New members of your downline will look to you for training and advice or assistance to help them get established in the business. They will be keen to succeed and highly motivated to learn. Here are some important tips to help you be effective in training your distributors.

The effectiveness of training sessions depends largely on the trainer. A trainer who simply stands in front of the group and delivers information without interacting with the students will not teach as well as someone who gets involved. To become a top notch trainer you will need to:

1. Create Rapport

Before the training session starts, mingle with the participants and get to know them.

By meeting attendees ahead of time and chatting with as many of them as possible, you will have broken the ice before the session begins. This will create an immediate warmth between you and your audience when you begin to train them.

Avoid sensitive topics in this “getting to know you” phase, as you are trying to build rapport, not get into an argument. Stick to topics like good restaurants in the area, or traffic on the way to the venue.

2. Give More Than Expected.

If you deliver only content that is expected, you are really not giving value for money.

Make an effort to provide a more valuable and interesting experience than participants expect. Do extra research or locate additional resources that help people gain more from the experience.

You can share your own, or other people’s stories and perhaps even get the attendees themselves to share personal experiences that are relevant. You will find that you can also learn a lot by involving your audience.

Make the learning as interactive as possible. In other words, get the trainees as involved as possible. The easiest way to get their cooperation is to make the whole process fun. If you create a friendly, safe environment in which people feel comfortable getting involved, you will find people much more willing to interact.

It is also important to keep learning yourself. You can improve your training skills by attending seminars for trainers.

3. Use a Variety of Training Methods

It is important to move between different training techniques in order to keep trainees interested. Standing in front of people and lecturing them with straight information is likely to cause them to lose interest and stop paying attention because it is so boring.

Instead, use a number of training techniques that encourage interaction and move the learning forward quickly. It is important that training has a practical purpose and active learning is the best way to achieve it.

It isn’t hard to make your training sessions interesting. Here are some strategies you can use:

- role play
- group discussion
- case studies
- trainee presentations
- telling stories
- short quizzes
- fun games

Presentation aids such as Power Point presentations, video clips, audio, flip charts, posters and other training props can help convey information and keep the audience’s attention.

Adjust your approach depending on the time of day. For example, during the afternoon when people may begin to get tired, keep them alert with interactive strategies.

4. Use the Right Amount of Variety

The aim of training sessions is to give attendees the ability to actually do what they are being trained to do. This means that it is very important to reinforce learning throughout the session. A good rule of thumb is to provide three different activities for each specific topic so that learning can be reinforced.

One way you can do this is to introduce a case study with a video clip that gives a detailed view of the subject. You can then divide the participants into small groups to discuss the information and come up with some solutions to a problem. Afterwards, the groups can designate someone to present their information to other attendees.

Learning retention is significantly greater when you include group activities and multi-sensory training techniques.

5. Keep Them Interested With Surprises.

There should be no surprises for the trainer of course, because the training session should be very well planned.

However, the participants are another thing altogether. A good trainer plans to surprise the trainees.

You can surprise them by using a range of different and interesting training strategies. Participants may be aware of the course content but find the techniques new and interesting.

You can also use rewards to motivate them. Small rewards like chocolate bars, pens or notebooks can be enough of an incentive to get people involved. When you divide participants into teams during the session, you can award points to teams. This is a great way to get people excited and involved.

6. Train to The Objectives.

It is easy to get off track when you create an interactive learning environment, so it is essential that you have planned the course carefully. What are the learning objectives of the training? What topics must be covered in each session?

It is important to constantly reiterate these objectives during the course so that it stays on track.

It is common for groups to want to spend more time on topics that interest them but if you do that you will find there is insufficient time to cover the other topics in the course.

Next time you need to run a training session, apply these training strategies for the best learning outcomes. Keep in mind the rule of three as you plan and deliver the training: repetition, recall and retention.

Discover Kevin Sinclair’s system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

How do YOU communicate with your people? If you need to let your staff know something – the latest pay offer, when the office party is, that their department is being restructured – how do you do it?

If yours is a fair-sized business, chances are that you leave it to the HR department to fire off a memo or an email. And often, that’s just fine. You don’t need a leadership training course on how to organize a party.

