Prove You’re the Best  - 1 Day Workshop

There is a cold hard truth about entering awards: Awards judges will not give you the benefit of the doubt. Here are some actual entry guidelines: "Stick to hard results rather than rambling anecdotal evidence" "Judges will award high marks only for entries with measurable rather than purely anecdotal evidence" "Entrants must demonstrate quantifiable evidence" If your evidence is poor, then your story, no matter how good, will not get the credit it deserves. This workshop will help you gather the right evidence - it is not as easy as you might assume.

Forthcoming dates Thursday 22nd January 2009, London, Victoria Thursday 5th February 2009, Birmingham, Birmingham (We are also able to run closed or on-site workshops on request)

Course Aim

Whatever sector you work in - private, public or voluntary; you are probably familiar with the increasing pressure to prove that initiatives have been a success. Our interest is primarily in terms of impressing awards judges, but this could equally be to impress your boss, your board, your investors, the media or your customers.

Traditionally success is measured using operational targets and 'key performance indicators'. If you want to prove “we did a good job” then this is fine. However, if you want to really impress awards judges or board members then you need to demonstrate IMPACT: Hard evidence that proves that what you achieved was outstanding and “made a difference”. 

If you think a customer survey is sufficient evidence of customer satisfaction, testimonials are evidence of happy stakeholders or the value if charitable donations is a measure of social responsibility, then this workshop will add a whole new dimension to your understanding of impact evaluation. It will answer the questions:

• What makes one piece of evidence better than another?

• How meaningful are the existing performance measurements we use here?

• Where do I look and what do I measure?

• When do I know that I have proven a point?

Target Audience

This workshop is relevant to:

• Directors who need to create a more results-orientated culture.

• Marketing professionals who need to impress customers and awards judges.

• Project managers who need to evaluate the impact of programmes effectively.

• Change managers who need to measure the demonstrable impact of before and after.

• Operational team members (e.g. HR, IT and Finance) who need to show that budgets were spent wisely.

This public workshop will have between 8 and 12 delegates per session. Alternatively, this course can be delivered in-house and tailored if required.

Key Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• Appreciate the long-term significance of demonstrating you’re the best.

• Distinguish different types of measures and which are most appropriate for different situations.

• Understand how strategy is aligned to performance measures and be able to craft SMART objectives.

• Determine which measures to use to demonstrate customer attitude, behaviour and advocacy.

• Calculate productivity / efficiency gains, profit improvements and ROI.

• Understand the time value of money and the longer-term impact on investors.

• Explore the range of performance indicators used for creativity and innovation, selecting those most appropriate for your organisation.

• Itemise which environmental impact measures are relevant to your organisation now and forecast those which will be key for the future.

• Establish which other CSR measures (social / community / economic) measures which you want to incorporate and develop.

• Explain why employee engagement is so key to organisational success and how it can be measured.

• Understand the principles of benchmarking and how to access some benchmarking surveys / studies.

• Explain the role that strong independent endorsements play in ‘proving you are the best’.

• Make the most of your success stories through stronger positioning, targeting and PR.

• Improve your Award win rates through:

  • Better qualification of suitable awards; with award and category selection based on finding entry criteria that match known achievements.

  • Better evidence of impact.

  • Improved presentation through better photographs, graphs etc.

Workshop content

This will be a very practical ‘how to’ workshop that will explore that all important science of 'impact evaluation', covering the topics that our recent survey showed would be most useful:

The workshop facilitator

Liz Barnes BSc. Cert Ed, DipM, MCIM, Chartered Marketer Liz Barnes, a principal consultant at Boost Marketing, has amassed a wealth of experience in the areas covered in this workshop through helping Boost clients gather compelling evidence for award submissions, improve their measurement processes, conduct surveys and prepare for scrutiny by awards judges. As a Chartered Marketer, her background combines strategic consulting with workshop facilitation and even university lecturing. Read full biog.

Pricing

There are two pricing options:

Attendance on the public course: £399 for one delegate or £748 for two delegates. There will also be a further £25 discount per delegate if the place is booked three weeks in advance (specific dates associated with each workshop).

A closed, in-house tailored workshop: workshop dates and locations are flexible and the course content would be tailored to suit the client. The course delivery will be charged as a one-off day-rate fee for up to ten delegates, expenses (including delegate manuals at £20 each). Customisation is also available on a per-day rate .

(c)  Boost Marketing