracting and may be committing their organisation to obligations, irrespective of whether their role entitles them to do so.

All too often individuals hide behind contracts, citing them as the reason for not doing things or for doing things in a certain way without understanding the actual contract itself or how contracts work. This programme is a must for all individuals who are engaged in letting contracts and managing contractual relationships, or are a party to a commercial contract. It’s ideal for those who have no formal knowledge of contracts and as a useful refresher for those with a working knowledge of contracts.

It covers the fundamentals of contracting: how contracts are formed; the various elements of contracts, such as service level agreements and terms and conditions; how to establish and manage a contract; how to take account of intellectual property; and how to choose the right approach for your business.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Know how contracts are formed.
• Recognise the elements required for contracts to exist.
• Understand the key terms and conditions within contracts.
• Know how to take account of intellectual property.
• Know how to protect their organisation from commercial risk.

“Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.” American General Patton

Risk is inevitable in business. The skill is in understanding the nature of the risk and quantifying it. Commercial managers need to balance the management of risk and cost as the basis for developing a robust strategy. In reality, traditional tools have led to a focus on the management of price and service to users, with the element of risk receiving less attention.

The objective of this programme is to put participants in a position where they can identify, prioritise and manage commercial related risk. Risk assessment has been with us for many years in the scientific and engineering fields. Its application to commercial matters is relatively recent. This programme focuses on how we can adapt the best of the approaches elsewhere to our commercial needs to arrive at a robust risk assessment and management methodology.

Assessing risk is not sufficient. To some extent all business is risky and a key role of commercial managers is to assist the organisation to deal with risk in a sensible and constructive manner. This programme covers the principles underlying risk management and reviews the main approaches for identifying and quantifying risk. Participants are provided with clearly illustrated examples of how they can control commercial risk.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the concept of risk and the importance of its management on a daily basis.
• Use different approaches to identify risk.
• Quantify risk before and after action has been taken.
• Use approaches for mitigating risk.
• Prioritise risk.
• Make decisions about how best to manage commercial risk.

Some people fear spiders, for others it’s numbers. We’ve gone beyond being surprised at how many people “don’t do numbers” – and we’re not talking about junior employees! It’s downright frightening how many people in business feel uncomfortable when confronted with numbers. Rather than hide the fact, we think it’s better to deal with it.

Designed to develop confidence and understanding of financial skills, this programme demystifies the role of finance in commerce by covering some of the key issues, concepts and jargon used by accountants and contractors. It explores the relationship between cost and value and covers cost control in long term contractual relationships; the balance sheet – seeing the real business behind the numbers; the profit and loss account – developing the confidence to challenge the numbers; long term project appraisal techniques; and seeing the bigger financial picture – how the City rates the companies you work with.

This is designed for those who have little or no formal training and provides an excellent refresher for those who are comfortable with finance. It also provides an opportunity for those with some understanding of finance to broaden their knowledge. We won’t turn your employees into accountants, but we will give them the confidence and skills to understand numbers, know which ones matter, ask the right questions and challenge them where necessary.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Be able to discuss a project’s costs in language accountants respect.
• Understand what drives costs up and down.
• Use a simple, structured approach to interpreting numbers.
• Confidently challenge contractors claims and quotes.
• Feel more confident in asking the right questions rather than expecting answers from the numbers.
• Make decisions about how best to manage commercial risk.

Research shows that between 60% and 80% of every pound earned by a business passes straight through to suppliers. Often as little as 20% of this amount is managed by purchasing professionals. Purchasing is now part of every middle manager and budget holder’s job. Suitable training is a pre-requisite for success.

Designed for people who are new to purchasing and those who find they are responsible for purchasing activities but have had no formal training in the area, this two day programme aims to give participants a solid understanding of purchasing and the key skills and knowledge required. It provides an overview of the purchasing cycle and then looks at each of the key elements: identifying the need; creating a specification; sourcing and market analysis; identifying suppliers; getting and assessing supplier offers; agreeing terms and conditions; contracting; and supplier management.

Delivered by highly experienced consultants with a wealth of experience in running procurement programmes, participants have a tremendous opportunity to learn the tips and traps from people who have been there, and done that. If you are a public sector organisation, we will make sure that the key OJEU requirements are covered to give you confidence that your employees understand their responsibilities under European Union Procurement Directives.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Recognise the key stages of the procurement cycle.
• Understand how contracts are formed.
• Analyse expenditure.
• Identify priority areas for cost savings.
• Assess and categorise risk.
• Differentiate between different specification and contract strategies.

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu

Too often we go to lawyers to have them write a contract before we know what we want the contract to achieve. It’s not the lawyers’ fault when the deal goes south, although we like to pretend it is. Structure follows strategy. Before a contract can be constructed we must consider the four questions of contract strategy:

• What is it that I want to buy (sell)?
• How do I want to pay (get paid) for it?
• How much do I want to pay (get paid) for it?
• What kind of supplier (customer) do I want to deal with?

In answering these four strategic questions we will set the base line for determining whether we want to buy or sell simple goods or bundled services. They will tell us whether payment is based on results or activities or on time passing. They will set the boundary for the budgets and the scope of any services. Finally they will define the target market in which we need to operate.

When preparing to establish a contract our objective is to establish a set of rules that will regulate a continuing relationship. Done correctly it will ensure that both parties undertake those elements of the tasks that they are best equipped to do, and that risk and reward are appropriately allocated to the right place. This programme is designed for senior managers, budget holders and commercial and procurement professionals who need to use vendor based resources to achieve their objectives, and who want to be sure that their current approach to providing goods or services is the right one.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Identify the right approach to define the goods or services to be contracted for.
• Set the boundaries for the contracted goods and/or services.
• Choose the right model of contract for the outsourced services or goods.
• Link payment to the correct trigger.
• Clearly identify the risks and risk transfers involved in outsourcing.
• Establish the basis on which to set and operate a performance measurement and management framework.