But you’re missing opportunities to influence and inspire your staff if you leave ALL your communication to word-processed notes and email messages.

And you’re opening the door to misunderstanding and resistance if the really big changes are not communicated in a very particular way.

Let’s take a step back for a minute. If your day consists of meetings, more meetings, phone conversations, business lunches, staff negotiations, media interviews and board discussions, then you’re doing nothing but talking and listening all day.

Now, yes it’s a cliche, but knowing how to communicate effectively IS the most important task of a successful leader. For a successful leader, talk IS action.

But many managers get communication wrong. For instance, most leaders believe their main role in communicating is to make decisions for everyone else, and then tell everyone about the decisions.

Sorry, but this is a myth. Not only that, it doesn’t work. (How many times have you told everyone what needs to be done in a meeting or an email only to have nothing happen?)

The second myth is that you have to decide EVERYTHING. Managers who believe this create a rod for their own backs.

Why is that? Well, if you decide everything, then no one will ever take any initiative or show the slightest ounce of energy to do anything without your rubber stamping everything. Even the tiniest project will grind to a halt unless you have the final word.

But your time is far more precious than this. You should use your time more wisely than in rubber stamping it.

So how do you know when a decision absolutely has to be made? Well, let me tell you.

The most effective way to find out if there is a real decision to be made is to start a debate. By debating the issue with your peers, your staff and other stakeholders, you can decide whether a particular change is necessary or not.

Now, to start the debate you need to ask your people what they think is going on in a particular situation. And then you can test their answers against your own opinions.

This process helps you significantly in gathering as much intelligence as possible. And it makes it more likely that you will make the right decision for the company. But it also helps all those involved in the change.

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, explains this well: “Through the process of presenting their own opinions, the participants will refine their own arguments and facts so that they are in much clearer focus. Gradually all parties can cut through the murkiness that surrounds their arguments, clearly understand the issues and each other’s point of view.”

So the successful leader is courageous and encourages widespread debate – even from people who disagree, as well as from supporters. And this helps you make the best decision for the organization.

Not only that, but it will help all those affected by that decision – they will know that they played a part in making the decision.

If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”.
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Reading at a liesurly pace is fine, it is all part of the appeal that reading has to many people. It allows you to relax and process the words slowly. Unfortunately the way we read for pleasure is not suitable when we need to read articles and information for work or study.

When you read textbooks or thick technical articles you do not need to read every word. The ability to read quickly is often important when faced with this type of subject. You can learn how to process information quickly using Evelyn Wood speed reading techniques, they will help correct many of the mistakes people make with daily reading.

Mistakes We Make

When you join an Evelyn Wood speed reading course you will learn how to stop making the frequent mistakes that most people make when reading. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when reading is to sound out each word in their mind while reading.

The Evelyn Wood speed reading program will help you to stop doing this. Although sounding out the words in your head is a good way to first learn reading, it slows you down immensely.It is a habit many people never grow out of . You are probably unconsciously doing it right now.

There are additional skills you will learn with the Evelyn Wood speed reading technique that will help you to read and comprehend faster. One of them is to read with your finger. This might seem simple but increasing the speed of your finger as you read across a page is harder than it sounds.

Benefits From Learning

Numerous people benefit from learning the Evelyn Wood speed reading technique. It does not matter how old you are. You will probably find this course very helpful. If you are a student then this is invaluble information. Learning these techniques will free up your time for the work you have as a student.

The Evelyn Wood speed reading techniques also include ways to retain information you have read and you’ll have better comprehension of content. This is important without comprehension of content your reading will have been for nothing.

If you have ever experienced a time when you have been reading the same sentence over and over again without understanding anything then this might be the time to start learning the Evelyn Wood speed reading techniques.

Even if you are a working professional this course will help you. If you have to deal with journals and articles everyday as part of research or day to day tasks then this course will help you to be more efficient.

Francis Hesse will help you find all you need to become a proficiant speed reader.

Learn More About Speed Reading Here

While catching the early morning news at the gym today, I was astonished to hear the headline that Starbucks is closing nationwide for three hours to train its 135,000 store employees on the art of coffeemaking and the ultimate customer experience.

Wow! I have been a training professional for over 25 years and this announcement is monumental to our profession. A company actually talks about the importance of training, stop the presses!

