Tips of the week

Customer Service – Handling Complaints

Complaints can sometimes provide valuable feedback and an opportunity to improve.  We need to be appreciative of those who take their time to bring problems to our attention.

Three ideas to increase success include:

1. Don’t attempt to justify actions or blame anyone, within or outside of your organization.
2. Ask questions to get all the facts; make no assumptions.
3. Mutually agree on a course of action.  Sometimes the course you identify is not satisfactory to the person complaining.

Our Toronto based Customer Service skills training workshop provides the skills to create winning interactions with your most valuable resource.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based customer skills training and other management skills and leadership courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Negotiating Skills

Everything is negotiable.

Three ideas to increase success include:

1. Determine your primary objective?  Clarify what is important to you.  Be specific.  Also consider your secondary goals.
2. Try to anticipate the other person’s objective.  Prepare questions to help discover their objectives.  Never assume….always seek to clarify and confirm.
3. Establish mutual benefits and be prepared to communicate these to motivate the other person to see the value of your position.

Our Toronto based Negotiating skills training workshop takes the mystery out of negotiating.  Focus on understanding five negotiating strategies and counter strategies and developing techniques to handle negotiations.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based Negotiating skills training and other management skills and leadership courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Communication Skills

 You have 90 seconds to make a positive first impression by the way that you communicate.

Four ideas to increase your communication success with a first impression include:

1. Dress respectfully.  This means be as formally dressed as they might be.  It’s always easier to dress down than to dress up; to remove a jacket or roll up your sleeves.
2. Get feedback from people you trust on your handshake.  Too firm or to lax can easily be corrected.
3. Be on time.  Allow extra time and anticipate potential delays.
4. Start with a smile.  Let your warm personality melt any initial resistance..

Our Toronto based Communication skills training workshop provides the communication skills for performing positively and clearly to enhance your career and personal success.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based communication skills training and other management skills and leadership courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Customer Service -Handling Complaints

As long as there are customers or clients there will always be complaints.  Respect and thank those who bring complaints

Four ideas to increase success include:

1. Sometimes just having an opportunity to be heard is enough.
2. Empathize… put yourself in their shoes.
3. Apologize only once.  This does not necessarily mean you are accepting responsibility for the problem; merely regretting their inconvenience.
4. There is no need to apologize for your rules or policies.

Our Toronto based Customer Service skills training workshop provides the skills to create winning interactions with your most valuable resource.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based customer skills training and other management skills and leadership courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Business Writing

Get your message across with clarity, brevity and increased success.

1. Establish an appropriate tone by focusing on the reader.  Replace some of your “I’s andwe’s“ with “you”
2. Accentuate the positive by telling what you can do.  Always state your ideas in positive terms.
3. Use bullets and numbers to make your writing easier to understand and easier to read.

Our Toronto based business writing skills workshop provides strategies and techniques to sharpen your business writing skills.

Contact us today to find out how our business writing skills training and other communications skills courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.  Our public workshops take place in Toronto.

Leadership – Motivating Others

Being able to motivate others is essential for your success.  We all need the others to help us along the way.

Three ideas to increase your success with motivating others:

1. Create a need by identifying a benefit to the other person. This helps to develop a sense of personal responsibility
2. Show interest in the other person’s progress by following up. 
3. Give recognition, support & approval.

Our Toronto leadership training course provides leadership strategies and techniques to shape your performance as a supervisor or team leader.  The program will assist you to influence others.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based leadership skills training seminars and other communications skills supervisory skills workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Business Writing

The idea is to get your message across with less effort and greater impact.

Three ideas to increase success include:

1. Before you write, consider your purpose. What do you want to accomplish?  What do you want your reader to do?
2. State your purpose or your writing in the first sentence.
3. Replace business clichés with conversational words.

               Replace:                          With:

• along the lines of             like
• at which time                    when
• for the purpose of            for
• for the reason that            since, because
• in order to, in order that    to, so
• in regard to                      about
• in the event of                  if
• in the near future              soon,  shortly

Our Toronto based business writing skills workshop provides strategies and techniques to sharpen your business writing skills.

Contact us today to find out how our business writing skills training and other communications skills courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism.  Our public workshops take place in Toronto.

Assertiveness Skills

Assertiveness enables us to communicate our opinions, thoughts, beliefs and emotions in an effective and confident way – without being passive nor aggressive.

Four ideas to increase success include:

1. When saying no, remember to be gracious by always offering an alternative.
2. Use three sentences to disagree diplomatically. First, paraphrase to demonstrate your understanding of their recommendation. Second, acknowledge the value of their recommendation. Third, present your own recommendation
3. Ask questions to ensure that you work together to a resolve conflict when an issue is important to you. i.e.: What do you need? How can we resolve this situation?  What would it take to fix this?
4. Information is power; use the additional information to establish common ground and mutual goals.

Our Toronto based assertiveness skills training workshop provides the assertiveness skills essential to getting your ideas, plans and feelings across with confidence and conviction.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based assertiveness skills training and other communications skills courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism

Time Management

If you delay starting or put off doing something, it may take longer to do later.

Three ideas to increase success in overcoming procrastination include:

1. Overcome perfection paralysis… unless you are a brain surgeon 90% right is better than 100% of nothing.  Having all the information before taking action either takes too long or is not possible.  Build your self esteem and your intuition.
2. Engage in the “dirty practice” of self-discipline by committing to someone else.  We work harder at not disappointing others.  Simply “announce your intentions” or if you really want to succeed, sign a contract agreeing to pay a large sum of money if you don’t complete the task or behaviour.
3. Use the 21 day success habit check list.  Post a visible calendar and give yourself a check each day you complete a task or behaviour After 21 days it will become habit.

Our Toronto based time management skills training workshop provides the time management skills essential zero in on the areas that will provide the greatest return.  Participants develop the methods to step out of the states of overwhelm, frustration, disorder, anxiety and lack of control into the state of mastery and satisfaction.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based time management skills course and other communications skills and leadership training programs and workshops can help you build your professionalism.

Assertiveness Skills

Many job-related frustrations and stresses can be traced to discomfort in handling difficult situations:  We may avoid dealing with these types of situations or may offend others by coming on too strong.  We need to learn to act assertively by expressing concerns directly, firmly and with composure.

Three ideas to increase success include:

1. Strive to be realistic, responsible and respectful.
2. Build your confidence and your self-esteem every day by reflecting on “what’s good about you?”
3. Structure your sentence to begin with “I” followed by either “expected” or “prefer” or “need”, when you are providing feedback concerning performance issues.

Our Toronto based assertiveness skills training workshop provides the assertiveness skills essential to getting your ideas, plans and feelings across with confidence and conviction.

Contact us today to find out how our Toronto based assertiveness skills training and other communications skills courses and workshops can help you build your professionalism