Executive Playground

Executive Playground at Birmingham Chamber

Executive Playground at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: Successful Selling Skills 20th January 2010 http://tinyurl.com/yf3dwu4

Top 3 Benefits & Barriers of Social Media in Business

The top 3 benefits and barriers to using Social Media in business as voted by attendees of our 'Social Media for Business Benefit' training event held at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.

Top 3 Benefits:

1) Generate more sales

2) Raise profile of company

3) Lead generation

Top 3 Barriers

1) Lack of skills & knowledge (about social media)

2) Time & rescources

3) Defining Return on Investment

To achieve more benefits and overcome your barriers to using social media to advance your business, call 0845 330 7884

Mastering Social Media for Business Benefits

Our next series of Mastering Social Media for Business Benefits at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce starts on the on 4th November with an interactive 2 hour breakfast seminar, great for networking and to gauge what's going on in the business world as far as social media is concerned. This is followed by a full training day on 18th November. Our morning is spent developing your social media strategy and integrating it with whatever marketing strategy exists for you. The afternoon is spent online (there is a laptop for each delegate), developing your social media profile and opening accounts to get you started. This day covers the main networks beneficial to business such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Ecademy. To book and for more information call Leon Rovira at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce on 0121 454 6171. For more details click here

Mastering Social Media For Business Benefits

If you work with or for anyone who doesn't believe that social media can benefit business or sales send them here http://ping.fm/Q6JD5

Mastering Social Media for Business Benefits

The vast majority of businesses don't know how to harness the power of social media for business benefits. There is resistance at management level - including director level, to understanding it, the perception being that it's all about Facebook 'kind of stuff' and it has no real place in business.

How wrong they are AND this is entirely understandable. 

Now there is a way to discover what it can do for your business and how to do it without spending hours online! Come to our 'Mastering Social Media for Business Benefits' 1 day training workshop. It's for anyone in business open enough to learning more about it. You won't be disappointed. If you are you get your money back.

This day isn't run by a techy by the way. It's run by Anne Wilknson, our managing director who eats, drinks and breaths business - not technology.Our next event is on Friday 25th September in Birmingham, West Midkands, UK. It's for maximum 8 delegates due to the hands on nature of the day. :

• Understand what social media is and how it could benefit your business

• You will develop a social media strategic plan that will fit your business, products and services

• How to use social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twiter, Ecademy and others to gain access to your ideal target market and decision makers

• How to avoid wasting loads of time on social media using time-saving devices

• Benefit from a social media staff policy template with guidelines for use
  

• Discuss your business and receive help to achieve tangible benefits through sales, service and quality

• and much more

Call 0845 330 7884 to enquire and book. Places are £175 each.

Welcome to Executive Playground®

We are a Business Improvement Consultancy based in Solihull in UK. We enjoy a variety of clients which includes the NHS, Private Sector and Public Sector organisations and SME companies. 

 

We design bespoke solutions to solve a range business challenges, from turning around poor sales performance, coaching underperforming staff, working with senior management teams on culture change programmes to implementing innovation strategies. Just a few examples. These are delivered through consultancy, management development and training, facilitated workshops, coaching and profiling.

 

In April 2010 we will launch our first product, TeamVention online. TeamVention online is a unique web based application for cost reduction, service improvement and culture change programmes targeted primarily towards the NHS and Public Sector.

 

Achieving tangible measurable results are fundemental to our success and word of mouth recommendation is how most of our clients find us. Click here to see what they say about us. 

 

Take a look around, for more information and click on the Services tab or call 0845 330 7884

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From our blog...

Executive Playground Case Study featured in TEAM newsletter

Executive Playground is an approved service provider to TEAM, a UK wide network of approximately 180 recruitment agencies with over 300 branches. We help managers and business owners of recruitment businesses to develop effective and innovative strategies to win more business and improve the sales and marketing skills of the team. Anne's work with Hart Recruitment has been featured as a case study in this month's newsletter. If you are interested Download TEAM July 2009 Revised and go to page 7 'Strategy, Skills and Sanity checks'

How to use social media to increase sales

Is your business losing out on new customers and sales because you don't understand enough about social media and how to use it to generate business? 