Open? Restricted? Negotiated? There’s more to tendering than simply “going out to tender”. Choosing the most appropriate process, deciding how to manage yourself internally to deal with a tendering process; preparing the necessary documentation…

In business as in life, courtship is all-important. Your Invitation to tender (ITT) is the crucial opportunity to attract the very best suppliers to your business and to establish the ground rules for a successful and value for money procurement. To avoid common pitfalls, it’s important that those engaged in managing the process have a comprehensive understanding of all stages of the process, and make relevant decisions about how they will undertake the process, at the outset.

This programme is designed for budget holders, project managers and anyone who has to get quotations from suppliers for work from time to time and covers all aspects of how to get the best results from putting a contract out to tender. It provides the context for the subject by giving an overview of the tender process and looks at when and where to use different types of tenders. We also cover creating and issuing tender notices; OJEU requirements; governance; negotiation; giving feedback and dealing with disputes.

While tendering is used primarily by the public sector, those in private sector companies which use tendering, such as in the construction industry and other services organisations, will also find this programme highly relevant.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the process and importance of each stage of going out to tender.
• Avoid common pitfalls.
• Identify and manage risks in the process.
• Clearly specify needs.
• Schedule tasks effectively.
• Recognise key legal issues & implications.

Competitive tendering is frequently the preferred route for choosing suppliers. But if competition is supposed to improve the quality of the bids submitted, why is it clients all too often feel disheartened by the bids they receive?

It is crucial that buyers have the systems and skills in place to ensure they get the bids they want, rather than accepting the least worst bid they are offered. The starting point for this workshop is acknowledging that power shifts to the supplier once a contract is let. Therefore, it is essential that the buyer uses the pre contract award period to drive the best value possible from the potential supplier.

This programme offers fresh insight and approaches to driving improvements into bids and dealing with potential problems before contract award. It looks at both the process for evaluating bids and identifies the behaviours required to ensure best practice in bid evaluation. The workshop uses real examples to demonstrate how bid engineering can help buyers leverage significant improvements.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Drive improvements in bid quality, closing the gap between what they want and what they are offered.
• Understand and use approaches and processes to motivate bidders.
• Manage stakeholder expectations in the evaluation process.
• Identify and manage foreseeable problems before contract award.

Everything you do relies on your suppliers. When they fail, you lose money, or worse still, you lose a customer. Your success is founded on strong relationships with high performing suppliers. Yet one of the complaints we hear increasingly is “I had nothing to do with writing the contract but I’m supposed to manage it”. Our hearts go out to them. It’s not easy managing a contract when you feel powerless to do anything about it.

If you can’t ensure that that those who will be managing suppliers post contract award are involved in establishing the contract, you can do the next best thing – make sure they have the training they need to drive the supplier performance you require. That’s what this supplier management workshop does. If your employees have little or no formal training in managing suppliers, then this two-day programme is a fantastic place to start. For the more experienced supplier managers who want to achieve a step-change in relationships with their suppliers to deliver significant business benefits to the internal customer base, it provides the opportunity to compare their experiences to what other organisations are doing.

The workshop covers best practice in supplier management, agreeing supplier criteria, exploring commercial risk, and practical elements of supplier management. Importantly it provides practical advice on how to drive supplier performance improvements despite the contract by focusing on what you can do, not what you can’t do. Backed with practical tips and advice based on our trainers’ experience in working across organisations, this workshop has been hugely successful in giving employees the confidence and skills they need to create high performing suppliers.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Identify quick wins for improvement.
• Define “tomorrow’s suppliers” and recognise world class suppliers.
• Understand and have the confidence to challenge costs and performance.
• Define expected levels of performance.
• Identify areas for ongoing improvement.
• Get behind supplier’s hype.
• Understand and differentiate partnerships from other types of relationships.

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” Thanks to Mick Jagger for his inspiration.

Service levels agreements (SLAs) are a key component of contracts for the provision of outsourced sources as they set out the quality of service required from your supplier. But how do you ensure you get the service you want, not just now but over the course of the contract?

The last decade has seen the relentless growth of the target culture. And, its true, you get what you measure – whether you want it or not. What about payment by results or other incentive/performance agreements? How can these be made to work? What are the dangers, if any, of these approaches? How can we ensure that we are setting the bar at the right level? What do we do if the measures tell us the performance is to the agreed standard but the result is, well, rubbish?

Measure performance and you will manage failure. Measure result and you will manage performance. We examine the sources of information to monitor performance and the pitfalls of choosing the wrong measures. This programme is designed for managers of in-house or external service providers to help them identify key performance indicators, develop appropriate measures and construct a documented suite of relationship rules that will underpin the delivery of a high performing service.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the structure and role of SLAs in contracts.
• Know how to identify and set relevant KPIs.
• Know how to develop appropriate measures.
• Learn the tips and traps for developing effective SLAs.
• Understand common pitfalls – and how to avoid them.
• Know how and when to use SLAs.

As more department managers and budget holders are responsible for spending money directly, the role of the purchasing professional and commercial manager is changing. Often, they are required to act as advisor, coach and technical specialist to support other business professionals. In effect, they have to assist other people to be buyers, rather than buy on their behalf. They are internal consultants.

