Business Skills

Articles

Build your business skills with our practical articles

Knowledge Bites is creating a library of free content, to help business people around the world to grow their skills from the comfort of any desk - anywhere!

This is a continuing project for 2024 so please check back regularly for new content.

Sales & business development

What Makes a Great LinkedIn Post?

LinkedIn is one of the key tools in a salesperson's tool-kit in 2024, but how should you use LinkedIn effectively? Part of the mix, is writing LinkedIn posts that have the impact you want them to have, and here's how.

Is LinkedIn a Sales Tool?

A perennial question with a variety of opinions. Here are the thoughts of sales expert Neil Shorney on what LinkedIn is and isn't.

Taking Sales Skills to the Charities Sector

Many people might think that charities are the last people who'd need sales skills, but in fact, these are exactly the kinds of skills charities need. Not just for direct fundraising, but for clearly and persuasively communicating their values and promoting their causes. Here's an article about how sales skills help charities and not-for-profits.

Walker is Right about Customer Experience

An article looking into the findings of the Walker Report into the main differentiators of business, and how customer experience is what matters, more than price or product.

A Sales Mindset for All Staff

Sales isn't just for salespeople - everyone in an organisation has their part to play, particularly those who interact with customers. Helping all staff to develop a sales mindset can ensure customer experience is the best it can be, and that new opportunities are uncovered by those with customer contact.

How to Sell when you're the Cheapest

You might think that having an expensive solution makes it tough to close sales, but in fact the reverse is true - being cheaper than the competition can make winning the right sales very difficult. Here's why.

Coaching & mentoring

Top Coaching Questions for Leaders

The key to being a successful coach in the workplace, is being able to ask the right questions. Here's a list of some of my favourites in the COURAGE™ framework, which can easily be applied to many other coaching methodologies.

How To Coach In A Remote Environment

Coaching is one of the best recognised techniques in a leader's tool-kit. It's the perfect tool to help people to find their own solutions to problems, and to buy into action. But it's also rooted in deep yet subtle communication, and strong relationships. So how do you coach someone you're not face-to-face with? Here are some ideas.

Risk Management as a Technique in Coaching

Coaching is, at least in part, about creating a safe space for employees to try things out and learn from their mistakes. Although coaching might seem a world away from risk management, the two principles going together incredibly well to create this place for experimentation. Here are some ideas to help you.

Coaching Tips for Leaders

Coaching. Such a valuable skills, but such a misunderstood discipline. For leaders, coaching is a vital tool to get the best out of staff, so here are some coaching tips from Knowledge Bites to help you succeed in these important conversations.

Leadership

How to Ask Better Questions - Every Time

Our most popular LinkedIn article ever, but quite a big margin. Questions are vital for people-focused leaders to get the best out of their staff, yet so many people ask questions which have minimal impact. Here's how to ask the questions which help your employees to thrive.

Communicating the Organisational Strategy

Organisations spend a lot of time and money developing their organisational strategies, but then some of those strategies disappear into a drawer, never to be seen again. Strategies need to be shared to be effective. Here are some thoughts on how to do this effectively.

Thriving in the virtual world

Which Platform Should I Choose For My Online Meeting?

As you get into the world of online meetings, one of the first questions you’ll be asking yourself is “which platform should I use?”. With so many choice, it’s a question a lot of companies are struggling with, and we’re often asked for our opinion. So, here’s the Knowledge Bites guide to the different online meeting platforms available.

Negotiation skills

What Is a BATNA and Why Should I Have One?

A BATNA is one of the pivotal concepts in any negotiation, and if you haven't got one, you're diminishing your chances of leaving a negotation with what you want from it.

How to Negotiate the Salary for your New Job

Any job change, either within your current organisation or to a new company, will (hopefully!) bring with it a salary increase. But how do you ensure you get what you're really worth? Here's how to apply negotiation skills to this important situation.

Communication skills

Improve your communication skills with the Chewbacca Mask Lady

A light-hearted look at engaging communication prompted by the Chewbacca Mask Lady - you'll have to read it to find out!

Speak Like They Can't Hear You

A personal reflection on how working with a deaf training participant improved my communication skills with everyone.

La différence entre voulais et voudrais... et pourquoi c’est important au travail

Des différences subtiles dans votre langue au travail peuvent avoir un effet important sur le résultat.

Personal effectiveness

5 Tips to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

It's not an exaggeration to say that Imposter Syndrome can be absolutely debilitating for individuals in the workplace. And this belief that someone doesn't deserve to be where they are in their career can affect some of an organisation's most talented employees. In fact, some research says that it's more likely to affect high-performing people. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome can be tough, but it's absolutely possible, and can lead to a huge leap in effectiveness in the workplace.

