Graham
🇬🇧
Business Training

Graham Y.

Develop Yourself And Develop Your Skills

Popular 24 Articles
Woking, United Kingdom

Professional Value

Graham helps multinational sales organisations align culture with strategy while improving sales effectiveness. He has reduced stress‑related downtime by 30% and increased sales conversion rates through tailored programmes that integrate NLP techniques and culture‑alignment diagnostics. He delivers these solutions across the UK and Middle East for firms in petrochemical, pharmaceutical and telecom sectors.

Selected Clients

Institute of Sales and Marketing ManagementThe Business GroupChartered Institute of Personnel and DevelopmentManagement Centre EuropeMiddle East Management CentreLAB (Language and Behaviour) profile programmeSolutions

Executive Profile

Graham has 20 years of experience as a consultant and partner in training companies, developing and delivering training solutions both internationally and in the UK, and speaking to various audiences on a range of subjects.

After graduating, he began his working life in teaching, before moving into sales. He sold successfully to a wide variety of businesses and levels within them. After a period on the road, he moved into personnel and training for a spell before moving into Sales Management.

He has worked with a variety of major companies in the UK, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, mainland Europe, Russia, and the USA, training a range of Sales and Sales Management skills, Stress Management, Personal effectiveness, and interpersonal skills. In addition to speaking at conferences, events, and meetings, he spends a considerable amount of his time working in the Middle East region. He has worked with many different organisations conducting both training and consultancy assignments - ranging from petrochemical to pharmaceutical, from financial institutions to computer manufacturers and dealerships, telecoms to publishing. He has spoken on subjects from "Culture and Strategy"; "Sales Process and Sales Direction for the present and future"; "Managing Pressure and Stress"; and "NLP in business and life" and areas around these.

He has had many years of experience tailoring programmes to help organisations address a range of issues. Additionally, he uses an OD approach to work with organisations to evaluate their culture and whether it is appropriate for their strategic aims. If not, he will assist them in designing and implementing the suitable actions to correct this situation.

Other projects have ranged from: "modelling" top performers to enable recruitment, development, and specific training to be tailored to what is done by the successful staff, creating and training a graduate mentoring programme involving the Directors and senior managers of a major corporation, project managing the design and development product sales programme to be delivered by a combination of methods from traditional face-to-face workshops, virtual classrooms, and intranet and CD - for roll-out to over 6,000 people, and project managing a major customer service programme for a bank in The Gulf region.

He enjoys balancing the need to develop business skills with the interpersonal and personal development areas for individuals. This is why he splits his time working on the more "business" oriented subjects and stress management and personal effectiveness. He has a strong belief that everyone can continue to learn and grow - even if they do not think so! One problem that many people have in the workplace is that they continue to seek new ideas and the latest knowledge, without learning to apply what they already know. He enjoys awakening this in people and helping them exceed their own expectations in a practical way.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management, a Master Practitioner of NLP, and was involved with setting up and running "The Business Group", which promotes the use of NLP in organisations. He is an accredited trainer for the LAB (Language and Behaviour) profile programme - "Words that Change Minds". Apart from working with his own clients within Solutions, he has also led courses for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, MCE (Management Centre Europe), and Middle East Management Centre. He has written for many magazines and also contributed to the first edition of "NLP - Business Master-Class" by David Molden.

Core Competencies

Corporate Culture

★ 29+ years experience

Graham helps organisations evaluate their culture and its impact on strategic aims.

He assists in designing and implementing actions to correct cultural issues, ensuring alignment with business objectives.

His approach involves assessing the current culture and identifying areas for improvement to drive success.

Sales - Country, Sector Specific

★ 39+ years experience

Graham develops sales strategies and methods tailored to specific countries and sectors.

He helps sales teams adapt to changing markets and customer buying patterns, focusing on consultative selling and building client relationships through interpersonal techniques.

His approach enables salespeople to develop necessary skills for success.

Stress Management

★ 34+ years experience

Graham offers insights and tools to prevent stress by addressing its causes, rather than just symptoms.

He helps individuals and organisations reduce pressure's negative impact, promoting a proactive approach to stress management.

His methods enable people to manage pressure effectively, leading to improved well-being and performance.

Articles by Graham

Article
8 min

Why Do You Need A Sales Process?

The benefits of having a defined sales process

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Article
7 min

When Will Organisations Really Take Stress Seriously?

