By: Jeff Cochran, SNI Master Facilitator. During the middle two weeks of August, Chip Tames and I were fortunate enough to be in the Philippines teaching and coaching negotiations skills. During our second week there, the rains generated by Typhoon Maring caused wide spread flooding throughout Metro Manila. Quezon City and Makati were the hardest hit. Unfortunately, many of our participants lived in those areas. As a result, a few of the days of training were sparsely attended as some folks were unable to leave their homes on impassable, flooded streets. My colleagues back in the states, upon hearing the news were concerned and curious how we coped with the flooding. I honestly told them that we coped the same way we do in the Northeast when there is a bad winter storm. The safety of the participants was our highest concern, and we told everyone if they could not make it in safely to stay home, and if they could make it in safely we would see them tomorrow. In fact, it was exactly how we cope with natural disasters everywhere. People often ask, "How do you teach negotiations in such diverse cultures?" My response always is that wherever you go, people are people and there may be subtle nuances, but the basic tools remain valuable everywhere. The flooding in Metro Manila reminded me of that. Monsoonal Flooding is very different from a Winter Nor’easter that causes a blizzard, but folks respond pretty much the same way. They hunker down, make sure their family is safe and rely on their neighbors to help them out if they get in a real jam. It’s nice to know that regardless of subtle differences as the result of culture, humanity remains basically the same all over.

High turnover and worker attrition rates in the recent economy have left many businesses short of staff or working with a bunch of new hires who lack a grasp on the business. In addition to this, the last several years have produced some significant changes in the philosophy of worker training. Applying these new tips and techniques for training your workforce can get your business working more smoothly and make your employees more confident that they understand their roles.   Cross-Training Isn’t Just For Fitness In order to deal with the high turnover rates of recent years, many businesses have on-boarded a group of less experienced employees to fill those roles. What may make more sense for many companies, however, is to cross-train existing employees. Many individuals already on your team can handle more responsibility, and more time on the job will have given them a clearer sense of how those responsibilities fit into the larger corporate scheme. A group of cross-trained senior employees will outperform a group of new employees tasked with a single role.   Training Is A Game Gamification is one of the new tricks in employee training that has come about in the last few years. Turn training into a large-scale game, with tasks and quests that your employees must complete. This element of fun helps to keep employees engaged and motivated to participate in training activities. In this respect, training employees can be like working with children - learning needs to be fun for workers to engage enthusiastically, which is why turning training into a game is so effective.   Embrace Technology More and more training can be done on an individual basis using technology, rather than in group settings. Employees today are increasingly comfortable using technology in all parts of their lives, and work training should be no exception. eLearning and other digital formats may hold the attention of workers who spend much of their time using technology.   Understand Their Goals There is a large psychological element to training techniques today. If you better understand the goals of your employees, you will be able to motivate them more effectively. Helping your employees to pursue their own goals gives them an incentive to engage fully with the training process. Other psychological tools utilized in best training practices in recent years include providing positive reinforcement and embracing different learning styles. If you provide employees with training materials best suited to their learning style, they are more likely to retain the information.

Recently, PressBox named the Top Thirteen Sports Power Players in Maryland. For each ranking, they calculated a numerical impact score from factors such as: "overall wealth, financial success and social influence; the value of their sport enterprise; the influence their work has had on other places or people in sport; their philanthropy efforts in the community or across sport; their community engagement; and the strength of their particular brand in the sports industry."   Ron Shapiro, Chairman and Co-Founder of SNI, ranked #7, recieving an 8.9/10 impact score, only ranking under team owners and the CEO of Under Armour.  When Pressbox described his impact throughout Maryland they noted that: "Team owners, business leaders and civic leaders keep Shapiro on speed dial because he is known for his deft touch in dispute resolutions, business transactions, public relations and negotiations. Shapiro has served as chairman of the boards of more than 25 civic and charitable organizations. His impact score is derived from his network of relationships in sports and the many organizations that have relied on his influence in setting their course and direction." SNI congratulates and thanks Ron for his incredible impact.   To see the full article clink the following link: http://www.pressboxonline.com/story/10429/The-Top-13-Sports-Power-Players-In-Maryland

