NBS Training and Coaching

"We don't use agencies."
"Our current supplier is fine."
"Your fees are too high."

Most experienced recruiters could probably give me a reasonable answer to all three.

So why do objections still cause so many problems in real conversations?
Because knowing an objection-handling technique and being able to use it when somebody actually pushes back are two very different things.

This week's No BS Training Notes looks at what happens in those few seconds after an objection lands — and why I think we've spent too long teaching people what to say, and not enough time changing what they do.

Your Sales Team Doesn't Have an Objection Problem | John Williamson "We don't use agencies." "Our current supplier is fine." "Your fees are too high." Most experienced recruiters could probably give me a reasonable answer to all three. So why do objections still cause so many problems in real conversations? Because knowing an objection-handling technique and being a...

I saw this today and it made me chuckle.

After yesterday's solar eclipse, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone spotted the commercial opportunity.
"I Saw The Eclipse" souvenir canes.
For people who stared at the sun for slightly longer than recommended. 😂

You've got to admire the entrepreneurial thinking.
See a problem.
Find a market.
Create a product.
Although I'm not entirely convinced repeat business is going to be particularly strong.

Anyway, that's enough internet for one Thursday morning.

I was looking back through my diary at what I was delivering around August and September last year.

Quite an assortment.

* Client Interaction & Composure Under Pressure — which, in reality, was partly “please stop swearing at the customers.”
* Effective Communication.
* Personal Branding.
* A three-day “bespoke” Leadership Toolkit.
* Coaching & Mentoring.

And Public Speaking — which wasn't really public speaking at all. They needed help presenting confidently at work.

It reminded me of something that still frustrates me about the training industry.

A company decides it has a problem.

Someone Googles “communication training” or “management training”.

They find a course with roughly the right title, speak to someone who assures them it can be made bespoke, and a trainer gets booked.

But hardly anybody asks: What are you actually trying to change?

I've done a lot of associate work for large training providers and I've genuinely been sent around 170 PowerPoint slides for a one-day course.

Very little context about the business. No meaningful trainer notes. Just a deck and an expectation that the trainer somehow makes it work.

If you've been doing this long enough, you can.

You talk to people. Ask questions. Find out what's really happening. Adapt what's irrelevant and spend time where it's actually needed.

But I've also had delegates tell me about trainers who essentially read the PowerPoint to them.

Sometimes they even got the delegates to read bits aloud.

Apparently that's interaction.

And this is the important bit if you're buying training.

“Communication skills” isn't a problem.
“Leadership development” isn't a problem.
“Sales training” isn't a problem.

What's actually happening in the business?
What are people doing — or not doing?
What conversations aren't happening?
Where is performance getting stuck?
And what do you need people doing differently when they're back at work?

Those questions should come before anybody starts talking about course content.

Otherwise “bespoke training” can very easily become a generic PowerPoint with your company name added to slide one.

That's increasingly what I want NBS Training & Coaching to be about.

Not selling you a course title.

Finding out what's getting in the way of performance, building the intervention around that, and giving managers something they can continue to coach and reinforce afterwards.

So if you're looking at training for the autumn, don't start with the course. Start with the problem.

Tell me what's happening and what you need to change.
Then we can work out whether training is even the answer.

Drop me a message if you want to talk it through.

Saturday coffee thought...

Sitting having a coffee while I wait to collect the dog from the groomers, and for some reason I've been thinking about my last recruitment sales workshop.

Sales objections came up. Again.

They nearly always do.

Even experienced recruiters will tell me they're not completely comfortable when a client suddenly says:

"We don't use agencies."

"Your fees are too high."

"We've got a PSL."

"Just send me some information."

As someone who's been around sales and recruitment for more years than I care to count, I sometimes wonder when handling objections actually clicked for me.

Because once it does, it's really quite simple.

Everything is when you know how.

The problem I see with a lot of recruiters who've mainly learned on the job is that they've never really learned a repeatable way of handling objections.

So it's hit and miss.

They hear the objection and rush in with an answer.

They get defensive.

They start explaining why the client is wrong.

Or, worse, the brain goes blank and the conversation just sort of... dies.

And here's the interesting bit.

You can teach someone the words to use.

That doesn't necessarily mean they'll use them when a real client pushes back.

That's why at NBS Training & Coaching, we don't just teach objection-handling techniques.

We've developed a rather different way of changing the behaviour around the objection itself.

It gets people practising what happens in that uncomfortable few seconds after the client pushes back — until responding differently starts to become much more natural.

I'm not giving away exactly how we do that here. That's half the fun.

But it certainly gets people talking, thinking, laughing... and occasionally becoming rather competitive.

If you've got a sales or recruitment team who know the theory but still struggle when a real objection lands, drop me a message.

There may be a rather less beige way of fixing it.

Right. Hopefully the dog is now considerably better groomed than I am.

Back in Sheffield last Thursday, continuing our work with the easyHotel team.

One thing that's become clear throughout this project is just how much pressure frontline hotel teams can find themselves under.

Most guests are great.

Some aren't.

When you're working behind reception, often on your own or with a small team, you don't get to choose the situations that walk through the door.

That's why this programme isn't about teaching people to "deal with conflict."

It's about recognising situations earlier, communicating effectively under pressure and making good decisions when emotions are running high.

One of the real strengths of delivering these sessions alongside Andre is the perspective he brings.

