My first ever training was a sales training in the 1980s that lasted just 2 minutes...
"Welcome to Express Employment Services. Here are the file cards for potential clients and here are the file cards for applicants. Ring the clients and see if they want any of the applicants. See you later"
Armed with this advice I then proceeded to make a truly dreadful job of ringing these potential clients, who remained "potential clients" until I figured out that there was a lot more to sales than had been imparted during my two minute induction.
After six months at this company I was headhunted to work at a multinational recruitment concern who wouldn't even let you speak to a client until you had completed a five day residential course in Birmingham. The good news was that this was definitely a step forward from the previous experience, but the bad news was that the entire training was very conceptual and when staff returned to their offices they found themselves ill equipped to deal with real clients and applicants.
I left the world of recruitment in the 1990s after a very successful career which included negotiating a series of million pound contracts. I learned the hard way from independently seeking out and funding my own training and making note of what worked best in the real world. In the latter part of the 1990s I came across NLP .By this time I had already set up my own training business that later became Nick Kemp Training Ltd. I had heard good things about NLP and wanted to investigate more. Better still a seven day course back then cost less than five hundred pounds, so I went ahead and booked. I was a bit surprised on arriving at Great Russell Street's TUC Centre to find over 300 other attendees at the same event. However it was well presented and even though I left with some insight into the world of NLP I didn't really grasp and integrate the skills until much later.
After four years of attending many more NLP events, and spending weeks each year helping out on courses, I finally learned and integrated the skill set, and from 2004 - 2009 taught my own NLP courses for the public. Mindful of my initial experience I always ensured that the group was no larger than thirty in number and the trainings focused on skill development rather than being simply a feel good experience. In recent years I have voiced my observations about the way in which some schools of NLP have hugely inflated workshop prices whilst in my opinion diluting the quality of the training, and my blog reveals many observations on this issue.
Running a successful training requires a great deal of precision and paying attention, before you even get to the live event. In the world of NLP I have seen some truly dreadful trainings which mostly failed to connect with the audience because the room was a poor choice. I remember on one event a very well known celebrity trainer make the following comment on first seeing the actual training room - "I hate it"
After realizing I was standing next to him he then back peddled and stated "We'll make it work" I later found out that the trainers never looked at the training venues ahead of time and made a mental note to always check this detail when running my own events!
I run Business, Personal Development, Public Speaking, NLP and Provocative style trainings for groups and on an individual basis. These take place in the UK, USA and Europe and I am always mindful of creating great value for money.
The hotels are carefully chosen for their quality of service and the training locations are central so people have good access to restaurants and local facilities. The current trainings can be located on this site. Please e-mail me from the contact page if you have any further questions prior to booking.
