The world is full of trainers so why choose Tom?

Tom’s training is based on a 12 year track record in running sales teams and business leadership, primarily for US or European hi-tech companies. This experience brings significant credibility and enables him to use real world anecdotes to support key learning points and demonstrate real empathy with participants. Tom is also co-author of “The Financial Times Guide to Business Training” which looks in detail at the best practice in needs analysis, training design, delivery and follow-up.

His book starts with the words “Business Training doesn’t work”.

Too often, companies and trainers implement workshops and training courses which deliver content but do not engage participants to take action. Tom’s focus is on delivering high-impact, highly practical workshops that engage participants and focus on turning the learning into action.

Tom focuses on some specific areas where his depth of experience and expertise enable him to add real value and works with both corporate and Professional Service Firm (PSF) [link to Professional Service Firms page] clients.

Effective influencing:

We spend an average of 23 minutes of every working hour trying to ‘move’ people: get them to take on board a new perspective, commit to taking action or change their minds about a particular situation.

Influencing, therefore, is a critical skill for anyone who sells, manages or leads. But how can individuals influence more effectively in any situation, be that 1:1 or 1:many?

From research into the book “Brilliant Selling” a model for practical influencing emerged that Tom has been working with and training groups on all around the world. Called the C3 Model of Influencing™ it is built upon what effective influencers do. The components of Confidence, Credibility and Connection are central to influence and are articulated both through the things we do consciously and the less conscious use of our body language and voice tone. Tom teaches these concepts along with wider practical influencing tools and approaches that give participants a variety of practical strategies to become more influential in any situation.

Tom’s training in influence focuses on:

  • What gets in the way of your effective influencing right now?
  • How to build increased situational confidence necessary to influence effectively in any situation;
  • How to develop a deeper sense of confidence at the point of influence through engaging your mind-set and focusing on ‘deep practice’;
  • How to demonstrate, evidence and build your credibility and connection and how to use these two elements in face-to-face meetings;
  • How to harness the less conscious body language and voice tone of credibility and connection;
  • How to utilise powerful yet practical approaches to start your meetings and presentations more effectively and increase the chances of achieving a successful outcome;
  • How to have the ‘difficult conversations’ more effectively

Selling skills:

Tom started out as a salesperson and rose through the ranks to lead sales teams. Sales effectiveness requires a clear process so that you can monitor and improve what you do (you can only manage what you measure!), outstanding communication, influencing and relationship building skills and an ability to develop corporate (and not just individual) relationships. Toms training work is informed by his best-selling book “Brilliant Selling”.

Tom’s selling skills programmes focus on raising individual participant’s awareness as to how they are working right now in the important aspects of the sales process and then provides them with intensely practical tools and approaches with which they can improve.

Popular aspects of Tom’s training in this area includes:

  • How to make time for the important tasks in selling;
  • How to build trust with clients;
  • How to influence clients more effectively through formal (presentations and pitches) and informal (individual meetings) touch points;
  • How to be seen as an Advisor rather than an Expert (necessary to creating a successful Adult-Adult selling relationship with the client);
  • What to do when things go wrong in client relationships;
  • How to develop your consultative selling approach with effective questioning;
  • How to elicit and use client values to develop the sales relationship;
  • How to build deeper rapport with clients;
  • How to differentiate yourself and your organisation when you are selling

Client Relationship Management:

Developing your key client accounts can have a significant positive impact on relatively your profitability. For many organisations, a small percentage of their clients are responsible for the bulk of their business and so choosing the right relationships to focus on and then managing them proactively and effectively is critical.

Tom’s training in this area focuses on a number of critical areas including:

  • Making objective decisions about which clients to focus on;
  • How to set effective client relationship goals – both in terms of hard (revenue, profitability, account penetration, share of wallet) measures and relationship measures;
  • Relationship priorities (including building trust, client and business knowledge etc.);
  • Managing challenges when they occur and;
  • Defining your influence and action plan

Effective presenting:

Presenting is a key skill for leaders, managers and anyone involved in client contact and influence including professionals and sales people. Often these situations are ‘high-stakes’: it is important that you achieve a specific outcome either for yourself or your business. Tom designs and delivers high-impact presentation skills workshops that bring about immediate behaviour change for participants.

Based on his book, “The Leader’s Guide to Presenting”, Tom delivers highly practical workshops that focus on:

  • A six-step preparation process that can be applied to any presentation;
  • How to pace an audience in order to be able to demonstrate empathy and lead them;
  • How to structure your presentations to keep an audience engaged;
  • How to create and use effective visual aids including PowerPoint;
  • How to start and end a presentation to maximise your impact;
  • How to handle audience questions effectively;
  • Utilising body language and voice tone to support your connection and credibility with the audience and;
  • Practical tips to make your content and yourself memorable for the right reasons.
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Tom Bird and I both spoke at at a Leadership Conference in London. Tom is an engaging and entertaining speaker, sharing his meaningful insights on influence and effective human interaction. The audience thoroughly enjoyed his depth of knowledge and his engaging presentation. I highly recommend Tom Bird as a speaker.

Gary Noesner, Chief - FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit (Retired) and author of "Stalling For Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator."