We had some great news last week, Beyond The Box has been shortlisted in this years Field Marketing Awards to be held at the Marriot Hotel, Mayfair in London on 1 October!  Beyond The Box is one of five companies competing the ‘Most Effective Retail Training/Mystery Shopping’ category and we are all very excited about it! The nomination is for the work completed with the electrical brand Hoover. We are looking forward to a lovely evening at the awards ceremony in October and will keep you posted on on the outcome!  

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Communication is such a fascinating subject and despite language barriers, builds great friendships and relationships.

A massive 55% of a message is transferred via body language, 38% by the vocal characteristics and just 7% through the words used.

Whenever Beyond The Box delivers communication courses, delegates are amazed at the small part words play and fascinated by the role of body language. It becomes apparant how important body language is if you can recall an occasion when you were visiting another country and found yourself having a great ‘conversation’ with someone who didn’t speak a word of your language and you couldn’t speak a word of theirs. The content of the conversation will have been transferred by body language, along with the tone, emphasis and pace applied to the words used.

Of course some topics such as football are universal and can always bring about animated and productive conversations!

Some gestures made with the body are a langauge of their own and whilst completing some research on the subject I came across this video on You Tube. It’s worth taking a look not only for the content but for the entertainment value it provides when it’s demonstrating the origin of some well used gestures! I’d be interested to know if anyone can expand on the content and the accuracy behind it. It appears convincing in its theory when it explains how certain gestures have evolved, but can we be sure?

Here is the video

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Motivate - understand ‘what make your staff tick’, get to know the person, what drives/motivates them, understand what de-motivates staff (working conditions, unfair treatment, poor policies) so you can avoid these. 

Opportunity - give your staff opportunities for advancement and the chance to develop themselves, as well as develop their role. Set goals and challenging targets to help staff advance 

Team building - arrange regular team meetings, communicate with all staff, keep them informed of any changes, or update 

Involvement - get staff involved; seek their opinions on the ongoing development and progress of their company 

Valued - believe in your people, make sure you let staff know that they are valued; focus on recognising excellent performance, send a letter or email thanking them for a job well done. Remember to send staff a birthday card.  

Empathy - show staff that you care about them and not just the job; take their feeling into consideration, understand that some times out side influence can affect their work.

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Be specific Make sure your feedback is clear and focused on the performance and don’t personalise it. Explain what the problem is, why it important that the employee achieves the performance expected. If you have raised your concerns before about the same problem, remind the employee when you have pointed out the offence in the past. Simply telling them what was wrong won’t help them change their behaviour, discuss how the employee can improve or avoid the mistake in the future, get their input. Make sure you add a time frame when you want to see the improvement by.  

Give timely feedback. Make the individual aware of what they did as soon as you can after the event, so they can recall what as happened. However be aware of their emotional state, before you give the feedback, perhaps you may need to wait until the employee has calmed down and can think clearly about what has happened. But don’t wait days or weeks, to provide feedback, when the problem has become a distant memory and don’t save telling the person until you have your next meeting, this could turn your meetings into a negative event.  

Check understanding. When summarising back to the employee, avoid asking ‘Do you understand’ they may merely say ‘yes.’ Ask them to summarise back to you, what you want them to do to improve, and when you want to see the improvement by, this way you know that they have understood what was said.

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I went to a womens networking group last week. They had a guest speaker from Alter Ego who gave a presentation on colour and style.

Sounds like an art class but in this instance colour and style referred to the colours and style of the clothes we should wear that enhance our skin tones and body shape.

Alter Ego explained that we have one of two skin tones, warm or cool. Your skin tone determines which shade of colour enhances your appearance. Wearing the correct shade can enhance someones appearance by making their skin glow and their eyes sparkle. I swear it takes shadows away from certain areas of the face which in turn reduces the appearance of wrinkles too! Can’t be a bad thing!