Let’s face it: customer relationship management (CRM) is a jumbled mess. We come to CRM with an empty box, and then an uncoordinated group works to add information to it. The leads generated by various parts of the sales force simply don’t come together into a coherent image of who our customers are. But with evolution in the field of CRM, there is potential for that to change. From the revolutionary no software world of Salesforce, CRM is evolving. The CRM of the future won’t require an entire team of its own, generating leads and pouring information into it. The only CRM worth having in the future will be one that provides those leads on its own. Many highly successful companies have found that there is only one good way to deal with their CRMs, and that is to assign an entire team to the projects, along with thousands or even millions of dollars. The empty box that every current CRM starts out as gets filled by these teams, but only large companies have the resources necessary to make this happen. Instead, the rest of us are forced to work with conflicting information or missing updates. With a system like that, it’s impossible to know who needs our products. A properly functioning CRM in the future will have the answer to that question. Right out of the box, new CRMs will have a set of customer recommendations. And, to make the system even better, those recommendations will be consistent across departments. If one department discovers that recommendations are wrong, the CRM will update across all departments. Leads should be singular and consistent in this CRM of the future. There shouldn’t be duplicates or entire CRM-dedicated teams. And those leads shouldn’t cost millions of dollars to uncover. Finally, to really have an optimized CRM will mean that we get the big picture. The new CRM should be able to tell us whether our customers are on Facebook, or if they are Twitter users instead. A wide variety of information should be available within the CRM, and the system should be smart enough to know which representatives need which kinds of information. This may sounds like a stretch, but we are rapidly approaching this phase in the world of CRMs. It was exciting when Salesforce first revolutionized the market by getting rid of the extensive software needs that CRMs used to come with, but the future holds even more exciting prospects. CRM may still be a hassle, but coming down the road are changes that will streamline the lead process in ways we never imagined before.

When designing a mobile app, it isn’t enough to just code into the void and then launch the app to consumers. No - there are numerous ways in which apps should be optimized for maximum user enjoyment, starting with the selection of an appropriate mobile platform. Follow these five rules when choosing your mobile app platform to ensure ease of use and top performance. Choose a hybrid platform. Using a hybrid platform will allow your app to translate across different platforms and environments. This makes it less expensive to design and avoids the pitfalls of trying to translate a platform specific application. Make sure your hybrid platform is compatible with mobile coding, can run background activities, and can manage secure on-device backup. Adopt HTML5. HTML5 still has its problems, but because as a platform it embraces so many different functions, from messaging to data semantics, it is unwise to forego this platform entirely. Making HTML5 part of your hybrid platform will help to integrate your app into the growing community of HTML5 users, while still providing it with some firmer ground in the form of a joint platform. Engage with the cloud. It can feel strange to back-up your devices and programming in what seems to be the equivalent of thin air, but the cloud is the way to go these days. Don’t overlook more traditional back-end systems, but combine them with public and private cloud structures to improve the overall integration of your app with other programming. Choose your provider carefully. With the rapid changes that app platforms are undergoing resulting in constant turnover, it is important that you choose a supporting provider who is financially solvent and that has an extensive roadmap for product evolution. Your provider should be able to make new formats available to you rapidly, and their company framework needs to align with your service level agreements. Emphasize collaboration. Nothing in today’s marketplace is designed by a single person. Rather, it is much more common to find multiple teams of people engaged in the problem solving process of designing an app. With that kind of diversity, however, it is not uncommon to find different coding languages and conflicts between the groups. Make sure to choose a platform that can help to integrate the multiple groups into the final product and that offers collaboration software, resulting in a seamless experience for the consumer.

