It’s easy to spend most of our time communicating with our front-line, customer-facing teams, after all, it is vital that these teams present your company to your customers in the best light possible. And this is of course essential; demotivated sales teams are not good at winning business! But it is essential you don’t forget your non customer-facing teams too.

But why? How do the non customer-facing people help sales or the success of my company?

Consider how they leave your sales team feeling when they speak to them. Do they leave the sales team fed up and frustrated?

Or perhaps some of your backroom teams do talk to customers? Finance, despatch, logistics, all of these and more will sometimes talk to your customers.

You need to ensure they know about the company, its values, vision, and what the company does. And ensure they are motivated and want to work for your company.

How do we do that? Sometimes you need to look at it from a different angle. Let’s look at an example.

A Finance Department

A few years ago I was asked by a Financial Director to talk to her team.  She was struggling with their engagement and didn’t know how to resolve it. They had had the same training as everyone else on the values, vision and mission of the company. But they were still indifferent.

After talking to them we realised that the problem was that they had no feeling of belonging to the company as they had no idea what the company did.  The problem is that the company made engineering components, these components went into machines, the machines went into factories and the factories made products that you and I use.  For non-technical people to follow this trail and relate the products to things they know about is hard on their own. 

I was asked if I could break this down so that the team could really engage in what the company did and hopefully change the way they viewed their employer. 

I ran an informal workshop, not going through the products the company made, but going through the applications they were used in, ensuring that I spoke about the end products.  So for instance instead of saying the company made a cylinder, I described the cylinder being used on a conveyor belt to move a box of chocolates.  Or a piece of tubing being used to supply a vacuum to put a windscreen into a car.  I then asked them to name a product that they used and I described which of our products would be used to manufacture the product. 

As a previous Product Manager I had seen all of the products they named in production, they ranged from face cream to contact lenses and garden products!  It was a challenge of my knowledge too!

We also discussed some of the largest customers they spoke to and what they did.  And talked through what end products the machines they made may be used for. 

What was the reaction?

The reaction was instant! Your non customer-facing team’s motivation was now through the roof!

The FD reported that many of the team said it was the best training they had been on as they now understood what the company did and crucially now felt that they were part of the company. After all, they used the products that the company made so they were now engaged.  

From an indifferent team, she now had a team eager to meet with colleagues and show off their newfound knowledge!  She heard conversations afterwards where the team were quizzing the sales team about their clients, now having the confidence to ask questions where they hadn’t before. 

There was a huge change to the motivation of the team, meaning that the FD now had an engaged and enthusiastic team, who were ready to ‘sell’ the company to others, increasing retention and helping in recruitment.  They helped to motivate the sales team, what we traditionally call the front-line staff. No longer did the sales team leave conversations with them frustrated, now the finance team made suggestions and helped the sales team sort out issues.

And of course, conversations with the customers’ finance teams were now more positive, and this was noticed by the sales team in their conversations with customers.

So don’t forget your non customer-facing teams!

They can have a huge influence on the general company environment and, sometimes on your customers too! Let’s ensure we motivate your non customer-facing teams too.

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

The Pathway Communication Company Ltd provides a personalised plan to help you and your business move forward. We might help you set goals, a strategy, a communication plan, facilitate a meeting, be a coach or mentor. Whatever it takes. Find out more at: www.pathwaycc.co.uk

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When the MD of Biesse Ltd visited Festo in 2018 it was the start of a revolution in the way the management team communicated with their staff. Instead of sending company emails out that detailed the financial performance of the last quarter, they started communicating what they wanted the future to look like. They invited their employees to be part of the future and to truly understand the part they could play in the success of the company.

Read all about it in our case study below and find out more here

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

The Pathway Communication Company Ltd provides a personalised plan to help you and your business move forward. We might help you set goals, a strategy, a communication plan, facilitate a meeting, be a coach or mentor. Whatever it takes. Find out more at: www.pathwaycc.co.uk

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Many people do not have experience of coaching in a business environment, in most people’s experience coaching is associated with sport. A coach in sport is defined as an ‘instructor or trainer’.  They teach, tutor, educate their pupils or team. 

An executive or business coach typically doesn’t offer information. 

Their skills lie in listening and asking questions to help their client work out an answer for themselves.  However skilled we are at self analysis and making decisions, sometimes we get tangled in our thoughts and we are unable to see clearly through the fog. Talking through the issue with a coach can untangle your thinking and help you come to a decision.

A couple of examples …

• A senior executive in a large company who is not sure if there are opportunities for her or whether she needs to look elsewhere.  This is not a question I can answer, and neither can she!  But what I can do is ask her questions and give her some tools (in this case create a mind map ) to start to find the answers herself.  I will meet with her again in a few weeks after she has mapped out the issues and has a clearer picture of the options. We will then talk through specific parts of the map she has created to start to unravel her thinking.
• A manager who has just joined an organisation and is having issues with one of his staff.  The member of staff is not communicating well in meetings or on a one-to-one basis. He is unsure if the problem is him or the staff member.  We discussed the way he works and compared it to the way she works. He recognised through talking that actually they work in a similar way – this led him to set a series of actions that meant he changed the way he talked to her. I will meet with him again to see how this worked and what further steps, if any, he needs to take.

Both are situations that can be dealt with alone, but it is hard! And you make a decision and then second guess yourself!

I can help! By listening, showing empathy and picking up on specific phrases or comments you make I can ask questions which lead you to clarify your thoughts and perhaps help you to think about your issue from a different perspective.

To find out more and experience executive coaching for yourself then contact me.

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

The Pathway Communication Company Ltd provides a personalised plan to help you and your business move forward. We might help you set goals, a strategy, a communication plan, facilitate a meeting, be a coach or mentor. Whatever it takes. Find out more at: www.pathwaycc.co.uk

The post Executive Coaching? What is it and what can it offer me? appeared first on The Pathway Communication Company.

Coaching can help! As a fellow small business owner and a business coach, I can help untangle your mind and put an action plan in place to help you decide what to do next – and what not to do yet.

It fascinates me to listen to a creative business owner talking passionately about all the ideas they have and then helping them to slow down; talk through each one and see them start to form solid plans to put each idea into practice!  They feel so excited that the plans are going to come to fruition. And how amazing for me to see them move forward instead of being frustrated that the ideas are there but with no progress. 

A garden designer is created!

One of my former clients is a garden designer but due to family circumstances she mostly does garden maintenance at the moment.  She is very creative (as you can imagine!) and was itching to move forward with all the designs she has in her head; she particularly loves adding water features to gardens and combining the different features. 

She had ideas but no plans as to how to move her business forward to get the clients she needed to become a garden designer. Over a series of online coaching sessions we uncovered and discussed the different ideas she had, crystallising them into actions which she then carried out between our sessions.  She now has a new business name, a website, business cards and is promoting herself as a garden designer.  She has already done some quotes and is starting to win some business.  Her creative side can now truly come out as she designs some amazing gardens! 

So the answer to the question: “Can Creative people benefit from coaching?” is yes! When you are paralysed by the ideas and have no idea how to put them into action call me!

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

The Pathway Communication Company Ltd provides a personalised plan to help you and your business move forward. We might help you set goals, a strategy, a communication plan, facilitate a meeting, be a coach or mentor. Whatever it takes. Find out more at: www.pathwaycc.co.uk

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