Training is often the 800 pound corporate gorilla that never gets addressed, yet needs to be. Many businesses fail based upon their lack of buidling an effective and ongoing internal training program. Since training is considered an expense to most companies, its importance is low on the corporate totem-pole.

Finally, through this announcement, a well-known and profitable company has given us a peek behind the corporate kimono and revealed that lower sales and unhappy customers could be related to “a training issue.” Kudos to Starbucks for stepping up to the plate and addressing this situation. And cheers to them for making a marketing event around it. How often do we hear about other companies staff training events? NEVER.

Telling the world you need to devote time training is a great positive, because it reveals you know the secret to success – its your people! A well trained staff and happy customer experience help drive company profitability.

How did Starbucks determine they needed additional training? Well, they didn’t ask me, but if they followed standard training industry processes, here are the steps they might have taken. First, they would analyize their volumes of data to determine who their target audience known as demographics.

Often large companies will trun demographics into fictional people and create a story around them to help staff to better visualize their customer needs. For example: A typical young mom with 2 children under the age of four frequents the store between the hours of 8:30am – 10:30am. So they will give this group a name, Sue. And that business professionals will be descending upon the store between 6:00 to 7:30am. Perhaps this group will be called Bob. Each story will tell what products these people ask for most and what customer experience they expect.

When building the training program objectives, they will address the individual needs of Sue and Bob. The key to sound training programs revolves around meeting the needs of your target audience.

The next step is to teach staff members what you want them to say and do. This should be a step-by-step process that is repeated several times. Repetition builds knowledge, confidence and skills.

Now they know the expectations, it is time for the learner to practice their new skills. Using case studies about Sue and Bob will help to reinforce the key learning strategies determined in the objectives. When working through real problems, learners become problem solvers. The key to highly successful customer service is to create problem solvers.

Finally, the trainer might have asked for learner feedback so any questions can be addressed then in real time.

I predict the net result of this three-hour training intervention will create a mad rush to your local Starbucks, just like the mood we experience on the day after Thanksgiving. We Starbucks groupies will wake up and literally run to be the first in line to benefit from the well-trained barrista’s abilities to wow us with that perfect latte and service with a smile. I want to taste the fruits of the training intervention first-hand and affirm my training profession.

Thank you Starbucks for elevating the corporate training experience to a new level. I tip my training hat to you!

Karen Miller founded Design2Train, an instructional design and training development company to help companies solve triaining related issues. Learn more about the company at Design2Train

If you are interested in succeeding in the area of business, it is essential that you are well educated in the area of effective communication skills.

While many individuals seem to be born natural communicators, the rest of us must acquire this particular skill in order to be successful at it. Consistency is the key when it comes to business and communication skills.

Here, you will find useful information directly related to the impact of good communication skills in the business environment. If you are looking to gain effectiveness in your professional career, you are sure to benefit from the information contained here.

The lack of communication skills has been determined to be one of the most popular reasons for the overall decline in many businesses.

The inability to share ideas and thoughts, facts and figures, and express oneself in the business world can literally destroy careers, and close the door on many different types of businesses. It is essential to know and understand this very important fact in order to completely grasp the overall importance of this particular skill.

It is also important to understand that building skill level in this area is a must. Each and every single individual communicates in different ways, due to their take on the matters that are important to them, as well as their skill level in the area. You must be able to adapt to these differences effectively.

There are two general types of communication. The first type, obviously, is verbal. The second type of communication is nonverbal.

Many times, believe it or not, the nonverbal cues that we give off speak louder than the words that we actually use. When it comes to communicating in a professional environment, it is important that we are all aware of the things that we are communicating with our mouth, our facial expressions, and our general body language.

This is really the first step to increasing business and communication skills. Without this knowledge, there is no marked area for improvement. With this knowledge, you will find yourself constantly striving to increase the verbal and nonverbal means in which you communicate with others in the professional environment.

When focusing on business and communication skills, it is important that you focus on several different aspects that may be experienced in the professional environment.

First, you should be able to experience comfort and quality when it comes to communicating with a person in a one on one manner.

Second, you should understand how to communicate when it comes to conflicts that may arise in the professional environment.

Third, you must ensure that you know and understand how to communicate with a team of individuals in a discussion that is related to the business for which you are a part of.

Last, you should gain some sort of comfort level in communicating in training sessions, as well as the general public.

When it comes to business and communication skills that are numerous necessary components that should be the center of focus these are considered to be the “building blocks” of effective communication.

The first component is the ease of establishing contact with another and the method in which it is done. The second is active listening. This means listening to what it said and paraphrasing to ensure understanding with the other party involved.

The third is the ability to speak in a general manner so that it reduces the possibility of complicated emotions arising. The fourth is the ability to communicate in an ethical manner so the business is not compromised in any way, and that policies and procedures are properly adhered to.

The last is in the area of presentations both on an internal basis and an external basis.

In conclusion, business and communication skills are an absolute must for the professional. The areas previously mentioned should be practiced consistently, and reinforced at every opportunity.

In today’s business market, writing has also become a standard form of communication on top of verbal and nonverbal types.

It is important that every professional knows and understands how to communicate via electronic and written communications. By focusing on all the areas mentioned here, you are sure to see an increase in your performance in the area of business communications.

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My assumptions are that:
You have some basic knowledge of training.

Or you may have experience in the training field as an instructor.

You might have developed instructor-led training or printed training manuals.

YOu would rather get a root canal than write objectives!

Wait, there is hope!

The first most important principle to remember about writing objectives is: Understand is not a measurable objective!

Let me repeat, Understand is not a measurable objective!

Having written objectives for over 25+ years, I admit I am very picky. And when I see a document that starts off with objectives that include “understand”, I cringe. Excuse me, how to do measure someone’s understanding of a concept or procedure? You can’t.

What is a measurable objective?
- Objectives are written to give direction to training events.
- A measurable objective contains an “action” verb thereby engaging the learner to demonstrate knowledge or problem solving skills.
- A measurable objective is “capable of being measured”.

Here is how to quickly create measurable objectives by putting Bloom’s Taxonomy theory into practice.

1. At the Knowledge Level, the learner exhibits previously learned materials by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts and answers.

Level 1: Key Words include: Choose, define, find, label, list, match, name, recall, relate, select, spell, tell, what, when, where, which, who, why

Use these to create instant objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Define what is ______?
- Match how is… related to______?
- Choose where is ______ found?
- Tell why we chose to use ______?
- Select the main ______?

2. At the Comprehension Level: the learner demonstrates the ability to relate to facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions and stating main ideas.

Level 2: Key Words include: Classify, compare, contrast, demonstrate, explain, extend, infer, interpret, illustrate, outline, relate, rephrase, show, summarize, translate

Use these Instant Objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Classify the type of ______
- Compare and contrast ______to ______
- Explain the process to ______ a ______
- Illustrate the best process to ______

3. At the Application Level: the learner solves problems by applying knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way.

Level 3: Key Words include: Apply, build, choose, construct, develop, experiment with, identify, interview, make use of, model, organize, plan, select, solve, utilize

Use these Instant Objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Solve common business case scenarios using ______
- Identify what would result if ______ happened
- Select the best ways to solv e a problem about ______
- Organize the ______ into ______ for efficiency
- Utilize the process to ______

4. At the Analysis Level: the learner examines and breaks down information into parts by identifying motives or causes; making inferences and finding evidence to support generalizations.

Level 4: Key Words include: Analyze, assumption, categorize, classify, compare, conclusion, contrast, discover, distinguish, divide, examine, inspect, simplify, survey, take part in, test for

Use these Instant Objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Discover the process by examining the individual components of the ______
- Classify the ______ into elements
- Conclude that ______ will happen if the following steps occur
- Examine the relationship between ______
- Categorize the parts of the ______

5. At the Synthesis Level: the learner compiles information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or other solution.

Level 5: Key Words include: Adapt, build, change, choose, combine, compile, compose, construct, create, design, develop, elaborate, estimate, formulate, imagine, improve, invent, make up, maximize, minimize, originate, plan, predict, propose, solve, solution, suppose, theorize, test,

Use these Instant Objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Discuss the changes needed to solve ______
- Choose the most efficient way to ______
- Invent a new technique to ______
- Modify the plan to ______
- Minimize the loss or risk by ______
- Combine the right techniques to ______
- Improve the efficiency by ______
- Propose effective strategies to ______
- Adapt a new way to ______
- Design a new approach to resolving ______

6. At the Synthesis Level: the learner presents and defends opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas or quality of work.