Drawing on his experience as a former Military Police officer, Police Officer, Custody Sergeant and Inspector, he shares the reality of dealing with confrontation when the stakes are high. Not theory... real situations, real decisions and the lessons that come from them.

Those stories spark some of the best discussions in the room because they quickly become, "How would that look in a hotel?" rather than, "What's the textbook answer?"

That's where learning becomes practical.

A huge thank you to everyone who took part last Thursday, and to the easyHotel team for continuing to invest in their people. Looking forward to the next stage of the project.

John Williamson is a recruitment and leadership performance trainer who believes people learn more from solving real problems than sitting through another slide deck.

Less Beige. More Brave.

One of the things I enjoy most about running workshops is that someone always asks a question I hadn't planned for.

This week it wasn't about sales techniques or leadership models.

It was simply...

"Why do some teams seem to improve after training, while others slip back into old habits within a few weeks?"

It's a great question.

And if I'm honest, it's one I've spent years trying to answer.

These days I don't think it's about finding better trainers or more engaging workshops.

I think it's about what happens before the training starts... and what happens after everyone goes back to work.

That's why I'm putting more time into developing what I call the NBS Performance Architecture™.

It's really just a practical way of looking beyond the obvious and understanding what's actually driving performance.

I'm looking forward to sharing more of it over the coming months. I have a feeling it's going to become a big part of how I work with clients.

With the recent focus on employers taking all reasonable steps to protect their people, many organisations are reviewing how prepared their customer-facing teams really are.

We've recently launched NBS Workplace Safety & Conflict Management™ — a practical workshop for organisations where staff regularly deal with customers, guests, visitors or members of the public.

Designed for:
🏨 Hotels
🛍 Retail
🍽 Hospitality
🏢 Housing Associations
🎭 Leisure & Visitor Attractions
🏥 Healthcare
☎ Customer Service Teams

This isn't security training.
It's practical behavioural training that helps people:
• Recognise risk earlier
• Stay calm under pressure
• De-escalate conflict
• Handle challenging conversations
• Protect themselves, colleagues and customers

Delivered by the NBS Workplace Safety Team, combining expertise in behavioural performance, communication, conflict management and frontline operational response.
Everything is practical, interactive and based on realistic workplace scenarios.

If your organisation is reviewing workplace safety, conflict management or customer-facing training, I'd be happy to have a chat

I've been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes at NBS recently.

Not just designing training courses, but looking more closely at why people behave differently at work — particularly when things get difficult.

That's where NBS Behaviour Dynamics™ comes in.

Because most people can communicate reasonably well when everything is going smoothly.

It's when the pressure goes up that things change.

A salesperson gets defensive when challenged.

A manager avoids the conversation they know they need to have.

Someone who is normally calm becomes frustrated.

A customer gets angry and suddenly the person dealing with them can't remember any of the techniques they've been taught.

Understanding those changes — recognising them and adapting how you respond — is becoming an increasingly important part of the work I do.

Alongside that, I've also been developing our diagnostic approach.

Because I'm not particularly interested in selling somebody a training course simply because they've said:

"We need some training."

I'd rather work out what's actually causing the problem first.

Is it skill?

Behaviour?

Confidence?

Management?

Communication?

Or something in the way performance is being managed and reinforced?

That's the thinking behind our NBS diagnostic tools and the wider Performance Architecture™ approach we're building.

If you manage a team, lead a sales function or run a recruitment business and any of that sounds familiar, have a look around the NBS website.

There's also a free Recruitment Performance Diagnostic™ on there if you want somewhere practical to start.

https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

Less Beige. More Brave.

Recruitment is a funny industry when you think about it.

I've worked with education recruiters, technical recruiters, childcare, IT and infrastructure, and plenty of businesses in between.

Completely different markets.

Yet one thing keeps coming back.

When someone new joins recruitment, whether they're a graduate or they've come straight from school, they're still new to recruitment.

A degree doesn't automatically teach you how to pick up the phone to someone you've never met.

It doesn't teach you how to build trust with a candidate, ask a client a difficult question, deal with rejection or keep a relationship going when there's nothing immediately in it for you.

That's why I think getting people properly developed **early** matters so much.

Not six months down the line when they've picked up a load of bad habits and somebody decides they're "not performing". Early.

Teach them how to speak to people.

How to listen.

How to ask better questions.

How to build genuine connections.

How to manage candidates rather than simply process them.

How to develop client relationships rather than just ring businesses asking if they've got any jobs.

Because recruitment is sales. Of course it is.

But it's sales with another relationship running alongside it.

You're building trust with the person buying your service **and** the person whose career you're representing.

Get that bit right early and you've got something to build on.

Twenty-odd years around recruitment and I still love the industry.

Different sectors. Different markets. Different people.

But underneath it all, it's still very much a people business.

Just a thought for the day.

A question for recruitment leaders.

When was the last time you sat down with one of your consultants and genuinely coached them?

Not checked KPIs.

Not asked about jobs.

Not reviewed activity.

Actually coached them.

What are they struggling with?

What conversations are they avoiding?

What skill would make the biggest difference to their performance right now?

I've worked with enough recruitment businesses to know that most performance problems aren't activity problems.

They're usually confidence problems, communication problems, management problems or skill problems.

The challenge is that those things rarely show up on a dashboard.

They show up in conversations.

Sometimes the most valuable thing a manager can do on a Friday afternoon isn't look at another report.

It's spend 30 minutes helping someone become better at their job.

What's one thing you've learned this week about managing people?