Bernie Jones

Managing director

Impact Corporate Training

What are your areas of coaching and why did you choose this specialty?

Improving business interaction skills – influencing, selling, customer service, managerial skills, teamwork, work-life balance. It’s a fascinating field. We are constantly selling, designing, implementing and evaluating our services, and learn from our successes and disappointments. We draw upon this experience to enable us to better coach our clients in these areas – it’s the ultimate experiential learning activity.

What makes your training unique?

We go to great lengths to learn about our clients’ business and their challenges. We design learning activities that replicate and simulate interactions that are typical of their business environment. Delegates receive quantified feedback about their current level of skills and the impact that their behaviour has on others. This information creates the hunger to learn, the motivation to change. We then present the delegates with the tools they can choose from to help them improve their performance.

How much does a session cost?

Our professional fee is S$6,000 per day.

How will your training benefit your participants?

The delegates leave the training with tools and skills to apply to specific work situations. For example, a sales person attending a selling skills program may realise that the reason she was having difficulty in closing the deal was because her informal sociable style worked in stark contrast to her client’s more reserved, analytical behaviour. This difference in style is impacting the client’s willingness to trust the sales person. From the training she now realises she needs to moderate this strength and focus more on the business details, presenting facts in a structured fashion, rather than relying on social skills to move the deal along.

What companies have you worked with?

Financial institutions and multinational corporations in Australia, across Asia, India, the Middle East, South Africa, Europe and the US.

How long have you been a trainer for?

16 years.

What was your profession before you started as a trainer?

I started work as a trainer with the Australian Taxation Office, and then moved into a senior training role with Chase AMP Bank in Sydney. From there I went into corporate banking sales, a role that brought me to Singapore. After 12 years in sales I decided to move out of banking and back into training, and start my own company.

What made you decide to be a trainer?

A friend of mine conducted the orientation training that I attended in the tax office. I realised that his was a great job for meeting people and learning a lot of business skills.

What school did you graduate from?

I went to Canberra University and did two degrees – one in Business Administration and the other in Adult Education.

How can people contact you?

berniejones@impactcorporatetraining.com, telephone 68231264, mobile 9754 9451