Showing 1–48 of 68 results

Accounting Skills for New Supervisors

Many of us flinch when we hear terms like depreciation, cash flow, balance sheet, and (worst of all!) budgets. However, these are all important concepts to understand if you’re going to succeed in today’s business world, particularly as a supervisor. Even better, financial terms are not as scary as they seem!

Advanced Project Management

It’s easy to forget the “manager” part of your “project manager” title among the other range of activities you are responsible for. However, your management skills are an important part of your success as a project manager, so it is crucial that you grow both of those skill sets. There are also some advanced project management techniques that you can master to help bring your projects to successful completion. This workshop presumes that participants have a thorough understanding of project management, including topics such as preparing a statement of work, setting project goals, scheduling, budgeting, managing project risks, and executing a project.

Advanced Skills for the Practical Trainer

Behind every spectacular training session is a lot of preparation and meticulous attention to detail. The truly skilled trainer can make a program exciting. The learners will have fun while they are learning if the facilitator is able to involve their emotions as well as their minds. You will see the involvement, and you will feel the energy. To reach this stage as an adult educator isn’t always easy, but success isn’t just for the naturally gifted. It is possible for all of us who put effort into our personal growth and development. We want the enormous satisfaction that comes from working with others to help them reach their potential as human beings. This three-day workshop will help you reach that goal. This workshop requires that you have a good understanding of basic training principles, including adult learning concepts, Mainstream Corporate Training's experiential learning cycle, training methods, and designing a learning sequence. We strongly recommend completing Mainstream Corporate Training's  "The Practical Trainer" workshop before taking this course.

Advanced Writing Skills

This is a one-day advanced writing skills workshop for those who already are good writers. Our time will be devoted to writing letters of recommendation, of persuasion, of refusal, or of action, that reflect current word usage and up-to-date formats. You can also learn some basics about writing business cases, proposals, and reports.

Basic Business Management: Boot Camp

Owning a business requires a vision balanced with attention to detail. You need to be a generalist who understands the multiple aspects of running a business, as well as the ability to step back and see the big picture and to reach into the future.

The business environment is a complex place to be. Whether you wish to work as a consultant or freelancer, establish a corporation, or set up an operation that meets a need for very particular type of customer, there is a tremendous amount of information that you need to know and to apply.

This three-day business management training course provides essential learning for new business owners, whether the business is just in the idea stage or you have already begun and need to fill in the gaps.

Becoming A Progressive Employer

Many people like to think of themselves as progressive in some fashion, but is this usually the case? Employers can be considered progressive for numerous reasons, from the way they treat their staff to their approach to technology. This one-day course will point the way towards being a progressive employer for those who wish to be on the forefront of employee relations and develop an innovative stance on business.

Body Language: Reading Body Language As A Sales Tool

Body language can make or break our efforts to establish long, trusting relationships. Our body language can help to reinforce and add credibility to what we say, or it can contradict our words. Understanding what signals you are sending, as well as being able to read the signals that your clients send, is an essential skill in sales and throughout our lives. What is your body language saying about you? Find out in this one day workshop!

Budgets and Managing Money

For managers in today’s business world, it’s essential to have a working knowledge of finance. We all play a role in our organization’s financial health, whether we realize it or not. If you don’t have training or a background in finance, you may be at a disadvantage as you sit around the management table.

Understanding the cycle of finance will help you figure out where you fit into your company’s financial structure, and how to keep your department out of the red. This two-day workshop will help you prepare budgets and make decisions with confidence.

Building a Brand on Social Media

Your brand speaks for your company and its products and/or services. In today’s online-focused world, it’s important that your brand has a definitive, consistent, and responsive presence. Whether you’re looking to build a brand from scratch, or strengthen an existing brand, this course will help you build a brand using social media. We’ll cover how to build a social media strategy, identify social media platforms that fit your brand, craft strong messages that will engage your audience, and evaluate and revise your strategy.