Being a buyer is not enough. These individuals need to champion best practice and have the behavioural skills to persuade individuals at all levels of an organisation to bring about desired change, and this requires an entirely different set of skills, behaviours and knowledge. This programme is designed for purchasing professionals who are required to work in a supportive and consultative role within the business. Participants are introduced to the skills and behaviours required to identify, plan and implement successful changes to business processes.

We introduce the overall concepts, guidelines and skills involved in effective internal consultancy; explain the key stages of the consultancy cycle; and explain a range of analytical models and tools. The skills required to facilitate successful workshops are covered, and practised; along with core project management concepts. The programme can be modified for other functions where the role has become less about doing, and more about supporting others by providing consulting skills.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Identify the key stakeholders in any procurement.
• Negotiate the soft contract with their internal clients.
• Establish the assistance that the client needs and agree their role.
• Market their services as consultants to internal clients.

As more department managers and budget holders are responsible for spending money directly, the role of the purchasing professional and commercial manager is changing. Often, they are required to act as advisor, coach and technical specialist to support other business professionals. In effect, they have to assist other people to be buyers, rather than buy on their behalf. They are internal consultants.

Being a buyer is not enough. These individuals need to champion best practice and have the behavioural skills to persuade individuals at all levels of an organisation to bring about desired change, and this requires an entirely different set of skills, behaviours and knowledge. This programme is designed for purchasing professionals who are required to work in a supportive and consultative role within the business. Participants are introduced to the skills and behaviours required to identify, plan and implement successful changes to business processes.

We introduce the overall concepts, guidelines and skills involved in effective internal consultancy; explain the key stages of the consultancy cycle; and explain a range of analytical models and tools. The skills required to facilitate successful workshops are covered, and practised; along with core project management concepts. The programme can be modified for other functions where the role has become less about doing, and more about supporting others by providing consulting skills.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Explain the need for category management and how it differs from traditional procurement.
• Implement a category management process.
• Define the category manager’s role (commercial and process leadership of multi-functional teams).
• Kick Off category action (scoping, identifying team members, team charters, initial category profiling).
• Ensure the team functions effectively and creates category plans with an appropriate level of analysis to support creative and wide ranging options for additional value.
• Use key analytical tools when creating their strategy.

Whether it is procuring a new IT system or outsourcing shared services, the scale and complexity of selecting a supplier and implementing an agreement is a major initiative. These procurements are major projects in their own right, often with budgets ranging from hundreds of thousands of pounds to millions, with multi-functional team of lawyers, consultants and various stakeholder groups.

The modern enterprise must have both the systems and the skills to deliver complex procurement programmes to time, to budget and with the necessary governance to demonstrate best value for money and fairness of treatment. It’s essential that project managers, senior managers who have ultimate responsibility for major procurements, key stakeholders to major procurement initiatives and technical experts who will be involved in the procurement initiative all understand the complexity of issues involved.

This programme is a great way to bring a team together to kick off a programme or project. The actual project can provide the relevant content to make the theory come to life.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Identify the skills and knowledge required to manage major procurements.
• Implement effective contract governance.
• Schedule key milestones effectively.
• Recognise the need for an effective communications programme.
• Assess value for money.
• Work confidently with legal constraints.
• Keep stakeholders, including bidders, engaged over a long period of time.

Climate change has gone beyond simply a talking point. Legislation on carbon emissions means that organisations need to make conscious commercial decisions about how they buy what they buy.

How much energy our business consumes through our building, transport, and goods and services design and manufacturing will have major implications for an organisation’s profitability and reputation. Keeping up to date with developments, let alone understanding their implications for day-to-day strategic and operational decision-making, is a full time job. What exactly is it? Is it hype? Does it make commercial sense? What are the requirements on me? How do I go about it? If you are asking these questions, you are not alone.

Drawing on the experience of our procurement and legal consultants, we have put together a workshop that brings together updates on relevant facts and information. This senior manager workshop provides a forum for understanding current thinking and practices. As well as covering the theory, it provides examples and practical advice.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Have a clear understanding of the legislation covering sustainability.
• Be able to speak confidently about what is meant by sustainability.
• Be aware of the different options available to them and their organisation.
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the different sustainability mechanisms.
• Be in a position to begin to implement sustainable procurement in their organisation and supply chain.
• Be able to define measurements and mechanisms to map their progress towards a more sustainable supply chain.

“Innovation is at the heart of economic progress. It gives new businesses a chance to replace old ones, but it also dooms those new businesses to fail unless they can keep on innovating.” Joseph Schumpeter

Innovation is all. Probably 80% of the products most of us now use did not exist five years ago; and 80% of them will not exist in five years time. How then, does the procurement professional keep abreast of this wave of change and foster creativity? What does innovation look like? Where does it come from? How do organisations like Apple and Virgin manage to constantly re-invent themselves to stay ahead of the game? Innovation is not just about luck or a crazy idea. It is often the result of a structured approach to problem definition and a methodical analysis of options and potential. Really useful innovation is anything that solves a problem that you have been unable to fix.

Good ideas are not enough. This programme looks at the wider aspects of picking the best innovations and getting them accepted in a, sometimes, hostile environment. It sets out to demystify innovation and covers how purchasing teams can adapt their processes and behaviour to become more innovation friendly and to solve problems creatively.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Deploy tools and techniques to encourage innovation.
• Put in place innovation-friendly processes.
• Lead structured workshops to help drive innovation.
• Sort out good innovation from the background noise of change.
• Identify different people’s responses to innovation and help manage them through coping with necessary change.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli

This programme demystifies the process of investment analysis and provides practical advice on how to create, and sell, a compelling business case. It is designed for procurement managers who have to help internal clients make complex choices between different bids on major purchases. When we use terms like total cost of ownership, extended payment terms, lease or amortisation we are speaking the language of investment analysis. It begins with a discussion of the importance of investment analysis and covers the major techniques of Return on Investment (RoI) analysis such as internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV) and discounted cash flow (DCF).

