The Green Room

Good wood from smart guest contributors. This edition…. Deb Trebilcock from Coalmine Canary, with lessons learned from a brutal day pounding the hills surrounding Adelaide....

Customer language guides

In planning workshops and strategy sessions, we sometimes fall into language traps - talking "us-speak". Internal acronyms, the boss' pet sayings and terminology, themes from our last internal branding events. Nice, but maybe more meaningful to us than anyone else.

Take the word blinkers off a moment, and consider the type of language used by your customers;

• How do they speak, write, communicate, in their business, with their customers?
• What terms, tone and topics dominate their conversations with you?
• When they try to persuade you, or their team, or their clients or suppliers, what style of argument do they use? How do they employ language to shift perspectives?
• What terminology do you sometimes use that gets them screwing up their noses, or giving you blank looks, or that turns the conversation in a negative direction (that you need to remove)?

You will continue to talk and communicate like you, but discussing client terminology and calibrating your language to more closely align with how your VIPs speak and promote is a simple, often overlooked strategy.

Adel-anguage. We speak about Fritz and Wine. Not together. But maybe...

Workshop observation...

Make the room work.

a. U-shapes are terrific for teams of 10 - 20 when most of the action is front-of-room, but
b. If you need them collaborating in breakouts, just pick up the chairs and move them.  

Seeds

3 things to keep in mind when eyeballing a prospect for the first time…

1. They're hoping, wishing, praying, that you will be different. Better. The ultimate supplier. 
2. They're looking for every little sign that you're not (because they've been down this road so many times before)
3. They will give you a great many answers to the test, right here, right in this conversation, if you're brave enough to ask, if you care enough to pay attention, and if you're smart enough to connect the dots in a not-uber-scary way.

Jets and success. Track-leavers.

The Swarm Guide

Meet Strategy Road Associate Catherine Wells, a financial strategist & financial planner who specialises in supporting clients with SMSF as well as planning for millennials. Cat and her team support an array of business owners, families and individuals, from Baby Boomers hitting retirement age, to those young enough to get the full lifetime benefit of compound interest. Check out Cat's business Plansure.

Blooming

Reflect & remember...

Memorial days are anniversaries of major events with lessons for an entire population to review and remember. Hard-won lessons, by others, their fruits enjoyed by us. Reflecting and remembering is about the very least we can do.

The even better play? Doing something with that remembering. Reflecting on the purpose of their actions - their "why" they did it - and honouring it in how you go about your next steps.

Memorial days are about the giants, the major moments for which communities need to gather around common touchstones and consider. But there are other, smaller moments - personal moments only you've been the beneficiary of - you can use memorial days to reflect on. Consider the sacrificers and enablers of your success, the drivers and catalysts and supporters. Consider the shoulders on which you stand and the standards set by others we'd do well to remember and apply. 

Some gave a lot for our success.

L W F.

Worth a Bo Peep...

South by South West (SXSW) is one of, if not the biggest conference on the planet dedicated to ideas, creativity and professional growth. It takes over the city of Austin, Texas, for a week, and brings crazy-calibre speakers together on one bill. Check out some of the back-content - http://sxsw.com.

Luft balloons* (imagine...)

If - then - else. A computer programming framework from yonks ago. Consider it;

• If client #1 left tomorrow. Just left. 
• If the regulators dropped the big one in your lap.
• If competitors 1, 2 and 5 merged.
• If your preferred supplier shut their doors. Or locked you out.
• If blockchain, bitcoin, AI, Machine Learning or Pokemon Go came into your market and just changed it irrevocably, fast.
• If your top product got recalled for quality issues.
• If your best performers snuck out the side door and hung up a shingle down the street.
• If the biggest contract you've ever seen lands in the order pile... and sucks up 98% of your capacity for 12 months.
• If Amazon turns up.
• If Amazons says "that market has no future" and doesn't turn up... and the analysts agree.
• If your kids stick an iPhone under your nose and say "isn't this new thing you've never seen before kinda like.... no, better than what you guys do?"
• If you're in a freak lawn bowls accident, and you're out of action for 4 months (you're fine, but you know, work with me...)
• If you change NOTHING about what you're doing for the next 6 months.
• If... (what is it? Your big 3am fear? Your can't-bring-myself-to-contemplate-it thing?)

If it happens, then what will happen. Then what will you need to do. Then what comes next?

Else? It's your Plan B. There's no single cat skinning manual. You have options. What could they be should the big wave hit?

Slide deck specials

It's the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. It's the name of a very handy Aussie pop singer & judge on The Voice. And mathematically, it means "variation". Change. It's the biggest concept you want to be confronting, discussing, imaging, regularly. 

The After-Workshop 

The whiteboard is full, the brains are emptied, the mood is happy-tired and it's time to thank the contributors, power down the data projector and call it a day. 

Consider a cherry-on-the-cake act.

Post-workshop drinks and canapés?
A shared lunch?
Take 'em out for tea?

If you can extend the budget and sequester just that much more time from the punters, it serves a range of purposes;

• It thanks people - food and drink is the gesture of gratitude that crosses all boundaries.
• It adds a new dimension to the bonding you've undergone in the workshop room, a more human, friendly dimension, that supports and ties tighter that connection.
• It opens up some light-hearted scuttlebutt about the workshop proceedings, and, if the mood genuinely was positive at session stumps, reinforces commitment and goodwill.
• It gives people a more relaxed, informal forum to discuss aspects of the session in smaller groups, or one-on-one, that they didn't feel comfortable or confident doing in the room.
• It creates a memory connection for future meetings - "Yes, I remember how that last meeting ended, we had a great time over a steak, a few laughs... I want to be part of that again".
• It shows you care about more than the transaction, more than the mechanics.  It shows you're in it deeper, with them.

Shared workshop experiences are great ties. Shared post-workshop experiences can deepen and extend a relationship to a whole different level. Cheers to that!

The trees for the woods…

(tumbleweeds....)

Wanna sign up?

If a mate has forwarded this free e-share to you and you’d like it once or twice a month, click here and type "sign me up, Scotty!" – thanks!

Thank you for reading!

Forrest Workshops custom-builds and facilitates team workshops on topics ranging from strategic planning, leadership and sales practice development, to innovation, customer experience creation and collaborating with your supply chain in an evolving market. Based in Adelaide, serving clients nationally and internationally, from SMEs to Fortune 500s.
Committed to facilitating purposeful teamwork. 

NEW! Forrest Workshops For One are tailored Coaching & mentoring programs for leaders, business owners, sales and service professionals. High-touch, deep- and long-term impact support.

Contact Troy Forrest from Forrest Workshops on 0430 308963 or troy@forrestworkshops.com.au for a discussion.