Building a Consulting Business

Today’s business environment isn’t focused on 9-to-5, lifelong, static positions like it was decades ago. Our world is constantly shifting and evolving, meaning that businesses (and workers) must evolve with it. As a result of this shift, consultants have more opportunities than ever before. This workshop will show you how to build a business as a consultant.

Building an Online Business

The Internet has changed the way that we work, live, shop, and play. You can take advantage of this new way of doing business whether you want to set up a part-time venture or create the next million-dollar enterprise. This one-day course will give you everything that you need to build a successful online business.

Business Ethics For The Office

What exactly makes a decision ethical? The problem with ethics is that what may seem morally right (or ethical) to one person may seem appalling to another.

This workshop will not provide you with an easy way to solve every ethical decision you will ever have to make. It will, however, help you define your ethical framework to make solving those ethical dilemmas easier. We’ll also look at some tools that you can use when you’re faced with an ethical decision. And, we’ll look at some techniques you can use so you don’t get stuck in an ethical quandary. Best of all, we’ll look at a lot of case studies so that you can practice making decisions in a safe environment.

Business Etiquette: Gaining that Extra Edge

If you’ve ever had an awkward moment where: 
  • You aren’t sure which fork to use,
  • You don’t know which side plate is yours,
  • You’ve ever had to make small talk with a Very Important Person and been lost for words…

Business Succession Planning: Developing and Maintaining a Succession Plan

Change is a hallmark of today’s business world. In particular, our workforce is constantly changing – people come and go and move into new roles within the company. Succession planning can help you make the most of that change by ensuring that when someone leaves, there is someone new to take their place. This one-day course will help you teach the basics about creating and maintaining a succession plan.

Business Writing That Works

We all know what good writing is. It’s the novel we can’t put down, the poem we never forgot, and the speech that changes the way we look at the world. Good writing is the memo that gets action and the letter that says what a phone call can’t.

In business writing, the language is concrete, the point of view is clear, and the points are well expressed. Good writing is hard work, and even the best writers get discouraged. However, with practice you can feel more confident about your own writing. This two-day workshop will give participants the tools to become better writers.

Change Management: Change and How to Deal With It

Change is something that excites people who love opportunities for growth, to see and learn about new things, or who like to shift the status quo. Some changes, however, are harder to adjust to and lead to expressions of resistance and anger. We can take concrete steps to make change more palatable by understanding people’s hesitation, enlisting the help of others, setting up plans, and managing stressors. These steps can also ensure that desired changes are implemented successfully.

In this one-day workshop, you will learn how to manage and cope with change and how to help those around you too.

Communications for Small Business Owners

Communication between individuals is a two-way street, but communication between business and its customers is a multi-lane highway. Navigate this highway successfully and you increase customer numbers and profits. Set out on this highway unaware, ill-prepared, or unconvinced of its importance, and you will lose ground to your competitors.

This course will introduce and reinforce the essential components of written communication that will connect you with existing and potential customers. If you are new to the communications highway, this course will provide the foundation for future development. If your company has some communications expertise, this course will help you strengthen and polish your essential components.

Creating a Dynamite Job Portfolio

The job market continues to change, as does the way we look for work. This course examines the value of presenting yourself as a complete package by using a resume as an introduction to an employer and backing it up with a portfolio presented at the interview.

In order to make the most of this course, participants need to have recently completed the Getting Your Job Search Started course, or identified target positions and completed a full skills assessment and goal setting exercise.

Creating Winning Proposals

Proposals are persuasive documents that are fundamental tools in organizational funding and output. This course will look at sources of funding, types of proposals and how to write proposals that will meet funding agencies requirements. This will include a number of tips and techniques to increase the potential success of your proposals. An important but often overlooked aspect of proposal writing will also be covered- Building and Maintaining Relationships. Relationships are built on honesty.  Potential projects must be a good fit for your organization and your organization must be ready to do the work contained in the proposal. The most successful proposals are going to be those that fulfill the mission and values of your organization and that of the funding agencies as well!