If so you are not alone, but help is at hand. 

Whilst business focused social media networks such as LinkedIn, Ecademy, Plaxo, Xing and a few others have been around for some time there isn't enough business expertise, guidance or support available from the technical experts to help businesses integrate it effectively into their sales and marketing strategy.  Knowing the tools without understanding business and how to apply it in each instance is just not enough. Consequently a huge gap in knowledge and understanding has emerged for the business community.

If this is affecting your business we can help.

We take social media offline and through your business doors in a very traditional way.  We educate managers and staff on what social media is (and what it's not), work with you to develop an effective social media strategy and usage policy. We train you on the various tools available, including Twitter and will help you integrate them into your marketing and sales strategy. If you don't currently have a strategy you need one -  and we'll help you with this too.

Don't allow your business to lose out through misinformation about social media in the marketplace, or  through ignorance or fear. Used well it has the most powerful sales growth tools available to you. Social media is here to stay and it will get much bigger.

By the way, we are not social media geeks or techies. We are highly experienced, business people and consultants who speak the language of business benefits. We run social media for business awareness seminars and masterclasses for Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. Call Leon Rovira on 0121 450 4239 to book a place on the next one.

Call 0845 330 7884 to speak to us and make an appointment. 

'Social Media for Business' Breakfast Seminar Birmingham Chamber June 2009

Here's an abridged copy of the presentation 'Social Media for Business' breakfast seminar today at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. You can download at Slideshare click here Slideshare/annewilkinson. 

At the beginning of the presentation which was designed for businesses interested in leveraging the power of social media, we asked 'What 3 business challenges would you like social media to address/improve'. The results are listed below. We understand that 'generating leads, finding new customers and increasing sales' are terms often used to mean the same thing.We have categorised the responses as accurately as possible to reflect both the right words and the right context. 

We received 41 answers in total:

17% of the responses received from business delegates wanted to increase awareness of social media (in order to be able to leverage it)

17% wanted to use it to improve communication

15% want to use it to prospect for new customers/clients

12% want to use it to increase sales

7% want to use it to develop their business

7% want to use it to share information

7% want to use it and achieve a return on investment

5% want to use it for networking

5% want to use it to raise brand awareness

5% want to use it as part of  a modernisation process

2% want to use it for marketing.

Today's session and the feedback we've had since, reinforced our view that many businesses need support to define their social media strategy and implement the right tools to achieve their business and sales objectives. Unlike more traditional IT solutions and applications, social media is not driven by the business community. This is a real challenge for businesses that could benefit from social media if they could understood it. Most of the training available is online! This is not very helpful to busy business people who don't have the time or inclination to sit in front of a computer for hours figuring it all out.

So what's the answer?

Social media consultancy. We take social media offline and bring it into your business. We train you at your place or ours. We'll help you develop a cohesive social media strategy and align it with your sales and marketing plan, supported by guidelines and policy for management and staff, so they understand the boundaries and can work for the benefit of the business within them. We help you identify and set up the most appropriate social media networks for your business. We'll even write your profiles for you if you want us to. We'll help you get the best from tools like Twitter and in a way that you spend a maximum half an hour a day to reap the rewards. 

Call 0845 330 7884 to discuss our social media consultancy services today.

NEW: Innovation in Action Half Day Workshops for SME's only £250

These new 'on demand' half day Innovation workshops for directors/owners of SME businesses are now available any day Monday to Friday, at our place or yours, dependent on location.

These are not open/public sessions - we work only with you on your real business challenges and to create new opportunities. All you have to do is call us on 0845 330 7884 and book your session 9-12 or 2-5pm, dates to suit. These sessions are run personally by our managing director Anne Wilkinson. They are incredible value at only £250 plus vat and mileage expenses where applicable. Follow up sessions are availble. We always offer a 100% money back guarantee if you get no benefit from our work. Call 0845 330 7884 and book your personal Innovation Workshop today.