  Give The Sales Team What They Need…When They Need It Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 Time: 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern SNI, in conjunction with Brainshark, Training Magazine, and Sales and Marketing Management will be conducting a complimentary webinar: "Giving The Sales Team What They Need…When They Need It!" To make training stick and actually drive results, it must be practical, customized, and accessible when needed. How can you leverage on-demand training and tools to improve your sales team’s ability to execute? Join as our EVP of Design and Production, John Buelow, and Brainshark’s VP of Sales Enablement, Marc McNamara, present examples of training content that it can be easily created, consumed, and tracked. They will share: A systematic approach to sales and negotiation that increase accountability and drives results Tips and tricks for delivering training content to boost engagement How to measure and track results To register for our webinar, please go to: http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/welcome/brainshark_oct_23.

One of the most nerve-wracking events at any office is the annual performance review. Employees tend to hate the stress involved with hearing a year’s worth of feedback in one sitting. Managers typically dislike the levels of formality that official performance reviews require. Still, performance reviews serve a vital function at any productive workplace. As we approach the end of the year - and the performance reviews that come along with it - let us stop to consider three tips for giving great feedback. 1. Be clear, concise and prepared. The most important step to giving a great performance review is to be clear, concise and prepared when you are speaking with your employee. We recommend that you prepare for the review by assembling all of the materials that you believe you will need to complete the review. Then, take the time to speak with a few of your colleagues (if applicable) about the employee in question to get a more-rounded impression of the employee’s performance. Once you have a complete view of the employee’s performance over the course of the year, you can distill that information down into a clear and concise review. 2. Engage with the employee and encourage their engagement. Many performance reviews end up being a manager reading off a sheet of paper to an employee. Although that method may alleviate some of the stress associated with a performance review, it is far better to engage with your employees as individuals during the process. As you work through the review, stop and allow your employee to ask questions, give explanations or even direct the conversation to topics that they think are important. When you truly engage with your employees during the performance review process, they are more likely to take your words to heart. 3. Set up an action plan for follow-up. Many employees (and employers, too!) secretly believe that performance reviews are not at all effective. This is due in large part to the fact most performance reviews have no real consequences. In order to ensure that your employees take performance reviews to heart, the onus is on you to schedule regular follow-ups. During the performance review, consider setting several concrete goals with your employee. You should also discuss the actions necessary to meet those goals. Finally, you should schedule regular meetings to discuss the employee’s progress toward these goals. Performance reviews have gotten a bad reputation for being stressful wastes of time. Still, a well-done annual performance review is vital to the success of any business. If you are willing to put in the work before, during and after the performance review process, you, too, can give performance reviews that are helpful and stress-free.

A fresh take on things is necessary for successful entrepreneurs, but those independent spirits who really make it in the business world definitely have some major personality traits in common. Of course, hard work, good timing, and just a little bit of luck help, too. If the following apply to you, you might have just the right personality and qualities to make your business dreams a reality. Confidence In Your Success Entrepreneurs don’t succeed by not being entirely sure about their ideas. In fact, building a business venture from the ground up requires jumping over plenty of hurdles that can stop you right in your tracks if you don’t have faith in your ability to scale them.  A Little Humility That said, being overconfident can bring you down just as quickly. The most successful entrepreneurs keep an open mind and have a commitment to constant growth and learning. Humbly seeking out mentors and peers is an important part of making it all work, as is giving credit where credit is due.  Dedication and Tenacity Starting from the bottom isn’t easy. Your first business venture may fail, an economic downturn could put a wrench in your plans, or a competitor may simply outdo you. Successful entrepreneurs get back on their feet and dust themselves off when things don’t go according to plan, and they’re always ready to learn from their mistakes and do better next time. Serious Self-Motivation As an entrepreneur, you’re not going to have anyone telling you what to do, when to come into the office, or when you can do better. Successful entrepreneurs have a fire under their feet that they feed themselves. A Penchant for Rule-Breaking Paradigm shifts and game changing ideas come from an ability to defy convention. Detractors may claim ideas are crazy or impossible to achieve, but successful entrepreneurs know that such claims mean that they’re on the right track. Willingness to Take a Risk (Within Reason) Entrepreneurship requires a good deal of risk-taking, from financial investments to innovations that present the world with something a little bit unfamiliar. A recent study actually found that successful entrepreneurs engaged in more risky activity in their youths than unsuccessful ones! Of course, the key to success is to take calculated risks. An Eye for Opportunity Finally, successful entrepreneurs know how to spot gaps that they can fill with their own ideas, and the most successful ones can spot those gaps across multiple industries. Richard Branson, for instance, has managed to grow successful business ventures ranging from transportation to communications.