Crisis Management

Viable organizations need to be ready for emergencies because they are a fact of doing business. The worst plan is not to have any kind of plan at all, and the best plans are tested and adjusted so that they work over-time. Fortunately, you do not need separate plans for fire, weather disasters, and all the different kinds of crises that can occur. One solid plan will help you to prevent, respond, and recover from all crises. This two-day course will help you ensure your organization is ready to manage any kind of crisis.

Critical Thinking

In today’s society, many people experience information overload. We are bombarded with messages to believe various ideas, purchase things, support causes, and lead our lifestyle in a particular way. How do you know what to believe? How do you separate the truth from the myths?

The answer lies in critical thinking skills. The ability to clearly reason through problems and to present arguments in a logical, compelling way has become a key skill for survival in today’s world. This two-day workshop will give you some practical tools and hands-on experience with critical thinking and problem solving.

CRM: An Introduction to Customer Relationship Management

This Customer Relationship Management course will introduce the different facets of  CRM and identify who the customers really are. It will also analyze the key components of CRM and explore how it can be integrated within an organization. As with many significant undertakings, undergoing a Customer Relationship Management review (even simply considering its implementation) requires learners to analyze technical and complicated systems. This course sorts through a myriad of information and brings you the basics you need to make a decision about the need for CRM, its benefits, and how to coordinate the base requirements for a CRM undertaking.

Developing a Lunch and Learn Program

If you look at any successful organization they have the support of employee development as a core part of their culture. For these organizations it goes beyond professional or even personal development to offering learning opportunities that create increased energy, creativity and fun. Lunch and Learns are a venue to foster sharing and peer learning and are typically aimed at fostering cross-organization collaboration and communication. They are a tool for sharing of information, approaches and talent. Further, they offer opportunities for networking in a safe, friendly and relaxed atmosphere. This course will give you tools to be able to create a Lunch and Learn Program that creates opportunities for learning that might not otherwise happen. You will also prepare a short Lunch and Learn session and receive feedback from other course participants.

Developing a Training Needs Analysis

The right training at the right time can make a huge difference in the productivity and profitability of your organization. Whether you are scanning your workplace for opportunities to make things better and training is the answer, or a client asks you to come into their organization and do an assessment, your answer is best framed in the form of a training needs analysis. Your ability to create an analysis that is comprehensive yet simply prepared is critical for it to be understood and acted upon. This one-day workshop will help you to gather the information, assess the data, and present your suggestions for training or non-training solutions.

E-Commerce Management

As the global Internet population continues to grow, electronic commerce is rapidly growing. By the end of 2022 the retail e-commerce market alone is projected to surpass $735 billion US dollars. This huge market encompasses traditional e-commerce, as well as m-commerce (which is growing faster than any other sector) and location-based e-commerce.  This course will teach entrepreneurs how to develop, market, and manage an e-commerce business, giving them a crucial advantage in today’s competitive market. This program will teach entrepreneurs how to develop, market, and manage an e-commerce business, giving them a crucial advantage in today’s competitive market.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence, also called EQ, is the ability to be aware of and to manage emotions and relationships. It’s a pivotal factor in personal and professional success. IQ will get you in the door, but it is your EQ, your ability to connect with others and manage the emotions of yourself and others, that will determine how successful you are in life.

We have all worked with and listened to brilliant people. Some of them were great and… well, some were not so great. The mean and the meek and all those in between can teach us more than they realize. When we look at the truly extraordinary people who inspire and make a difference you will see that they do this by connecting with people at a personal and emotional level. What differentiated them was not their IQ but their EQ – their emotional intelligence.

Entrepreneurship 101

Wouldn’t it be nice to be your own boss, work on your own schedule, and make money doing something that you’re passionate about? Millions of people around the world are living that dream and running their own business.

This three-day course will teach you the basics of entrepreneurship. You’ll consider if entrepreneurship is right for you and learn the basic steps of creating your own business. At the end of the course, you’ll have a solid foundation to start your entrepreneurial journey.