Procurement managers can lack confidence in using the tools because they don’t understand or don’t believe the numbers. Often, finding the numbers to put into the calculation is the hardest part of a comparative investment analysis. We look at what to leave in and what to leave out and how to estimate what you need, but don’t have.

This programme is designed to make this investment analysis process come alive. Our focus is on developing a practical understanding of the tools and techniques that lie behind the jargon. To make the right investment decision between different options is often based on the ability of the manager to lead a team through a robust appraisal of the investments to be made and to be able to communicate the effects of these options in a way that accountants, bankers and senior managers can recognise.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Calculate the business case for a chosen course of action.
• Confidently deploy and present the different return on investment appraisal techniques.
• Choose the correct investment appraisal method for any given investment.
• Differentiate between the profitability and cash flow profiles of investments.
• Restructure projects to improve the return on investment performance of projects.

“If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” Michelangelo

As the focus on procurement effectiveness and the expectations and demands of senior management increase there has never been such an acute awareness of the need to manage supplier resources to achieve maximum advantage. In this workshop we examine the key drivers of procurement performance, identify the tools and techniques that support the delivery of competitive advantage and provide delegates with the skills to manage a procurement team and to manage the network of stakeholders that need to be carried along with them.

No single answer is appropriate for all types of organisations or for all types of purchases or suppliers within an organisation. The ability to develop relevant and appropriate approaches in response to specific business circumstances is at the core of effective purchasing management. During the programme we will build a framework to create a procurement strategy, target and manage procurement and supplier resources, measure procurement performance and establish the skills required of procurement staff.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Build a top-level procurement strategy.
• Determine strategies for the different types of procurement requirements.
• Avoid the pitfalls of competitive complacency.
• Set budgets for the procurement function.
• Measure procurement performance.
• Establish a supplier management programme.
• Target resources to maximum effect.
• Benchmark the purchasing function.

Total quality management (TQM), customer care programmes and supply chain management have now become standard practice for every efficient business. Procurement teams have mastered techniques such as just in time, electronic data interchange (EDI) and strategic alliances or partnerships. Increasingly companies are looking at cost as a means of providing competitive advantage, and procurement is in the forefront of strategic cost management.

Recent years have seen the development of a number of cost management approaches, which have delivered significant benefits to the organisations which use them. This programme examines and explores some of the approaches being adopted by leading edge companies to manage procurement costs. We consider the limitations of traditional procurement approaches to managing costs and explore the requirements of effective procurement in the future. We examine best practice strategic cost management and explore the techniques that can be used to manage costs pro-actively.

This is a practical and hands on approach to improving the extent to which procurement can take a strategic approach to cost management. It looks at approaches such as zero base pricing, establishing target costs, should-cost models, and co-operative costing. Using examples from world class companies and their approaches to price and cost management you will learn how to manage price and cost movements, get the best from competitive tenders, develop target costs, establish collaborative approaches with suppliers and work with parametric cost estimating.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Set challenging cost reduction targets.
• Deploy best practice cost management techniques.
• Create cost models and simulations.
• Apply value engineering tools to major cost elements.
• Identify the different types and sources of costs and how to affect them.

To manage an account successfully you have to be customer centric, not product centric. This approach puts the customer at the centre of everything we do with the goal of developing more loyal and more profitable customer relationships.

It focuses on three processes – managing relationships, creating opportunities and orchestrating teams – to deliver a differentiated and consistent customer experience. The key to making the customer centred approach a reality is the way the account managers will work together with other parts of their own business and suppliers. They need to take the lead in understanding their customers’ needs, exceed their service expectations, proactively develop new opportunities and assure the customer of their commitment to them. The larger the customer, the more complex the process becomes.

However, regardless of a client’s size or needs, the same customer centred principles apply. In this pragmatic workshop we introduce participants to a structured approach for doing just this and help them apply it to their own accounts.

Benefits of attending – participants will discover:

• Tools and approaches for managing an account.
• How to develop a wider network of contacts within target accounts.
• How to identify and create opportunities.
• How to manage relationships.

Highly effective sales people don’t sell services or products, they sell solutions to other people’s problems. Often known as the process of “hurt and rescue”, effective sales people excel in identifying the problem their potential customer has, even before he or she knows they have it, and build relationships by helping to remove the problem.

Participants on this workshop will learn what’s involved in solution selling, and how to approach it through a staged process to achieve enhanced success in sales. We review some of the key techniques involved and provide opportunities for participants to deploy the skills and receive feedback from our tutors

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the psychology behind solution selling and how to deploy it.
• Acquire techniques and skills to successfully deploy solution selling.
• Learn how to turn problems into opportunities.
• Know how to use these approaches both internally and externally.

Most sales literature and training focuses on what you should say, not what you should ask. However, it is better to respond to a customer pulling your proposals from you than to constantly be striving to push your products or services at an unwilling buyer.

Highly effective salespeople recognise that they need to understand the other party to be able to persuade them, and that they need the other party to want to be persuaded. Underpinning all of this is the effective use of questions. Politicians, journalists and many other professions understand the importance of good question design and question structure. Sales people, too, can make use of questions to make their case and differentiate themselves and their business from the competition.

This programme helps participants understand the theory and techniques behind successful persuasive selling. During the programme we will examine the art of persuasion: reviewing the various interrogative techniques used to find out more about the other party involved. It reviews the persuasion levers available and how to choose and use them.

