Dates: Wednesdays  11th, 18th & 25th April 2012

Venue: Galway City (venue TBC)

Cost: Special rate of €350 per person

If you are an experienced trainer looking to gain a recognised award and sharpen your training skills or a novice trainer starting out looking to develop the required trainer skills alongside getting an award book by calling Orla on 086 3807802 or email orla@ots.ie

Book early to avoid disappointment!  For further information download our Trainer the Trainer FETAC Level 6 outline

A sample of feedback from our most recent Train the Trainer course:

Really enjoyed the whole experience & it has already changed how I approach, plan, deliver and evaluate my courses

I found the training to be very beneficial going forward in designing future programmes

I really enjoyed the three days and it was a real eye opener

My expectations were met & I now feel totally confident that I could conduct a session of training in lots of areas

Many thanks Orla for a very enthusiastic input over the past few days, looking forward to putting learning into practice

I should have done this course ten years ago!

If you would like to book one of these places contact Orla on 086 3807802 or orla@ots.ie.

• 250 jobs created at IT firm – September 2011
• Tech firms to create 165 jobs – October 2011
• 160 IT jobs to be created in Kerry – October 2011
• Irish IT consulting company announces 90 new jobs – November 2011
• Four routes out of Knock Airport will create around 100 jobs – November 2011
• AUDI create 20 new Sligo jobs (200 nationally!)- December 2011
• Hundreds of new jobs are set to be created in Galway City next Spring ZeniMax Online Studios –December 2011
• €4 million funding announced for Knock airport will create 35 new jobs – 2 December 2011

Put as much (if not more!) energy into satisfying current customers than chasing new ones!

It costs five times more money to attract new customers than to keep existing customers satisfied …. a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25% to 125% …. on average 20% of your customer base make up 50% of your sales

Why do we lose customers

We have influence over 69% of the reasons! People do business with People!!

Sorting out complaints can win them over!

Scarily only 4% of customers who have a bad experience report it!

Message….Absence of complaints doesn’t mean people are satisfied with your service – you need to ask them to be sure!

Better still if you do ask ….almost 70% of them will continue to use your service if you listen and sort out their complaint!

Does good news impact?

Unfortunately…People remember the good news less…..We are less likely to tell others when we feel satisfied (unless asked) …satisfied customers ONLY tell 2 to 4!

Always remember the link to service and sales …. Customer Service Skill is now one of the top critical employability skills universally sought by employers……for more details on Customer Service training courses contact orla@ots.ie – 086 3807802

Dates: Wednesdays January 25th, 1st & 8th February 2012 OR Wednesdays March 21st, 28th & Thursday 5th April 2012

Venue: Roscommon Learning Links, Elphin St, Boyle, Co Roscommon

Cost: Special rate of €300 per person

If you are an experienced trainer looking to gain a recognised award and sharpen your training skills or a novice trainer starting out looking to develop the required trainer skills alongside getting an award book by calling Orla on 086 3807802 or email orla@ots.ie

Book early to avoid dissapointment!  For further information download our Trainer the Trainer FETAC Level 6 outline

Dates: 26^th October, 2^nd & 9^th November 2011 OR 30^th November, 7^th & 14^th December 2011

Venue: Roscommon Learning Links, Elphin St, Boyle, Co Roscommon

Cost: Special rate of €250 per person

If you are an experienced trainer looking to gain a recognised award and sharpen your training skills or a novice trainer starting out looking to develop the required trainer skills alongside getting an award book by calling Orla on 086 3807802 or email orla@ots.ie

Book early to avoid dissapointment!  For further information download our Train the Trainer FETAC Level 6 outline

The winners…percentage increase since this Q 2010

• Marketing +61pc
• HR and Recruitment +59pc
• Production and Manufacturing +48pc
• IT +45pc
• Legal +45pc
• Sales +44pc
• Accountancy and Finance +44pc
• Hotel and Catering  +26pc

The losers – percentage decrease since this Q 2010

• Environmental, Health & Safety -118pc
• Beauty/Hair Care -32pc
• Construction, Architecture and Property – 29pc
• Retail - 12pc

A little intro to Brainstorming…

This technique was developed by Madison Avenue advertising executive, Alex Osborn, in the 1950s and combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking and helps you generate creative solutions to a problem. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts that can at first seem to be a bit crazy. The idea here is that some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to the problem you’re trying to solve, while others can spark still more ideas. This approach aims to get people unstuck, by “jolting” them out of their normal ways of thinking.

How does a Group Brainstorming session work?

To run a group brainstorming session effectively, do the following:

• Find a comfortable meeting environment, and set it up ready for the session.
• Appoint one person to record the ideas that come from the session. Depending on the approach you want to use, you may want to record ideas on flip charts, whiteboards, or computers with data projectors.
• Define the objective of the brainstorming session clearly, and lay out any criteria to be met. Make it clear that that the objective of the meeting is to generate as many ideas as possible.
• Give people plenty of time on their own at the start of the session to generate as many ideas as possible.
• Ask people to give their ideas, making sure that you give everyone a fair opportunity to contribute, including the quietest members of the group
• Encourage people to develop other people’s ideas, or to use other ideas to create new ones.
• Encourage an enthusiastic, creative, uncritical attitude among members of the group, Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session as this stifles creativity and cripples the free running nature of a good brainstorming session.
• Let people have fun brainstorming. Encourage them to come up with as many ideas as possible, from solidly practical ones to wildly impractical ones.
• Ensure that no train of thought is followed for too long. Make sure that you generate a sufficient number of different ideas, as well as exploring individual ideas in detail.
• In a long session, take plenty of breaks so that people can continue to concentrate.
• Ideas should only be evaluated at the end of the brainstorming session – this is the time to explore solutions further using conventional approaches.

Good luck with your idea generation session!

A sample of feedback from our most recent Train the Trainer course:

Really enjoyed the whole experience & it has already changed how I approach, plan, deliver and evaluate my courses

I found the training to be very beneficial going forward in designing future programmes

I really enjoyed the three days and it was a real eye opener

My expectations were met & I now feel totally confident that I could conduct a session of training in lots of areas

Many thanks Orla for a very enthusiastic input over the past few days, looking forward to putting learning into practice

I should have done this course ten years ago!

If you would like to book one of these places contact Orla on 086 3807802 or orla@ots.ie.

Try Edward De Bono’sDe Bonos Six Thinking Hats® a powerful technique I recently used with  a team of senior managers whilst facilitating a problem solving session – highly effective!

How does it work - This technique is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. When we think we often do so with the same hat on. This technique forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation. Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint but often they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps and do not make essential contingency plans. Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and more emotional people may fail to look at decisions calmly and rationally. If you look at a problem with the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ technique, then you will solve it using all approaches.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of blocking the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

Each ‘Thinking Hat’ is a different style of thinking:

• White Hat: With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
• Red Hat: ‘Wearing’ the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
• Black Hat: Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans ‘tougher’ and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.
• Yellow Hat: The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.
• Green Hat: The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.
• Blue Hat: The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

This technique allows  emotion and scepticism to be brought into what would otherwise be purely rational decisions. It opens up  creativity within decision making and helps  pessimistic people to be positive and creative.

Try it to solve your next problem and make your  decision – it really works! Good luck!