Environmental Sustainability: A Practical Approach to Greening Your Organization

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) involve a set of processes and practices that enable an organization to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency. A well-designed EMS can help an organization address its regulatory demands in a systematic manner thereby reducing the risk of noncompliance. An EMS can also help address non-regulated issues such as pollution prevention, odor management, water usage and energy conservation. In this one-day course participants will learn about EMS and how it can benefit their organization. Through the use of a Case Study and information they bring about their own company participants will leave with a draft EMS for their organization. It will include organizational Environmental Aspect and Impacts and Objectives and Targets for their organizations significant environmental impacts.

Getting Stuff Done: Personal Development Boot Camp

Why are there so many different organizational systems and time management methods out there? The answer is simple: it’s like any other personal challenge, like weight loss or money management. There is no simple, one size fits all answer. You must build a solution that works for you. Over the course of this two-day workshop, we will explore various time management and organizational tools and techniques so that you can build a customized productivity plan for your personal and professional lives. At the end of the course, you will emerge with a plan that works for you, so that you can start regaining control of your life!

Getting Your Job Search Started

While looking for work can be an exciting time, it can also involve fear and discomfort about change and the unknown. Whether you are already in the midst of a job search or just thinking about it, this workshop will help you to determine what your skill set is made up of, the kind of work that is important and realistic to include in your search, and how to get started.

Today’s job market is not the same as it was even five years ago. Knowing where to go, who to talk to, and the opportunities that are available will help to shift you from someone who dreams about having a job, to someone who has the job they always wanted.

Global Business Strategies

Opportunities to take a regional business into the global market make it possible to strategically, smartly, and profitably accomplish more than you can by staying local. To prepare, you need to set your business up for success by being open to learning, to applying new ideas, and to continually reviewing how you can create success in the global market.

Topics such as trade financing, regulatory considerations, international business planning, sustainability, and much more are included in this three-day course. The materials here are well suited for small and medium sized business leaders as they prepare to take their company into the global marketplace.

We strongly recommend that participants complete our “Entrepreneurship 101” and “Basic Business Management” programs before taking this course.

Goal Setting

We all have things we want in life. The route to success is to take the things that we dream about and wish for and turn them into reality. This one-day workshop will lead participants through thinking, planning, and taking action on the things they really want. They will learn ways to ensure that they get where they want to go in life.

Influence and Persuasion

When we talk about influence and persuasion, we often talk about marketing and sales. However, we influence in many ways and with great frequency. If you want a raise, sometimes you need to persuade your boss. If you want to convince your team to adopt a change, help your staff make choices, or choose the best place for lunch, there is often influencing taking place. This workshop will help participants learn how to influence and persuade in a variety of areas.

Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship has been described as a great way to make beneficial changes to organizations. People can choose to continue with the status quo, or they can work to make a difference in the lives of themselves and others within the company.

Who wants to feel empowered and recognized for their innovative and creative ideas? Who wants to make a difference? If participants answer yes to these questions, then this course will help them become energized and ready to push their ideas forward. After participants complete this workshop, they will have ways to get started and implement their plans.

Introduction to E-Mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is here to stay, and knowing how to do it well is essential for marketers as well as small business owners, coaches, and consultants. In this two-day workshop you’ll learn the essentials of planning, creating, and delivering exceptional e-mail marketing campaigns that support your overall marketing strategy. After this workshop, you will be able to reach more clients and potential clients through your efforts at being an e-mail influencer.

Kickstarting Your Business with Crowdsourcing

Today’s fast-paced marketplace demands that businesses think fast. Crowdsourcing can help all types of businesses keep on top of trends and stay competitive. This one-day course will show you how to leverage all types of crowdsourcing (including microwork, macrowork, crowdvoting, crowdcontests, crowdwisdom, and crowdfunding) to kickstart your business’ growth.

Logistics and Supply Chain Management

The supply chain is a crucial part of any business’ success. Optimizing the flow of products and services as they are planned, sourced, made, delivered, and returned can give your business an extra competitive edge.

This two-day course will introduce you to the basic concepts of supply chain management, including the basic flow, core models, supply chain drivers, key metrics, benchmarking techniques, and ideas for taking your supply chain to the next level.