Benefits of attending – participants will cover:

• The main hurt and rescue methodologies.
• The need to create doubt and then get movement.
• How to use questions and silence to persuade people.
• How to design good questions and a good question structure.
• When to make proposals and when to dig deeper.

Successful sales are based on the ability of the salesperson to sell a compelling case based on promising a healthy Return on Investment (RoI) for the prospective customer – and to be flexible in adapting that business case for the various stakeholders within the client organisation.

This programme demystifies the process of building an RoI business case and provides practical advice on how to create, and sell, a compelling business case. Many sales systems now include a RoI toolbox as a core part of their functionality. We have worked with many of them. Sales people often lack confidence in using the tools and going face to face with the customer based on the outputs because they don’t understand or don’t believe the numbers.

Often finding the numbers to put into the toolbox is the hardest part of building a business case. Using real life examples we will show participants how to identify sources of value and turn these into components of their business case. This programme is designed to make the RoI process come alive. We will cover cash flow, payback period, internal rate of return, net present value and RoI calculations. Our focus is on developing a practical understanding of the tools and techniques that lie behind the jargon.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Confidently deploy and present the different return on investment appraisal techniques.
• Choose the correct investment appraisal method to present their proposal in the best light.
• Differentiate between the profitability and cash flow profiles of investments.
• Identify and estimate sources of value to improve the business case.
• Restructure projects to improve the return on investment performance of projects.

Increasingly sales professionals are required to respond to a competitive procurement tendering exercise to acquire business. Success is a combination of a good product, the right price and, equally importantly, the ability to respond well to the invitation to tender.

Anyone who has been involved in responding to tenders or writing proposals will tell you it’s a time consuming process. Often large teams of people need to be co-ordinated to achieve all the relevant inputs. Sign-off procedures need to be adhered to. It is important that bidders have the systems and skills in place to put their offers in the best light. With more organisations opting for long term contracts to reduce costs, it is imperative that you ensure your bid has maximum chance of success. This requires multiple skills. You need to manage the team of people required to make inputs; run the process like clockwork to hit deadlines; write in a compelling manner; comply with the potential client’s requirements and make sure the numbers stack up.

This programme is designed for people who have to respond to tenders. It covers how to structure a bid; playing the points game; ensuring compliance; and organising yourself effectively to bid effectively and efficiently. We also recommend this programme for people who have to run procurement projects: they also need to understand the stages involved and to be able to see the process from the bidders’ perspective to ensure they get the bids and proposals they want.

Benefits of attending – participants will learn how to:

• Respond to Invitations to Tender (ITTs) with greater confidence.
• Reduce stress by structuring their resources more effectively.
• Avoid common traps.
• Gain practical tips and tricks.
• Differentiate their bids.

Whether you are responding to an invitation to tender, seeking more work from existing clients or approaching new and potential clients, your proposal documents speak volumes about you as a business.

Making your proposal or bid stand out is becoming harder. With ever changing technology and an ever-increasing volume of information, people have a shorter concentration span. It can be hard enough to make your proposal standout when you are having to respond to the potential client’s tender structure, it can be even harder with an unsolicited proposal.

This one-day programme is designed for people tasked with creating winning proposals. It covers how to structure and package proposals for maximum impact, develop compelling arguments, write clearly, succinctly and persuasively and overcome common pitfalls. It is equally relevant for individuals tasked with writing internal proposals, possibly to secure a budget for a project, as for those selling to external clients. Why not use this workshop as the basis for a hands on review and revamp of a proposal or bid you are currently working on? Working with the actual bid team, it provides an excellent opportunity to give your bid the best chance of success.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Recognise the elements of a good proposal and how to critique and improve their bids and proposals.
• Apply their existing knowledge and experience to produce a proposal that is easy to understand as well as meeting its objectives.
• Structure a proposal – and deal with multiple levels of structure within the one proposal.
• Critically review proposals they have written and learn how to improve them.
• Apply tips for avoiding common pitfalls.

Hades had a three-headed dog defending its entrance to stop people leaving. Many organisations have inverted the concept: they have a procurement department which to many a salesperson appears to have the job of stopping them from entering.

For sales people, the challenge is knowing how to get through, or around, the brick wall otherwise known as procurement. To be successful, sales people need to understand how procurement works. This workshop provides a revealing insight into what drives procurement, the techniques and processes they use and recent trends in procurement practice and what they mean for the seller. Looking at both public and private sector procurement practices, we will cover both informal and formal procurement practices.

Delivered by our very own poachers turned gamekeepers, the insight into the procurement world will help you focus your efforts on the right areas to improve your chances of success.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Think like a buyer and respond more confidently when with buyers.
• Focus their sales efforts on areas that will make a difference.
• Gain a better understanding of how cost and price data is used.
• Avoid the pitfalls of dealing with procurement.

Negotiations don’t just happen – they are organised and driven by one or more interested parties. Research shows that the party who controls and drives the negotiation achieves a better result than a simple analysis of their position would suggest.

This course is designed for those who are new to negotiation, and those with some experience who feel they would benefit from a structured approach to negotiation. It will focus on the structure and the elements of a negotiation, review the main persuasion levers, identify the main control skills and highlight common negotiation tips and traps.

The objective is to help participants develop confidence in their ability to negotiate by ensuring they have a clear understanding of what happens in a negotiation and how they can control their response. Using a variety of tutor inputs, negotiation exercises and role plays participants will build a staged model of the negotiation process and be provided with several opportunities to practise the application of this model and the tools and techniques involved.

The course will cover key elements of the negotiation process:

• The need to negotiate
• Choosing the right type of negotiation
• Structure of negotiations
• Planning to negotiate
• Making and receiving concessions
• Sources of value
• Conditioning the other party
• Managing the mechanics of the negotiation

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the structure and process of negotiation.
• Feel more confident in negotiations.
• Identify and use the power of a negotiated impasse.
• Use the full range of persuasion techniques to achieve their negotiating aims.
• Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of their own and the other parties’ position.
• Differentiate between objectives and positions.

This programme is designed for experienced negotiators. It gives experienced negotiators opportunities to role-play a competitive negotiation in teams and then critically assess their performance against the key indicators of negative and positive performance identified in early sessions.

Using a combination of tutor input, psychometric profiling of problem solving style, role-play, peer group review and video feedback, participants will review their negotiating strengths and weaknesses and develop an action plan to improve their negotiated agreements.

This programme builds on the core skills and theory covered in the ‘Say No – then Negotiate’ programme. The emphasis here is much more on deploying the skills and behaviours.

This programme is the preferred choice for those with experience of negotiation looking to:

• Improve their skills
• Explore different approaches in a safe environment
• Get feedback on their approach and style
• Address aspects of their negotiation performance they are not happy with
• Get feedback from other experienced negotiators
• Reflect on their experience
• Add new approaches and techniques

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Analyse and control complex negotiations.
• Manage their body language.
• Control the negotiation process – even when dealing with difficult people.
• Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of their preferred style.
• Develop an action plan for improving their personal styles.
• Achieve a step change in their negotiation through improved planning.

Taking participants’ real problems and negotiations, this workshop helps groups develop strategies and methods to address real issues and produce an action plan to improve their negotiation performance.

Frequently this is the preferred choice of organisations and teams who are about to embark on business critical negotiations or who are currently in the middle of complex negotiations. It provides an excellent opportunity to rehearse difficult or complex negotiations with feedback and advice from experienced negotiators.

It is the ideal choice for:

• Members of teams about to enter a negotiation
• Individuals who have not negotiated together before – and who would benefit from doing so in a safe environment
• Those looking to rehearse a negotiation
• Negotiation teams which are experiencing intra team friction or difficulties
• Teams that would benefit from a facilitated structured planning session for a real problem
• Teams which have hit a stalemate in negotiations and are looking for alternative approaches

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Make progress by working on specific work related issues.
• Enter a negotiation with greater confidence.
• Identify and prioritise the range of options available to them.
• Significantly increase the chance of success.
• Reduce negotiation team stress and fatigue.
• Redefine existing problems.
• Evaluate their negotiation performance and identify strengths and weaknesses.

The master class concept uses the knowledge and expertise of a seasoned group of practitioners to support each other through the learning and development process. Using real examples from the work environment, the participants are supported by coaches to develop a variety of approaches to the problem and to review and critique the performance they and their fellow participants achieve.

This is the preferred choice for senior and highly experienced negotiators as it focuses on the individual’s issues and performance and provides detailed feedback. It requires a level of expertise and openness that makes it a different experience from a conventional training programme. The process of feedback and review can be much more uncomfortable for people than a training programme. Performing under observation at a detailed level can be personal and very stressful for some people.

Master class events achieve most when:

• Each participant brings an assessment of themselves and a development goal for the session
• This development goal is shared with the other participants as the core target of the feedback and critique
• Participants are streamed to create peer groups that have a shared platform of skills and abilities
• Groups are small (4 to 6 people) to focus on practice and feedback
• Case study material is provided in advance of the programme to allow participants to prepare fully before the event
• The venue is carefully chosen to create a managed environment free from the distractions and baggage of the participants’ normal day-to-day job
• The organisation is made aware that the participant will be unavailable for the duration of the master class and appropriate steps are taken to avoid interruption and/or disruption of the event

Follow-up support is available via clinics, telephone or coaching to support the implementation of any behaviour changes and overcome any obstacles encountered.

In the future you may need to make decisions about services you offer: what services to bid for, what current services to hang on to, which services should you stop providing, what new services you could offer. Do you want to defend your existing turf? Do you want to innovate and introduce new services, including new ways of meeting existing demands? Are there areas you want to stop operating in? What about competitors – what are they doing? Do you want to follow their lead, reacting to what they do, or lead the pack? Where are we now, where do we need to be, and where do we want to be in the future, and what will it take for us to do that?

None of these are simple questions. They involve complex decisions making processes. They are at the heart of strategy and organisations and their teams need to constantly revisit their strategy, or run the risk of becoming overtaken by competitors or, at worse, obsolete.

This two day workshop will give participants a comprehensive understanding of what strategy is and isn’t. It introduces core strategy models to help you structure your thinking and demonstrates how strategy is deployed operationally when developing a business case and in commercial decision making. The models all have strengths and weaknesses, some are quite prescriptive and straightforward to use, others less so. The trick is not to see them as explicit instructions, but to understand that they are trying to guide you, and your team, through a thinking process.

The workshop is ideal for those managers who are involved in developing and implementing business strategy and tasked with turning strategy into operational and tactical plans. It is particularly helpful for those managers who have had no formal training in strategy development and who would benefit from understanding key theories and approaches. For those who have undertaken formal study at some stage in their career, it also provides a useful and welcome refresher.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the role and purpose of a business strategy, the strategic planning process and the difference between strategy and plans.
• Assess the strengths and weakness and of some of the most widely used strategy models.
• Know how to choose and use a range of strategy models intelligently while avoiding common pitfalls.
• Assess the challenges and opportunities presented by the age and size of an organisation.
• Assess a competitive market and the shape of an organisation within it
  Develop a strategy which seeks to create new markets free of competition.
• Identify and build on an organisation’s existing strengths.
• Adopt a broader strategic focus to adopt a more balanced approach.
• Use tactical planning models and an operational plan to successfully implement a strategy.
• Build a business case on the back of the strategy.