Level 6: Key Words include: Agree, appraise, assess, award, choose, conclude, criticize, decide, deduct, defend, determine, disprove, dispute, estimate, evaluate, explain, influence, interpret, judge, justify, measure, mark, rate, recommend, rule on, perceive, prioritize, prove, select, support, value

Use these Instant Objectives:

The student will be able to:
- Provide reasons to agree with the ______
- Offer opinions on the effectiveness of specific wording to customers.
- Estimate the amount of time it takes to______
- Recommend effective strategies or tactics to complete work more efficiently.
- Recommend three approaches to ______
- Rate the effectiveness of ______
- Defend the actions of ______
- Evaluate representative / client conversations for ______
- Assess the value of ______

A closing note on writing objectives:

Don’t use more than 3-5 objectives per unit of instruction. If there are more than that, consider breaking that unit into two parts. And even though we would like to think that we live in a perfect world and the learners need to achieve competence up to Level 6 – that’s not reality. Be happy if you can get them to solidly achieve typical goals of Levels 1 – 4.

Good luck in writing objectives painlessly!

Design2Train, a SBA 8a certified company, was founded by Karen Miller, an award-winning instructional designer with over 25+ years of project management experience. Design2Train specializes in creating training at the speed of business. Visit our website: Design2Train

There have been dozens of references about unique corporate cultures and why some of them work better in certain situations. There are names being tossed around, some of them seem to be made up on the fly. For instance there is the Work Hard/Play Hard culture or the Live and Let Live Culture. For every pundit there is a new buzz name for a social observance in business, and for every pundit they offer their own form of executive leadership training. Most of these philosophies, however, can be boiled down to specific components: trust, communication and inspiration.

History of Recognizing Corporate Culture

A closer look on how the corporation affects the individual was possibly first introduced by the author William H. Whyte’s book The Organizational Man. This work broke some ground in social analysis in corporations. He warned against the corporation turning into a bureaucratic stagnancy that stifled spontaneity. Corporations took away some main points from the body of work he produced and came up with agreements that:

- Employees are motivated or disillusioned in the workplace by prevailing corporate culture
- Corporate culture gauges the businesses’ effectiveness
- Corporate culture inevitably changes
- Power structure, interpersonal relations and human interchanges can be seen as unique to different types of corporate cultures

With that being established, other social leaders and scientists have made observances that are noteworthy. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch organizational studies professor, published, with his colleagues, six “dimensions” that distinguish separate characteristics in corporate culture.

1. Process oriented verses results oriented — A process culture will rely on keeping the risk low and using tried and true approaches, while results oriented are always in search of new methods and taking risks.

2. Employee oriented versus job oriented — Its simply distinguishing a work place that is placing more value on the comforts of the individual as apposed to making sure the work position is filled and is being productive in that position.

3. Parochial versus professional — Parochial cultures identify themselves with the business they work for while professional cultures identify themselves mostly on the individual’s work credentials.

4. Open system versus closed system — For open systems, the company is more transparent in communication. Management/executive levels talk to all levels of the company’s employees. Closed systems do just the opposite and are more open to seasoned high ranking employees.

5. Loose versus tight control — This is simply distinguishing corporate settings where the employer is either micromanaging the employee or not, it’s a degree of constraint from the top down.

6. Normative versus pragmatic — Similar to the process/results tag, it explains more about how the culture relates to the market or customer. For instance, a pragmatic approach in sales would be to make the sale if it includes bending the rules a bit. While the normative culture would adhere strictly to rules because of their ethic and moral implications as seen from the customer’s perspective.

And of course, there are varying degrees of each in most business models.

Companies Seeking Cultural Change

Culture in a company is important to maintain for proper business functions. Business and corporate leaders and CEOs alike often seek out guidance to change or bolster their corporate culture. The popular buzzword “coaching” has been tossed around in the corporate world, and many leaders seek executive leadership coaching.

