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The Pitch Doctor featured on Tweak Your Biz.com

Paul's interview with Lorna Sixsmith is featured on the Tweak Your Biz.com blog:

http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2012/05/16/the-pitching-bible-paul-boross-on-pitching-successfully/

Revelation Authors Release 2011 Survey Results

Ask most people in businesses today if they think that manipulation and office politics affect their working lives and they’ll say yes.

But ask them to quantify the impact on the business and that’s a much more difficult question to answer.

In 2011, Revelation Consulting Ltd set out to answer that question, and we are now running an annual surveywhich has turned in its first set of results.

It perhaps won’t surprise you to learn that 95% of respondents agreed that politics, manipulation and hidden agendas in the workplace had affected them directly and personally. But the cases that get bad enough to hit the headlines really are the tip of the iceberg.

The victims of bullying and manipulation mostly won’t speak out, so we have attempted to quantify the affects of corporate politics through three of their symptoms; under-performance, absenteeism and staff turnover.

1. Staff turnover

Some 70% of respondents said that they had left a job directly as a result of corporate politics, with around three quarters of those saying that their leaving salary was anything between £20,000 and £50,000 and more than 10% of them saying that they left a job paying over £70,000 per year.

The average salary, taken across all respondents affected in this way was £40,000. (Click here to view the pie chart in a new window.)

2. Absenteeism

The average number of days that the respondents missed work during one year due to bullying and manipulation was exactly in line with the figure of 4.5 days per year published recently by the Office of National Statistics, perhaps hinting that coughs, colds and bad backs aren’t the real reason that many people stay at home for the day.

However, it’s no wonder that the problem is under-reported: 85% of respondents said that managers actively covered up the situation. In our 2012 survey, we’ll be digging deeper into this, asking why individuals don’t speak up when they suffer from the effects of workplace politics.

3. Underperformance

This is another key area where business costs can spiral out of control, with more than half of respondents saying that either their manager or multiple managers openly knew about underperformance and failed to tackle it.

The impact on team effectiveness was estimated by respondents as a percentage of their team’s maximum potential performance, and is shown in the next chart: (Click here to view the bar chart in a new window).

Whilst the data used in this chart is necessarily subjective, it gives an indication that the individual respondents knew that their team’s performance was suffering from corporate politics, and therefore we can determine that business performance and shareholder value are impacted as a result.

One aspect of corporate politics that many people are familiar with is the activity of ‘empire building’, where a person builds a political empire by promoting allies and sidelining ‘enemies’. This practice was seen firsthand by 82% of our respondents and the promotions resulted in individuals being paid on average £50,000 and with responsibility for 14 staff.

Of the respondents who had observed this taking place, roughly half said that more suitable candidates were turned down, with the other half noting that the position was never advertised. Of the respondents who said that a better candidate was turned down, half said that that candidate then either moved out of the business unit or left the business altogether.

The cost of the problem exists on many levels. A potentially good employee was lost, a replacement had to be hired with the associated recruitment costs and a potentially ineffective manager now has a significant influence over many other staff.

Manipulation at work is never isolated; its effects grow and multiply over time, affecting more staff and increasing the cost to the business with every day that it isn’t tackled.

Separating perception from reality

As a final comment, we should point out that we have made an attempt to place some quantifiable measures on what is inherently a very subjective experience. One respondent asked how it would be possible to separate individual perceptions from any objective reality, and the truth is that this is very difficult.

Manipulative people will very often play the victim, making them hard to spot by anyone who is taken in by their tales of woe. When challenged, the manipulator will have a ready excuse; it was someone else’s fault, they were just trying to be helpful or it’s them that is the real victim in all of this.

And when they run out of excuses, their next line of defence is to run for the door, sometimes in floods of tears, or to counter-attack with a torrent of abuse and ridicule. These are all diversionary tactics, and the acid test must always be, “why would someone do that if they had nothing to hide?”

If you would like to complete the 2012 survey, please feel free to do so here.

The Pitch Doctor Launches His New Book - The Pocket Pitching Bible

Hot on the heels of his first Amazon number one ranking book, The Pitching Bible, The Pitch Doctor aka Paul Boross has released a unique companion guide.

Pitching is becoming more and more well known and widely accepted as a vital way of securing new business, and even in ensuring success in job interviews. TV series such as The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den have made pitching part of our everyday language, and everyone from graduates to seasoned entrepreneurs can benefit from improving their skills and winning more pitches.

Boross’ original book, The Pitching Bible, is a well regarded and comprehensive work, but it’s not so easy to dip into when you just need a quick reminder before you walk into a meeting with an investor. With critical acclaim from experts such as Tom Ziglar, son of the great Zig Ziglar, and Gavin Duffy, star of the Irish Dragon’s Den, The Pitching Bible was a big hit with sales and media professionals all over the world.

The Pocket Pitching Bible is a streamlined version of the original with all of the exercises, check lists and reminders plus all new content and a valuable new diagnostic section that helps you get to what you uniquely need to create the perfect pitch.

The Pocket Pitching Bible is available now from all good book stores, priced at £7.99.

The Pocket Pitching Bible

CGW Publishing

ISBN 978-1-9082931-2-1

The Pocket Pitching Bible released on Monday

Paul Boross' new book, The Pocket Pitching Bible, will be released on Monday.

It's the companion guide to The Pitching Bible which has hovered around the number one slot on Amazon in its category and is a handy pocket sized guide to delivering perfect pitches that you can carry with you everywhere you go.

Michael Heath's new book to feature a foreword by Professor David Clutterbuck

Professor David Clutterbuck, one of the best known figures in the world of coaching and mentoring, has written a foreword to Michael Heath's new book, 'The Fit Mentor'.

Professor Clutterbuck says, "Mentoring delivers consistently high returns on investment. I welcome this book as a valuable contribution to this consolidation of good practice."

We're working hard to get Michael's book into print as soon as possible, and it should be available in the next couple of weeks. Michael is one of the co-authors of the Dragon's Den book, 'Grow Your Business', so we're very pleased to have him on board.

The ISBN number is 978-1-9082931-5-2 and you can place advance orders on Amazon

Trudie and Lloyd Thompson interviewed by Fern Britton on Channel 5

Watch it here at C5's 'Demand 5' service:

http://www.channel5.com/shows/live-with/episodes/monday-30-april-5

"Trudie and Lloyd Thompson spent more than £30,000 on fertility treatment and faced bankruptcy after having 130 embryos implanted. Their son Jaja, now 13, was born after 12 agonising years and they’ve now written a book charting their heartbreaking journey with a miracle ending."