Issue 17 - Five Minute Insight - Customer Insight Solutions



	Issue 17 - September 2008 CONTENTS Introduction and Training Alert Insight in Practice - Working with Webinars - new for the presentation toolkit - With Compliments - on handling praise, not just complaints - Meet the Team Member - Make It Happen Mavis Developing Skills - Are You Sitting Comfortably? - Story Telling - Making A Habit Of....First Things First - on prioritisation - Tip of the Month - The Telegraph Business Club Training and Feedback - Autumn Courses - Book Now! INTRODUCTION Welcome to the 17th edition of 5-Minute Insights, the e-mail newsletter from Steve Wills and Sally Webb at Customer Insight Solutions (CI Solutions). We hope that in the few short minutes that it takes to scan the key messages, you will find snippets that are both informative and stimulating. If you want to find out more, we have provided links to longer articles for some of the insights. TRAINING ALERT! In recession, more than ever, we need our insight to deliver value to our organisations, and to be able to prove our own value in the face of possible budget cuts. So the Commercial Thinking course on 9th October couldn't be better timed. Places are still available so click here for more details. Don't let the recession bite harder than it needs to. And don't forget our Insight Management - Vision to Reality course on 18th October - details here. INSIGHT IN PRACTICE WORKING WITH WEBINARS Although many businesses use phone conferencing services, until recently remote presentations (especially outside your company) have been either impractical or costly. However, webinars now make it easy to watch, listen to and interact with a presentation from your desk or wherever you may be. The presentation can be heard either via PC speakers or a headset, or by dialling into a phone conference number. You can see the presentation or demonstration on your screen The presenters can use versatile facilities such as online polling. Typical webinar applications for Insight teams include specific research presentations where there are time and place conflicts, but also for such things as live market or customer updates in the place of emailed newsletters. Why not try a webinar for yourself? Or if there is a topic you would like to know about, let us know and we will see if we can organize a webinar on it for you. Please click here for more details. WITH COMPLIMENTS..... If a customer is sufficiently happy to take the trouble to send you a message of thanks, you need to take notice of it. Customer bouquets can help you by: Highlighting the products and/or services that you are getting right Boosting morale amongst your team members Leading to possible referrals (if actively encouraged) Positive feedback is important – and should receive the same attention from Insight teams as they give to complaints. In a recent article in Market Leader, Paul Walker suggest four strategies that will help you to make the most of any encouragement: Carry out an audit of your services and any positive customer feedback. Make sure that you thank customers when they thank you. Thank your team members when you have received thank you messages. Make customers who express their thanks into VIPs, with special privileges. For further information on how you can make the most of the compliments you receive, please click here MEET THE TEAM MEMBER During this series, we are looking at people who typify four different styles of behaviour. We will use two examples of each style: one whose approach has more impact upon other people and one that has more impact upon the task in hand. Make It Happen Mavis The style This month, we’re focusing on ‘Make it Happen Mavis’, who is a Driver. She therefore works at a fast pace but focuses on tasks and is results-orientated. She knows what she wants and she goes straight after it. The substance Mavis isn’t very good at thinking through the details of a project, and can soon come unstuck if things don’t quite go to plan. The solution She has to understand the need to pay more attention to the detail and to do some contingency planning. She needs to listen to colleagues who are more focussed on the details – and delegate to them, to make sure everything is covered. Help her to see that this will enable her to reach her goal more successfully. To understand more about how to help Mavis, please click here. DEVELOPING SKILLS ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY? Then I’ll begin! Story telling is now increasingly recognised as an effective means of business communication. It can really help to bring insight issues to life so that you can illustrate your key points vividly and your customers can engage with your ideas. A good story or anecdote will: Grab your customers’ attention and enable them to relate to your insights. Stay in their memories much longer than facts or figures alone! Tap into both the left (intellectual) and right (emotional) sides of the brain A good story can enhance almost any presentation. By involving the right side of brain as well, it helps to involve your listeners’ emotions, which can be very powerful in terms of making an impact. Story telling can help people to take your ideas on board and remember them. It should also help you to get action as a result of your presentations. For a more detailed look at story telling, please click here MAKING A HABIT OF... FIRST THINGS FIRST This is the third in our new series of seven articles based around Steven R Covey’s excellent book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". Insight teams are constantly bombarded with demands, so prioritising work is essential - and should be a regular habit. But how do you prioritise items that can vary tremendously? One way is to sort your tasks into one of the four following categories: Important and urgent. This is an item where there isn’t much choice – it has to be done. Important but not urgent. If you spend all of your time and resources in fire-fighting, you never get to this category - until the task becomes urgent. Urgent but not important. You need to minimise the amount of time spent on these jobs. Not urgent or important. These include tasks that fall within your comfort zone, but which tend to be time wasters. Don’t waste prime time and energy on them. The key thing to learn is to do the important before the urgent! But that’s where we so often fail – by letting our time get eaten up by urgent, though unimportant, things at the expense of important but less urgent work. So, don’t let those jobs just pile up – sort through them, prioritise them and stay in charge! To find out more about how you can do this, please click here . TIP OF THE MONTH Stop Press! Members of Insight teams need to be aware of the broader issues that might affect their work. This entails keeping in touch with the latest news stories. But how can you do this quickly and easily, without having to spend ages trawling through the Internet? One solution is to subscribe to the Telegraph Business Club. You can register for free – just go to their website at www.telegraphbusinessclub.co.uk. Recent articles include: Deborah Meaden (of BBC’s ‘Dragon’s Den’), talking about the importance of fun in business – as well as rewarding good work and telling people who’ve got it wrong A review of a new book on Internet Marketing An examination of why diversity makes good business sense There is also a series of videostreamed Masterclasses on subjects such as ‘Start with the consumer’, plus details of free seminars on a range of subjects. Why not try it out today, and broaden your horizons? TRAINING As part of our regular 6-monthly programme, these are the dates for next set of courses in the autumn. Book now to be sure of a place. Or contact us if you want to run one as an in-house course. Insight management: from vision to reality: 23rd October 2008 Sharing the vision of good insight management, with key processes and skills to help you on this journey. "Loads of useful learnings! I've applied one already today" Delegate Open Course 2007 Commercial thinking: 9th October 2008 Enabling you to present your proposals and recommendations in £s not %s, to raise your profile and impact with marketing colleagues, finance and the Board. "Probably the most useful course I've ever been on" In-house course - Professional services How to communicate for maximum impact: Just Been! Next one Spring 2009 Hands-on training to increase the impact of all your written insight communications, from emails and presentations, to reports and newsletters. "Energising course with great practical applications" In-house course - Financial services Click here for more details, and to book FEEDBACK We want 5-Minute Insights to be as useful as possible. That's where you come in! Please email us at feedback@cisolutions.co.uk with any comments you have about its content, its style, or with requests for items that you would like to see. If you have a difficult problem that you are having trouble solving - such as a Marketing Director who insists on ignoring unwelcome insights; or an issue that is challenging your team on the journey towards insight - please let us know. If we can make helpful suggestions we will, and if several people have a similar problem, we will write an article for 5-Minute Insights. If you would like to pass this newsletter on to your colleagues, please feel free to do so. Equally, if you know anyone who would like to be added to the mailing list, please let us know. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.

TRAINING ALERT!