Workshops

Wow, do we have a busy couple of months lined up in the Flourish studio space. What with my own Flourishing Workshops and our Customer Greenhouse joint venture with Customer Essential we have no less than four marketing workshops between now and the end of June!

With the exception of the Customer Greenhouse conference all of the workshops will be held in the intimate Flourish workshop space with an absolute maximum of 8 delegates – so plenty of opportunity for you to learn, share ideas and gain support from your fellow delegates. This cap on places does mean that most of our workshops sell out incredibly quickly – so if something catches your eye, do book asap as I’d hate for you to miss out.

Key Account Management Workshop

6th May, 9.15-12.15, Guildford

How do you look after the 20% of clients that make up (probably) 80% of your turnover? How do you ensure they feel valued, cherished even? Do you have a process in place? Join customer management expert Liz Machtynger and I for a practical, insightful and knowledge packed morning.  You will develop your own plan of action for identifying and dealing with your own key customers or accounts that you can put into action for profit. Ideal for both large and small organisations. Full details of the Key Account Management workshop on the Customer Greenhouse website.

Workshop Bootcamp

19th May, 9-4pm, Guildford

Should you be running workshops or seminars for your current and prospective clients? If you run a service based business and would like to position yourself as an expert, generate targetted sales leads and add some value to your client relationships then the answer to that should be a resounding yes! Join me for an intensive and highly practical “bootcamp” where we will guide you through the process of getting your first series of workshops off the ground by September. Full details of the Workshop Bootcamp on the Flourish website.

Providing Outstanding Service: The Customer Greenhouse Conference

16th June, London, 9.30-4pm

The second in our highly acclaimed Customer Greenhouse series of conferences. This time the theme is service. How do you deliver outstanding service to your customers? How do you ensure you’re delivering on brand. Examples and case studies from a range of large and small businesses including innovative thinking for VW, success stories at Brit Insurance and a whole host of smaller businesses and startups. Full details of the customer service conference on the Customer Greenhouse website.

Branding Workshop

23rd June, 9-4pm, Guildford

One of my very favourite workshops: an incredibly practical, creative and enlightening workshop to get you thinking hard about your business brand. Brand positioning, brand personality, brand messaging and creative – you name it, we cover it. And you get to make your very own mood board in the afternoon! One of my most popular workshops and back due to demand so do book quickly! Full details of the branding workshop in Guildford on our Flourish website.

We run such a broad range of workshops that I don’t tend to repeat them too often throughout the year. My advice – if you like the sound of a workshop, get yourself booked in! Many of them I will only run once a year…I hope to see you there

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Workshops

Yesterday saw the first of my Copywriting Essentials workshops for the year. Based on previous delegates feedback I extended the workshop to a full day, and I think we all really enjoyed the combination of theory in the morning and practical writing in the afternoon.

I got them working incredibly hard. Focusing their minds on what message they wanted to communicate, what they wanted their clients to know, think and do and then how they communicated that engagingly and with flair.

They learned a couple of tricks to help them write better copy – SPIN, AIDCA and a process for 13 ways to write a powerful headline.

After a delicious buffet lunch – Thai Chicken Salad, Coleslaw, Green Salad and Goats Cheese and Red Onion Tart followed by Chocolate Honeycomb pots out came the laptops and they set to work. Considering at least half the room had never met each other before they worked brilliantly well together – supportively sharing ideas and sensitively giving constructive feedback on what they’d written.

I heard several lightbulbs pinging as we talked about focus and really making sure that you write about what you say you will.

As a bit of a bonus, we also covered different writing styles – blogging, writing for the web vs writing for print and planning a website structure. Stu, our Senior Web Developer also joined us for an impromtu talk on writing copy that helps you get found for the search engines. I love how he makes the complicated stuff (that I confess I don’t always want to understand) seem so straightforward and simple.

They’re all now (hopefully) beavering away writing some great content for their websites and will be able to gain feedback from me for a couple of weeks as a part of the workshop package. I’ve also spied them bonding on twitter which is fab news! I’m sure there will be some new collaborations formed over time and plenty of support and banter moving forwards. The next Copywriting Essentials workshop is 17th November and they always sell out so do book early if you’d like to join us!

Images: Fiona Humberstone for Flourish

Tagged as in Workshops

Yesterday 8 wonderful ladies joined me at the studio for a Branding Workshop. Goodness did we work them hard! I had really hoped that the day would help clarify peoples thinking around their brands – what they wanted to be known for, their niche and the message they wanted to communicate. By lunchtime you could audibly hear the lightbulbs pinging and the pennies dropping.

From the lady who came in and introduced herself as someone who “designs reports, it’s a bit dull and boring to be honest” and left with a whole new purpose, enthusiasm and niche in her marketplace that’s going to get her creatively fired up! Right through to the wedding planner who now sees her style and what makes her unique to the expert that’s developing the confidence to call herself an expert. It was such a fun and inspirational day for me to see these ladies really connect with what they’re best at and become confident about their space in the market.

After a morning of getting everyone to think hard, work together and generate some clarity around what they were all about, we spent the afternoon thinking about brand identity. Very specifically, each delegate created a mood board to communicate and clarify how they wanted their brand to look and feel, and we talked in depth about colour psychology and analysed each business.

What I love about the mood board session is the fact that even the most skeptical person (and we did have an incredibly skeptical business coach on board) goes through the process and really sees the benefits in the end results. It provides such a useful springboard not only for what goes on the board, but also what doesn’t, and why it’s not gone on.

The group left the session with a really clear idea of where their business fitted into the market, the message they wanted to communicate and a starting point for how they are going to communicate that visually.

And here are some of the lovely things they said about the day:

“Very informative and helpful. Well presented. Good balance of briefing and hands on activities”

“Really liked being able to spend time focusing on my brand”

“Digging deep and challenging myself to think. Working with others to share ideas – thought provoking”

“Doing the mood board – incredibly helpful and inspirational. Really thought provoking and helpful”

And here are 7 of the 8 delegates (one had to leave a couple of minutes early) proudly showing off their mood boards!

I had a fantastic day – thank you so much for making it so fun. Izzy and I have just scheduled some new dates for more branding workshops. They’ll be available to book over the next couple of days but dates for your diary: Thursday 23rd June and Thursday 13th October. Hope to see you there.

Tagged as , branding workshop in Flourish Stuff, Workshops

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Tagged as in Branding, Workshops

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Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Marketing, Workshops

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Tagged as in Workshops

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Tagged as in Marketing, Workshops

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Tagged as in Business Strategy, Marketing, Workshops

I realise that I always talk about how excited I am to share a particular project or other with you, and that’s because each and every project we work on we really do pour our hearts and souls into them. By the time they get to the blog they’ve been deliberated, cogitated and digested by [...]

Tagged as , branding, Logo Design, website design in Branding, Case Studies, Colour Psychology, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design, Websites, Workshops

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Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Workshops