How well do you know yourself? How do you come across to others? Do you find some styles more irritating or difficult than others? Is your style holding you back? This one day programme is designed to give you a comprehensive understanding of your personal style as a leader and manager, and how people you work with are likely to react to you in different work situations. Through the use of a psychometric instrument and a range of models, you will find discover many aspects of your style including problem solving and learning styles, communication preferences, what motivates you, how to work with employees and other managers who may have a different style, and how to establish more effective and productive relationships with them.

With a greater awareness of your own style and preferences, you will be able to evaluate how, when, why and what you do works in some situations, and what you can do to make it better at other times. For leaders and managers who find they are increasingly having to work with a wide range of different people across organisations, this is an excellent opportunity for you to spend a day really getting to know yourself and your impact on colleagues, reflecting on your relationships with those you work with, and sharing experiences with other managers. It will also help you more quickly read and understand others with different styles and how you can interact with them more effectively.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Have greater self awareness of their personal preferences.
• Be able to identify and describe the behaviours of others and understand the effect they have.
• Be able to develop a wider range of styles to respond positively to a range of situations.
• Recognise what causes you stress and how to develop strategies to cope with them.
• Recognise their communication style preferences, and those of your team members, so that you can convey your messages to your team more quickly and effectively.
• Recognise different team styles and their implications, and how they can be adapted for better outcomes.
• Know how to use their understanding of style preferences to motivate others.
• Set themselves practical goals based on what they have learnt.

As a manager or supervisor, how many problem conversations do you have a day? How successful are you in getting a result that both you and your work colleagues are happy with? Welcome to the world of negotiation. Negotiation isn’t just about contracts and business issues – it’s about persuading and influencing others to settle an argument, agree a way forward, do something we want them to do, or support us in what we need to achieve.

As managers we negotiate when we have difficult conversations when managing employee performance, when we need to keep a colleague focused and on track with service delivery, and when we need to reach an agreement with service users. Some days it can feel like we are bouncing from one negotiation to the next, and it can feel stressful and tiring.

This one day workshop is designed for managers who are new to negotiation and those with some experience who feel they would benefit from learning a more structured approach to negotiation. It will help you develop confidence in your ability to negotiate with and influence others by ensuring you have a clear understanding of how best to plan for a negotiation, the typical stages of a negotiation, how to adapt your style to best suit the circumstances, and how to improve your ability to stay calm and focused in difficult situations. You will develop greater awareness of your own and others’ negotiating style and how you can use this knowledge to achieve better results, more quickly. For those wanting more hands on skills practice, we recommend a two day workshop.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Develop the skills and confidence to negotiate and manage difficult situations.
• Recognise, choose and respond appropriately to the five negotiation styles in different work situations.
• Be able to apply different techniques to them you defuse difficult situations and reach agreement with colleagues and customers.
• Have greater awareness of their preferred negotiating style, will have practiced trying alternate styles, and be able to select the style most appropriate for achieving their desired outcomes.
• Have practical tips for achieving positive outcomes from difficult situations or with difficult people.
• Set an action plan for improving their negotiation skills and/or using them where a negotiation approach may help improve outcomes.

Managing teams can be a rewarding and challenging job when you get a team of people pulling together to deliver an excellent service. All too often we find ourselves managing teams without any real understanding of the best way to go about it. This two day programme provides a unique opportunity for managers, team leaders and supervisors to get a better understanding of how to bring out the best in the people you manage and supervise.

We take you the key steps from scoping the team you need to deliver outcomes, through developing a job specification, motivating team members and dealing with difficult situations.

This is a highly interactive and pragmatic workshop that will give you the opportunity to learn and practice new approaches, including using coaching techniques, to get the best from your team, whatever your remit. We will cover how to set and maintain expectations, manage progress, address performance shortfalls, stretch talent and get the maximum value from the performance development review process.  We will take you through each of the steps needed to get the best from your team, both on the job and during the formal appraisal process.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Be able to set clear and measurable objectives to help manage employee expectations.
• Recognise different management and leadership styles and be able to choose appropriately.
• Recognise the different ways we communicate expectations and instructions can impact staff motivation and productivity, and use this knowledge to achieve better results and a more motivated team.
• Practice using the coaching models and core communication skills introduced in the session to support your team members in achieving objectives.
• Practice using feedback techniques for reinforcing positive performance and addressing performance development areas.
• Learn how to develop a flexible approach to leading and managing teams and practice selecting different styles and approaches.
• Know some of the common reasons for poor performance and use this knowledge to assess your own team.
• Be more confident in conducting performance reviews that drive performance.
• Develop and practice approaches which focus on positive aspects of performance to build engagement and motivation.
• Be more aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a team manager and how this could affect the team(s) you manage or supervise.

Change is constant: new people, new services, new products, new technology. And yet, so often change initiatives fail to deliver their desired outcomes. We all have very different reactions to change and it’s important that, as leaders, managers and supervisors, we understand how we feel about change as this will influence the messages we give to those we manage and overall team performance.

This one day programme will help you to understand how, and why, you and others react to change at both a personal and organisational level and what impact this can have when views differ. We will introduce you to tools and models to help you manage your team effectively when change needs to happen – both at a personal performance level and at a team level. By having a greater understanding of change, you will be better able to manage the emotional roller coasters that can derail individuals and teams and disrupt service delivery; and grasp opportunities to achieve excellence. By understanding the emotional elements of change you will be far better equipped to keep change initiatives on track.