Making Your Business Better

Starting and building a business begins with a great idea. At this moment, there are millions of ‘great ideas’ seeking attention and success. Some of those ‘great ideas’ may be very much like your own. To make your idea not only stand out, but to take root and grow a sustainable, successful business, you need the right team, tools, and expertise. This one-day course will highlight the essentials of business acumen, from relationship selling to and team building, through to planning and marketing, that will position your company to grow and thrive today and in the future.

Managing Across Cultures

Our culture defines many aspects of how we think, feel, and act. It can be challenging for managers to bridge cultural differences and bring employees together into a functioning team. This course will give supervisors and managers easy-to-use techniques for communicating across cultures, building teams, promoting multiculturalism in the organization, and leveraging the global talent pool.

Managing The Virtual Workplace

Virtual workers and virtual teams are an essential part of today’s workforce. More than ever, people are using technology to work anywhere, anytime.

There are big benefits to today’s virtual workplace, but there can be big challenges, too. This one-day course will teach managers and supervisors how to prepare employees for the virtual workplace, create telework programs, build virtual teams, leverage technology, and overcome cultural barriers.

Marketing and Sales

A small marketing budget doesn’t mean you can’t meet your goals and business objectives. You just have to be more creative in your marketing tactics. This workshop will show you how to get maximum exposure at minimum cost. You will learn effective, low-cost, and non-cost strategies to improve sales, develop your company’s image, and build your bottom line.

Marketing for Small Businesses

Marketing is about getting your business known and building your position within the marketplace. Small businesses don`t always have a big budget for marketing, so they have to do things a little differently than big business in order to grow their presence, increase results, and meet business goals. This two-day workshop will help small business owners and managers develop their marketing message, create a marketing plan, and apply the right strategies.

Mastering The Interview

The interview is one of the key elements of the job search process. As with any skill, we can get better at it with preparation and practice. In this workshop, participants will explore how to prepare for an interview and become familiar with the types of questions to expect, as well as the questions they should think about asking. They will learn how to prepare for second interviews, testing, and shadowing, as well as how to follow up on their interview sessions.

Meeting Management: The Art of Making Meetings Work

Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This one-day workshop will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate. Members of such a group want to get some kind of result out of their time together: solving problems, brainstorming, or simply sharing information. At its best, such a group knows what it is about, and knows and utilizes the strengths of individual members.

Negotiating For Results

Negotiating is about resolving differences. People who can master the process of negotiation find they can save time and money, develop a higher degree of satisfaction with outcomes at home and at work, and earn greater respect in their communities when they understand how to negotiate well.

Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling support duties, this workshop will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate in any situation. This interactive workshop includes techniques to promote effective communication and gives you techniques for turning face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.

Networking For Success

Business networking is an effective and efficient way for business people to connect, develop meaningful relationships, and grow their businesses. These achievements don’t come through a direct sales approach, however. They come from being interested in helping others, in listening, and in purposefully meeting and introducing people to one another. In this two-day course, participants will learn the essential ingredients for business networking, including in-person, people-centered connections and online spaces such as LinkedIn.

NLP Tools for Real Life

Neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short) is all about bringing your unconscious thoughts to the surface, so that you can have real choice over how you interact with and respond to the world.

Once you have a grasp on NLP's basic principles, you might be interested in learning about some tools that can help you do more with NLP. This one-day workshop will give you some hands-on experience with important NLP techniques, including anchoring, establishing congruency, developing rapport, creating outcomes, interpreting and presenting information efficiently, and even some self-hypnosis techniques.

To get the most out of this workshop, participants should first complete An Introduction to Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Project Management Training: Understanding Project Management

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to regular job duties, people are often expected to take on extra assignments and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time.

This workshop is not intended to take participants from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these three days will familiarize them with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

In this workshop, you will walk participants through the nuts and bolts of project management, from setting priorities to controlling expenses and reporting on the results. They may still have to cope with the unexpected, but they’ll be better prepared.