"A winning effort begins with preparation." - Joe Gibbs "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." - Alexander Graham Bell "I’m a big believer in the fact that life is about preparation, preparation, preparation." - Johnnie Cochran "One important key to success is self-confidence.  An important key to self-confidence is preparation." - Arthur Ashe Take any of the above quotes (or the countless others about preparation) and they boil down to one thing.  Preparation leads to success. In negotiation, preparation can be the difference between getting the deal you want and walking out of the room with regrets. It is the only aspect of a negotiation that is in your full control. There are lots of ways to prepare, but one great way is to use role-play.  Find a friend or acquaintance that can take the other side.  Let them play devil’s advocate and see how the negotiation may play out.  Do it a couple times to build confidence in your position and delivery as well as thinking through what the other side may say.

Every office has one: a morning person who skips into the office to begin their day with a grin and a loud greeting. Bypassing the coffee pot entirely, the morning person sits down to plow through the tasks in front of them, cheerily attempting conversation with their fellow officemates. If it seems like they are getting more done than anybody else, it is because they are. However, Super-Productive Suzy may not actually be "a morning person." In fact, very few people actually enjoy mornings. Instead, successful morning work is a result of a solid routine and not a genetic anomaly. Subsequently, even morning haters can get their workday started on the right foot if they commit themselves to five easy steps. 1. Exercise before work. Experts have been telling us for years that it is best to exercise in the morning. Still, people are reluctant to sacrifice their last moments of sleep in favor of going on a run. However, there are a number of reasons for why you should exercise in the morning before work. First, early exercise revs up your metabolism, which means that you will have more energy throughout the day. Second, crossing exercise off of your to do list before you "officially" start your day means that you will head into work with a deep sense of accomplishment. 2. Plan your day. The most successful people spend the first hour of each workday planning their workdays. When you first get to the office, clear off your desk and get to work on planning the flow of your day. This includes making a detailed list of everything that you need to accomplish. 3. Connect with others. Many people have a tendency to rush straight to their desks without even acknowledging the people around them. Instead, you should take the morning as a valuable opportunity to connect with your colleagues. Smile, say hello and ask them how they are. The morning is also a great time to check in with people who may need your time later in the day. 4. Ignore your email. It sounds completely counterintuitive, but the most successful people ignore their email for the first part of the morning. If you rush into checking and answering email, you will miss a valuable opportunity to make a prioritized plan for your day. Instead of spending your first hours at work searching through your inbox, do a quick perusal and respond to only the most important. Later on, when you have more time, you can answer the less-important emails. 5. Plan a break. Successful people know that they should always plan a midmorning break. This serves two purposes. First, it gives you a set deadline by which you should have all of your morning work completed. Second, a midmorning break serves as a great reward for powering through your morning to-do list.   Sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/23/16-things-you-should-do-at-the-start-of-every-work-day/ http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45jlkf/14-things-you-should-do-at-the-start-of-every-work-day-3/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/08/29/four-ways-to-start-your-work-day-right/ http://www.thegrindstone.com/2013/09/26/career-management/balance/start-your-work-day-off-right/