In this issue:

Are you easy to coach??

Book of the month

Open Rainmaking training course announcement

    ISSUE 13 • September 2007

       Like a number of coaches and trainers I have many experiences of people who attend development activities physically but appear not to be in attendance mentally. One recent seriously absent attendee set me thinking about some questions we perhaps should ask ourselves.

Continual learning is a basic necessity to professional improvement and development.  In many cases it’s other people who will help you get to where you want to get to in your development.

But only if you’re easy to coach.
The question is are you? And could we all be easier to coach?
I assume it's fair to say that we all know that we don’t know everything. We do know that. Don’t we?

If I was to define what coach-able means to me it would be …

• Approachable

• Attentive

• Receptive

• Curious

• Objective

• Trusting

• Malleable

• Confident

It means you must listen with the intent to learn rather than to show off what you know (exactly the type of listening required in the rainmaking process).

To be coach-able means to lack arrogance and defensiveness… and will minimize pride and ego. Completely teachable. Completely trainable. Completely malleable.

To be completely perfect, to need no more training or coaching, is to stagnate or die – and in many cases, to be dismissed.

To know everything is to be unbelievable.

The best professionals at all levels (and in most fields) require coaching to improve (executives, managers, professionals). And they know it.

Are you one of them?

Books of the month(s)

We work quite with a number of wannabe rainmakers who are not the best self promoters in the world. We often recommend this book to get them to realise that you do not have to become a braggart to let people know who you are and what you do.

This book is just a super way to introduce them to the middle ground. After all rainmaking is not all about who do you know but equally who knows you and what you can do to help them. 

Click the book to link to our recommended book page

A little tooting of the horn.....

To announce an "open to all comers" Rainmaking training course 
on Monday the 15th of October 2007
in conjunction with Intellect
the UK high technology industry trade association
at their offices in Russell Square in London.

If you want to get a taster of how Rainmaking training might fit in your organisation this would be an ideal way of finding out.

But please hurry their rooms are only able to take limited numbers of attendees...

Rainmaking Training
Many companies provide sales training courses for their services teams and then wonder why the training hasn’t worked. This course is different.

Our core assumption is that we must maintain the service deliverer’s integrity and trusted advisor status with the client. These are too important to be jeopardised. Rainmakers start with these as their platform and then build additional skills into their repertoire. We do not try to turn them into sales people; that would defeat our aim.

This course enables delegates to explore their own beliefs about selling and rainmaking. They will understand the important differences between the two and be given the tools and skills that will enable them to uncover business opportunities in their client organisations.

This training provides extensive opportunities to tailor the skills and knowledge to specific situations that delegates find in their work environment and to practise the new skills in role-play exercises.

What does your company gain?

• A team of delivery staff interested in developing further business with clients as a way of increasing the company’s revenue, with almost no increase in the cost of sales.
   
• Increasing chances of winning business by influencing clients' early thinking.
   

"It is what we make of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."

Nelson Mandela (1918 - )South African statesman

Mike Meyer on organising your customer data to support your processes

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thingthat ever has."     Margaret Mead (1901-1978)  American anthropologist