How To Set Effective Goals

Goal-setting is one of the keys to productivity and achievement, but many people either don't set themselves goals, or set goals that they'll never actually achieve. Here's how to set goals that work.

How Limits Can Boost Creativity

As the business world continues to evolve, it's more important than ever to foster an atmosphere of creativity in the workplace. In fact, this topic was Knowledge Bites' most requested course last year - it's encouraging that businesses are taking this seriously. But how do you encourage creative and innovative thinking? One way is by putting limits on people. Here's how.

Take the Time to Recharge Your Batteries

Work-life balance was thrown into the spotlight when remote working took off at the beginning of the covid pandemic, and it's not going away any time soon. We all need to think about how our performance can suffer when we're exhausted, but some are not very good at taking a break from the daily grind. Here's some encouragement to give it a go.

How to Have More Confidence in Meetings

One of the less-discussed challenges of being promoted into a management role, is the feeling that the individual has just made a massive leap from individual contributor to manager. One of the areas the employee feels this most acutely is in meetings, where suddenly they're expected to take part in a completely different kind of discussion. Here are some tips for new leaders to give their confidence a boost.

5 Tips to Stay At Your Best At Work

Whether you're working in the office or at home, or a mixture of the two, it's easy to work in a way which damages your concentration levels, health, and well-being. Here are 5 tips to work in a way which doesn't take its toll on you later.

A Reformer's Guide to Making Decisions

Strong decision making isn't a skills which only became useful recently - it's been important throughout human history. In fact, there are lessons we can learn from historical figures which can serve us well in 2024.

5 conseils pour rester au top de votre travail

Malgré ce que vous pourriez parfois penser, vous êtes seulement humain! Et quelles que soient vos ambitions, vous ne ferez pas de votre mieux à moins de prendre soin de vous, tant à l'intérieur qu'à l'extérieur du bureau.

Learning & development

How to Conduct a Training Needs Analysis (TNA)

Failure to fully assess training needs before implementing a training programme will lead to wasted training budget - people will attend training courses, then go back to their desks and do exactly the same as they were doing before, wasting all the training investment made. Learn how to do it properly in this how-to article.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus published his work, On Memory, where he shared his pioneering research on how we remember (and forget) things we've learnt. This has a huge impact on what tools are available to managers and coaches as they ensure maximum ROI from their training investment.

How to Ensure Training has Impact

Here's a lesson from someone way outside of the normal business world, but someone who absolutely knows how to make sure things happen - the Beagle 2 Test Manager. Take a look at what we can learn from this genius of the British space industry as we work to ensure the training staff take has the desired impact.

General business

How to Take Meeting Minutes

A thankless and generally unpopular task for all but the most dedicated minute taker, yet a vital part of most organisations. How do you take minutes in a meeting? Let's explore that for a few minutes.

Seeing our Differences Through a Child's Eyes

Workplace diversity is a big topic in 2024, and rightly so. We would do well to see each other in the way a child does, without all the assumptions and filters we use to interpret the differences of others.

How Agility Can Help Businesses To Weather Any Storm

An article from the start of the pandemic, left here as it's still applicable to the future - how being an agile organisation can help you to weather the storms around you.

Why I Don't Trust Boris

This isn't a political rant (well, perhaps a little) but an article about how trustworks, and what we can do to proactively build the trust between ourselves and others.

9 Reasons to Use a Small Training Company to Train Your Staff

In 2024, more than ever before, there's a massive choice available to organisations looking to train their staff. Many of these have their own unique advantages, but you might be surprised to hear that it's small training businesses which offer you the best balance of quality, flexibility, personalisation, and price.

Train-the-trainer

Why Virtual Training Can Be Better Than Face-to-Face

During 2020, training has been forced online by COVID-19, but in fact, there's been a gradual shift towards virtual training for a decade. Why? It's not just convenience and reduced venue & travel costs - if virtual training is done well, it can be better than face-to-face. Why? Read on...

Designing For Digital part 1: Intro

What's different about designing a training programme for virtual delivery? Is it as simple as dropping my face-to-face courses into Zoom and winging it? (No - it's not!). Here's the first of 3 articles on how to design for a natural virtual training experience.

Designing For Digital part 2: Key Challenges

Before you design your training for a virtual audience, you need to understand the key challenges of training online. Some are obvious, others less so. Here's the next step in our mini-series on designing effective virtual training

Designing For Digital part 3: Principles of Virtual Design

Now you understand what your aiming for and what the obstacles are to a natural virtual training experience, here are the key principles of virtual training design you need to be aware of as you put your training programme together.

The Changing Needs of Business Trainers

An article from a little while ago about how business training changed during the pandemic. We've left it up here because it's still relevant to how the business world is continuing to evolve towards a more virtual way of working.