Since many corporations have the time or money to train their employees, or more importantly, train their executives in coaching, they will seek out groups who specialize in executive leadership training.

Art Gib writes for Partners in Leadership (http://www.partnersinleadership.com) who specialize in corporate counseling and executive leadership coaching. They’ve assisted major corporations such as McDonald’s, Northwest Airlines and Best Buy.

What was long thought of a desperate approach to failed leadership, executive leadership coaching has made its way into many “successful” businesses as a mainstay. IBM for instance, has permanent staff whose role is strictly to train upper management. Successful companies are looking to maintain that winning streak. Executive leadership training is meant to help executives and CEOs learn about their methods and help them go where they want to go with their business, bringing their workers and constituents along — willingly — with them. This is done by evoking change in the company’s culture.

Some Training Approaches

For the most part, executive leadership training will begin with management: CEO, executives and general managers. It’s often broken into groups, or a series of one-on-one conversations with the guide. Also if there are special groups in the office that are given specific tasks, training is provided by some guide teams to help organize an effective structure.

Depending on where management wants to go with the company and the flow of information the guide typically wants to understand the culture and thought process within the company and advises them on:

- Building trust for executives and staff alike
- Aligning belief system and promoting teamwork
- Empowering all levels to take ownership of their work
- Refining communication and transparency

Some of the pitfalls within the structure are also looked into. Mostly this has to do with the overall corporate attitude, or culture as described before.

Training is geared to create a strong corporate culture. A strong culture is where all staff responds to work direction because of strong alignment with upper management. This is basically saying the idea of merely doing something because “it’s my job,” rather than a personal feeling and the belief that doing the work is the right thing to do.

There are pitfalls to a mindless following of this as well and executive leadership training is meant to train leaders in recognizing this and finding a balance between alignment verses bandwagoning and blind allegiance mentality, which can stifle creative independent thought.

You may be familiar with past employers who, you can tell, held a position in a company that suffered from bad culture. One dominant style of executive leadership style is where there is a micro controlled system will a lot of policy and negative reinforcement measures. Bureaucracy and procedural adherence is forced upon new employees. If not like this, then the groupthink opposite could occur.

Everybody is blissfully following allegiance and working happily in their position while the company could be suffering terribly and implodes. One may venture to think of companies in the tech industry during the turn of the 21st century that were overvalued or had corruption run rampant — they possibly had a slice of this negative culture style.

Art Gib is a writer for Partners in Leadership (http://www.partnersinleadership.com) who provide executive leadership coaching. They will direct a company’s executive team in training seminars, which were initially made popular by the book “The OZ Principle.”

Recently I helped a small business owner totally re-write his marketing and business plans. The owner was grateful for the new copy, but expressed a concern that he may have issues writing copy for marketing materials or responding to bid proposals later in the year.

He said,”It is so hard to start from scratch writing a marketing document when you have a blank piece of paper staring you in the face.” I understand completely and recommended how we could help him create “branded copy” quickly.

If you are a typical business owner, there are many times in the day when you must write about your business to inform, educate or communicate about your unique products and service offerings. Using this technique, you will no longer have to start with a blank page.

I refer to it as the Content Blocks writing technique. This method has personally saved me many hours of writing time as well has kept my marketing messages consistent and focused in proposals, company flyers and websites. It is a simple yet effective technique and here’s how to use it to build your business marekting campaigns. Here’s how to create your own content blocks document.

Start with a Word document and name it content blocks with a date in the title. Here is an example: abc_company_content_blocks_02152008.doc

You want to put a date in the file name because this is a work in progress, as your company grows and matures, the content will evolve. Keep this document on your desktop so you can easily click on it to retrieve information with one click.

Now it’s time to map out what to put into this important marketing reference document. You will want to write the information in a short paragraph format with a couple of spaces around each one to form “content chunks”. Take the time to write about three to five sentences in each paragraph. It is better to include a little too much information and be able to erase as needed, rather than having to think about and add additional information.

One of the easiest ways to add the best information to your content blocks document is to review a proposal and see what types of information they are requesting. Fortunately, over 50% of the information they request will be on the next proposal, therefore you have a competitive edge in getting proposals done quicker using this menthod.