If you are looking for a more comprehensive approach to managing change, we suggest combining this workshop with the two day Principles of Effective Project Management workshop below.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Be able to name and understand the key stages during the process of change.
• Recognise and describe their own and others’ common reactions to change.
• Be able to identify potential obstacles to change within their team, and how they can address them.
• Know how to communicate change requirements more effectively with different stakeholder groups.
• Feel more confident in creating and responding to change at both a personal and team level by practicing evidence based techniques and approaches.
• Know how to support others in their team who are struggling with change whilst maintaining service delivery.
• Understand why change initiatives fail, and how to ensure they stand the best chance of success.

Managers are increasingly involved in making sure that services are delivered in line with formal contractual arrangements with external parties and service specifications agreed internally.  These agreements set out what you will, and won’t, get paid for. Sometimes it is what you do; sometimes it the result (what you achieve). The difference is crucial in how you will direct, manage, monitor and report service delivery.

This one day programme gives you a solid grounding in the basics of contract law and how to use a contract or service specification to help you understand what has been commissioned and how you will manage service delivery. It will explain how to set and use measures of performance such as key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level agreements (SLAs) effectively, and introduce you to practical techniques for organising, prioritising and monitoring the delivery of services and complex workloads. Crucially, we will also cover how to avoid the common pitfalls of targets which can negatively impact behaviour.

We will look at how you find and use the relevant sections of contracts to get clarity on what you need to deliver and know how well you are doing. We also look at how targets can be used to improve performance improvements internally with your own teams and services. Targets are a way of life. This is the ideal workshop for anyone who is overwhelmed by the targets, wanting to make them more relevant, and wanting to use them more effectively to drive better performance.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the concept of performance and how this is contracted for, monitored and assessed.
• Know how to select relevant KPIs to effectively monitor service delivery against objectives and key outcomes.
• Know how and why KPIs and SLAs are used to monitor service delivery, and practice using them.
• Learn how to put SLAs and KPIs in place where none currently exist, and how to use them to drive continual improvement.
• Be able to assess whether their team is delivering on performance expectations using appropriate measures.
• Recognise how risk passes between parties in both the contract and operational behaviour – and how you as a manager can reduce it through effective performance monitoring and management.

Never has the pressure been stronger on managers to achieve more with less. That’s why it’s essential that all managers have a solid understanding of what drives costs, so that they can propose changes to the service design to reduce costs without reducing quality.

This one day programme will help you develop a solid understanding of costs, how they change, and how what we do has an impact on overall cost. We will look at common areas of overspend and provide practical tips for bringing costs under control while maintaining service standards. We will look at how to utilise resources to best balance demand and capacity and achieve a highly efficient service.

This module assumes no previous financial knowledge or training. It’s about making you feel more comfortable with the money side of service delivery and providing practical tips so that you can play a more active role in shaping value for money in your areas. This is a hugely practical and interactive workshop for any organisation wanting to reduce waste and costs in their business while improving performance.

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Develop an understanding of the different categories of costs associated with product and service delivery and how managers can control them.
• Understand the relationship between costs and the choices we make about resources.
• Identify the causes of waste and inefficiency and plan to remove them.
• Create options to match resources with demand, and for dealing with uneven or unplanned demand, for example, through multi-skilling or effective use of skill mix.
• Learn how to maximize organizational and personal effectiveness through efficient work package design and delegation.
• Use a checklist to help you identify areas for operational efficiency improvements.

Whether it’s working across silos and functions, working in partnership with suppliers to achieve joint goals, or just trying to get things done, managers and employees are increasingly expected to work as part of project teams. Often these complex goals are made even more difficult to achieve as different results need to be delivered simultaneously and at arms length, through managing resources and people based in several locations.

Managing projects is not just the domain of technology and construction specialists, nor does it require sophisticated software programmes. The professional purchasing manager in the modern organization needs the same project management tools, techniques and skills to confidently manage conflicting demands and deliver expected results on time and to budget. This two day workshop gives participants an understanding of the wider competences and skill set required to be an effective commercial project manager as well as ensuring they know the key stages of effective project management. The emphasis is on the behaviours, skills and knowledge required at each stage.

The programme challenges participants to be commercially inquisitive, rather than simply seeing project management as a set of sequential steps. We provide techniques that can help individuals prioritise when they have multiple projects or demands on their time. This workshop is ideal for managers who are required to do more than achieve deadlines and deliver technical solutions. Our programme is designed for:

• Leaders of project teams who are required to provide direction to the project team
• Project leaders who need to manage clients and negotiated problem resolution and disputes
• Individuals who have multiple calls on their time who could benefit from understanding how project management techniques could help them
• Individuals who have experience running projects but who would benefit from a deeper understanding of the wider competences required to deliver commercially successful projects
• Technical and professional staff who are required to prioritise tasks and deliver work packages
• Managers and staff responsible for ensuring on-time delivery of key project elements

Benefits of attending – participants will:

• Understand the key attributes and competences of commercial project managers and self assess their strengths and weaknesses.
• Learn the key stages of the project life cycle.
• Learn how to establish criteria for evaluating projects to ensure we are devoting our time to value added activities and getting rid of time wasters.
• Know how to prioritise when you have multiple projects or demands on your time.
• Recognise the difference between goals and measures.
• Recognise and overcome optimism bias in project management and reporting.
• Improve decision making.
• Know how to schedule tasks and calculate the time needed to deliver a project.
• Learn how to plan work, budgets and resources.
• Discover tips for staying on track and resolving difficulties.