It was interesting to note that when a survey of the room was taken the majority had an extensive range of black outfits in their wardrobe. Black is a safe colour for most people - it certainly was for me until I had my colours done and I could clearly see that it made me look drawn and dull!

The style section focussed on fabrics and outfits that can give the illusion of height increase or weight loss! Now that I like! I had a colour and style consultation completed by Alter Ego about 2 years ago. Since that time shopping for clothes has been more enjoyable because I know what suits me best - I’ve saved money too and actually wear all the clothes I buy. I can’t begin to tell you how many items I have bought over the years and never worn!

It was a real turning point for me because in addition to enjoying my clothes more, it has raised my confidence. My work means I frequently stand in front of groups to deliver presentations or seminars, wearing colours and outfits that make me look my best has made me feel better about myself allowing me to concentrate on the job in hand.

You may have heard the phrase - ‘You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression’. If you make presentations or meet people you need to influence as part of your work, you might want to consider having a colour and style consultation to help you make that first impression be a lasting one.

Find out more about Alter Ego http://www.myalterego.co.uk/

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Monday night at the Village Hotel in Warrington was the venue for this years Christmas party for the Hoover team. After a day at Bromborough running through the forthcoming Magnets training everyone met back at the hotel for a Christmas meal. The entertainment was by way of a Take That tribute band. sorry lads you didn’t quite compare to the real thing who some of us went to see at the MEN arena in Manchester the following night! The picture was taken by Aspect Event Photography who had dressed as Paparazzi to welcome the crowds.

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As the field marketing manager, I’m responsible for the training of the field teams. I was down at Hoover head office a few weeks ago training the field team on the ‘built in’ range. The team had little experience with this product range, so it was back to basics.

I find if you train on the basics, so that the trainers have a good understanding of the product range and the differences within the range, the features and benefits are more easily understood. For example when explaining the features and benefits of the ovens, the trainers need the background knowledge of the different types of cooking modes, how the different ovens work, what type of food is best cooked in which oven and who would find this type of cooking method useful.

All the trainers said that they found the training beneficial and that they enjoyed the 2 days. It has given them the confidence to ‘go out there’ and train the staff in store on the new product range.

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I visited the Beyond The Box stand at the Business North West Exhibition today to take some photos and video the team in action.

We’ll be adding some videos to the blog with great advice from Christine on how to manage an exhibition stand and some examples of effective training techniques from Dawn.

Christine had arranged for an artist to be there for the two days, and I was roped into having my caricature done while I was there!

Here are some photos from the day, and of the before & after caricatures.

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We had a really lovely email through from Bob Gregitis, the Sales Operations Manager at DSGI. It was to thank us for the work we produced for Currys recent communications launch. They have entered the contract mobile phone market with some fantastic offers and Currys approached us to help them train the store staff in readiness.

The training was in two stages and the final pack was posted to each store a few weeks ago. We beat our best lead times with this project because the research, plus the design of the training programme and artwork for the package was all turned round in about a 2 week period! A few candles were burnt at midnight as you can imagine, but we met the deadline!

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It’s fast approaching 21st November when we will be exhibiting at Business North West in GMex Manchester. We have visited the exhibition many times but this year we decided to take the plunge with a stand. You will be able to find us at stand 331 so come along and say ‘hello’!

Time passes quickly and though we planned to attend a few weeks ago we still have a few items to put together to make it a great day for us and our visitors. We are really excited about Steve joining us, a carricaturist who will be swiftly producing some portraits for visitors to take home.

Having your carricature drawn should be really good fun but if your not into having your face on the office wall why not come along and enter your details for our prize draw. We have put up £500 worth of branded promotional gift items for the company that wins. It could be YOU!

Some of you may be aware that we have a brand In Front Gifts which provides branded corporate gifts to ensure that companies stay in front of their clients at the times they matter most. ie. when they want to buy! We take time to consider what items your target customers would keep near to them so they have your details to hand. As you would expect branded pens are still the most purchased item. So come and visit us at 331 you could be a winner!

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