Once your document is prepared, you can open it in a second window on your screen and as you are responding to a proposal you can quickly cut / paste information. Not only does this save time in preparation, you are able keep spelling errors to a minimum since your content blocks document has been run through spell / grammar check.

Think of the time you will save responding to proposals, writing article publications, and preparing other documents in a normal marketing business cycle.

Checking back with the owner, he has used his content blocks in several ways including sharing it with his webmaster to get the correct wording for extending his brand on the homepage.

Another important suggest is to revise your information regularly and as needed, so that your marketing materials are current and consistent in “voice” and terminology. Time marches on, your company flexes and grows – so does your need to refine your content blocks.

Here are the topics we included:
Board of Directors (and a quick description)
-Company Summary: include founder and founding date
-Competitive Comparison: what types of businesses do you compete with?
-Competitive Edge: what makes you different
-Competitive Landscape (includes five competitors)
-Contact Information: name, address, cell, fax, email
-Company Owner Biography (including professional memberships, patents, degrees)
-Executive Summary (break up into 1-2 sentences, easy to cut / paste in other docs)
-Market Segmentation: public vs private?
-Mission Statement: no more than three sentences
-Company Objectives (stating where business income comes from in percentages)
-Positioning Statement: contextual reference
-Promotional Strategy: how do folks hear about you?
-Sales Literature: include links to websites,PDF documents, audio files, video files
-Target Clients: describe who is your target client
-Technology overview: are you high or low tech?
-Testimonials (quotes from clients): audios are better

In addition to words that describe your company include visuals that “brand” as well including:
-Logos: website, products, affliate programs
-Pictures of company owner, business site, website, clients, processes, products
-Links to audio files with testimonials, music or the company owner telling about the business

Using content blocks is a simple way to organize the most current and important information about your company. Take time to create this simple Word document and save hours agonizing over attempting to create proposals and other important documents at the last minute.

V. Karen Miller is the founder of Design2Train Design2Train.com, an instructional design /training development company helps business owners prepare training and information products.

There are an array of principals that corporate trainers are trying to help executives understand during their seminars, but they really want to get to the root of why the current state of affairs at the job are not turning results and how minds and culture can be aligned properly.

It’s a top down training principal where executive leadership coaching is at the crux of the training. Corporate trainers today, whose job it is to train today’s young businessmen and women to become tomorrow’s big time executives, commonly use methods that have been developed by others and released in print — notably the books “The Oz Principal” and “Journey to the Emerald City”.

The OZ Principal

The best seller book is put into motion as a training workshop. The steps in training are followed according to the book’s mantra: see it, own it, solve it, do it. This seminar details how to take on accountability issues and rethink what causes the mentality of blame in a corporation or business when there is a breakdown in tasks at hand.

The goal is to make the mentality of every worker in the business have the piece of mind to take on the task as their own — getting them to ask “what else can I do?” instead of blaming fellow employees or management for a job undone. The ownership mentality is prevalent throughout the training and also addresses executive leadership coaching aspects with their topic in particular called “Above the Line” Leadership.

The OZ concept comes from famous tale “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ” involving Dorothy and all of her friends who realize what they were missing was actually always within them and had the power to overcome from the start, hence the name OZ.

Cultural Transition Process

Changing the company’s culture is another program that is mainly focused on the executive level. The executive leadership training program has an initial assessment stage and a recommendations finding stage. The selected executives are interviewed first to get a snapshot image of the belief system and experiences of the organization. This is to identify cultural shifts that should be made to reverse any damaging current cultural beliefs.

After the assessment, the executives are given a debriefing and set up a planned two-day meeting where concepts such as The Results Pyramid and Focused Feedback are implemented.

Once the executive leadership coaching stage is complete; the company can then opt to have a facilitator trained to pass down the knowledge of the Cultural Transition Workshop. The facilitator learns through six scripted modules and will practice to later teach the one-day Journey to the Emerald City Cultural Transition Workshop on their own.

Many of these concepts are also contained in Roger Connors and Tom Smith’s book titled Journey to the Emerald City.

Partners in Leadership (http://www.partnersinleadership.com) is a pioneer in modern principles of executive leadership coaching, where for over 15 years their cutting-edge principles have been used all over the world.