Most organisations and many managers within them are probably aware of the costs and consequences of stress and stress related problems. They may have some insight to the actual numbers involved – e.g. over 13.7 million days lost in a year. Managers have challenges around maintaining business performance, or even surviving, coping with their own jobs and handling their own pressures. They may well be feeling stressed too. However, can they recognise or admit it?

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Article
8 min

You May Be Taking The Wrong Approach To Selling!

Are you hitting or beating your sales target or quota? If not, are you blaming the market, the customers or your competition? If you are making your target are you taking the credit for yourself rather than giving it to any of these factors?

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Article
6 min

You Think Absenteeism Is A Problem? Worry About Presenteeism!

It is estimated that about 60% of GBP 23bn in lost productivity in the UK is from presenteeism!

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Article
6 min

Manage Stress And Mental Health To Improve Performance

Stress and mental health are not issues which managers should ignore. They cost the organisation money, both directly and indirectly.

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9 min

Careful What You Cut!

Enhance your negotiation skills to keep afloat in tough times

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Article
9 min

Sales Success In Tough Time

It is not about having some new magic method for selling, it is about applying the things you have perhaps forgotten.

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Article
7 min

Building Your Personal Resilience To Reduce Stress

A look at why developing greater resilience matters.

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Article
6 min

Leadership - Do You Use Or Abuse Power?

How do you prefer to "control and influence" others?

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Article
9 min

Is Your Sales Forecast Too Sunny?

How to improve the accuracy of your sales forecasts

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Article
6 min

Are It People Wimps?

Decent management communication and support, plus personal development for the people can combine to help prevent a lot of the issues which lead to pressure and stress. Take time to do this and you will have a less stressed IT function - contributing more to the business!

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Article
7 min

Why Leadership Matters In Professional Practices

Too many organisations are "over-managed and under-led" to quote Warren Bennis. There is a difference between leadership and management.

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Article
7 min

Does Your Culture Support Or Sabotage Your Strategy?

When a company's culture is not right with what is needed for strategic success, the culture has to be changed as rapidly as can be managed!

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Article
7 min

Be A Successful Sales Manager Not A Super Seller!

How many sales teams suffer because their sales manager is not doing their job at the right "level"? Sales figures suffer, sales people suffer and the sales managers feel pressured and possibly even stressed.

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Article
7 min

Coaching Can Get The Boss In Shape

Who tells the boss that they can improve their management or leadership? How do they look at themselves objectively and identify what areas they can improve and the benefits of doing so?

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Article
4 min

Coaching Or Mentoring - Does It Matter Which?

Some differences and grey areas where Coaching or Mentoring overlap

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Article
10 min

Implementing Change Successfully

A challenge for most managers is to initiate or implement change programmes - and lead people through them, whether in the way they work or what they do. In this, lies one of your major challenges...

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Article
10 min

Encouraging Successful Change

Two key dimensions to successful, and effective, change initiatives

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Article
8 min

Think Before You Speak!

How many times have you said something and realised that the person, or people, on the receiving end have not fully understood what you meant or headed off and done something different to what you intended?

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Article
7 min

Who Do You Talk To?

When you are a leader in a business you face a number of challenges at different levels. Ask yourself how much focus you put on to these...

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Article
6 min

Ask For More - You May Get More!!

If you are involved with sales, how do you feel when you hear phrases such as, "Can you do anything about your price" or, "You'll have to do better than that." and variations on these? Does a cloud or two cross the sun? You start to think, "here we go again..?" yet, have you prepared for this situation?

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Article
15 min

Can Nlp Help Or Harm Your Business?

The simple answer to the above is, "both"! It depends on a number of things. Perhaps the first thing to explore is your reaction to seeing those three letters put together? If someone tells you they are an NLP practitioner do you search for your cross and garlic cloves? Do you welcome them and want to know more?

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Article
9 min

The Cost Of Stress - The Need To Monitor And Manage The Risks!

Not only are there a lot of potential risks arising from the spread of stress within an organisation, it costs a great deal of money!

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Article
17 min

Presentation Paranoia - Prevention And Cure

Have you had this feeling before? Rest assured you are not alone. You might be one of the many who would rate your fear of public speaking alongside or ahead of death! Your fear may translate itself to "FEAR" - Forget Everything And Run!

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