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TMG announces dates for Effective Personal Productivity programs
The McGrail Group invites presidents, CEOs, vice presidents, directors, and all those responsible for the success of a team, division, or company to participate in The Effective Personal Productivity Process—a seven-week adventure in creating a high-performance organizational by boosting personal productivity.
Sessions will be held at Great Valley Corporate Center in Malvern, PA on the following dates:
- Tuesdays, November 4 through December 16, 2008.
- Tuesdays, January 13 through February 24, 2009.
- Wednesdays, February 11 through March 25, 2009.
Each program begins with a kickoff session from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. and continues for the next six weeks. The course includes workbooks, CDs, a unique planning system, personal growth strategies, and coaching.
Benefits include:
- Understanding and building on your personal strengths.
- Communicating for maximum impact.
- Identifying—and prioritizing—high-payoff activities.
- Creating strategies to achieve your personal and professional goals.
- Developing time management techniques for a 24/7 wired world.
- Building and coaching self-directed, high-performing teams.
- Increasing ROI for your group and your organization.
To learn more about the program or to set up a free consultation, contact TMG president Mike McGrail at 610.993.0894 or mike@mcgrailgroup.com.
Four keys to a great sales organization
Create a leadership advantage. Many sales leaders got their jobs because of their sales ability. The good news is that this skill can be used to coach and mentor the people on their team. The other good news is that they can acquire the other skills that will take them from outstanding producers to outstanding leaders. A sampling of those skills: Creating goals. Developing a dynamic plan of action. Identifying critical success factors. Tracking results. Developing potential. Motivating individuals and teams to become high achievers. Solving problems through communication. Producing results.
Hire people with ‘the right stuff.’ How can you know if that well-dressed, smooth-spoken candidate sitting across from you will be a great sales person? Well, there is that thing called instinct. And, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests in Blink, intuition—especially when it’s well informed—is often worth trusting. But with the high costs of a bad hire—over $100,000 when you add in lost opportunities—more and more companies are using personal evaluations and other assessment tools to validate their instincts.
Leverage personal styles. Every sales rep has a personal style. And every customer also has a unique style. Some sales reps naturally understand differences in style and use this understanding in the sales process. Others develop this skill through educational programs. By understanding their own styles and learning how to adapt to their customers’ styles, sales reps not only gain an edge in the selling process, but also build the relationships that fuel future sales.
Grow your team’s potential. Okay, so you’ve assembled a talented team. Now how do you help them reach their full potential? Training offers the fastest—and most lasting—route to success. Among the concepts and skills that can be taught: Time management. Goal setting. Managing customer relationships. And of course, mastery of the sales process: prospecting, preparing great presentations, recognizing buying signals, negotiating the deal, and closing the sale.
Implementation: the critical step in strategic planning
First it was hot. Then not. And now? Well, strategic planning is still one of the most important ways for companies to establish—and reach—the goals that spell success.
Today, it’s hard to find any organization—from an IT team to a university to a major corporation—that doesn’t have a strategic plan. And it’s almost as hard to find an organization that feels their plan has lived up to its promises.
In
The Strategy-Focused Organization published in 2000, authors David Norton and Robert Kaplan offer an explanation for this widespread dissatisfaction. Their research found that 90 percent of strategic initiatives fail not because there was anything wrong with the plan, but because of implementation problems.
At The McGrail Group, our strategic implementation process picks up where the design consultants leave off. We’ve developed a series of steps that transforms a strategic plan from a power point or paper presentation into a dynamic force that drives change and produces results.
If you’ve never invested in a strategic plan, we’ll help you develop one—and then we’ll work with you to convert the plan into action.
To find out more about our strategic implementation process, just give us a call at 1.800.459.7191 or email us at info@mcgrailgroup.com.
Selecting, growing, and promoting talent
The role of assessments
Great organizations are built with great people. If that is true—and just about everyone agrees that it is—it’s important to hire, train, and promote top performers. But how to separate the best from all the rest? Assessment tools offer valuable assistance in attracting, retaining, and promoting the most talented candidates.
Hiring. Some candidates make a great impression while others seem entirely forgettable. So how can a decision-maker know who has what it takes to succeed? That’s where assessments come in. Used with resumes, interviews, reference checks, and other hiring practices, the best assessment tools offer valuable insights into who’s the ‘real deal’ with the aptitude, attitude, and skills to do a great job.
Retention. Hiring mistakes are very costly. Just add up recruiting, hiring, and training costs. Then factor in the cost of lost opportunities. Finally, throw in the costs associated with terminating an employee—and finding his or her replacement. By understanding the fit between the candidate and the job before making an offer, managers are able to reduce costly turnover.
Motivation and training. What motivates Sam? What skills would help Jennifer improve her job performance? As a manager, you can guess. Or you can use assessments to pinpoint the area that will offer the biggest rewards to Sam, Jennifer, and the organization.
Promotion. Will your star sales rep make a great sales manager? Will that outstanding customer service rep be as good at sales? Maybe. Or maybe not. Each of these jobs requires very different skills. By comparing the skills needed for a position to those of the candidate, managers gain the knowledge they need to make sound decisions.
Special Offer on Assessments.
Because we know you will love our assessment process once you try it, we are making a special limited time offer. Invest in one assessment for a top executive or direct report in your organization, and get another assessment (up to a $500 value) free. You can also use this free assessment to evaluate job candidates or make decisions on promotions. The ability to put the right people in the right positions and avoid costly hiring mistakes has a huge impact on morale as well as on the bottom line. Give us a call at 800.459.7191 or send us an email at info@mcgrailgroup.com to learn more about how the TMG assessment process can work for you and your organization.
We’d like to hear from you.
Phone: 610.993.0894
Toll free: 800.459.7191
Fax: 610.644.3378
Email: info@mcgrailgroup.com
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