Upskilling RS Sailing’s marketing staff with training

Hunmoco is a business consultancy that specialises in management training, process mapping workshops and teambuilding activities. Hunmoco prides itself on getting to know the companies it works with well so it can help them be better.

The owner of Hunmoco, Mark Jarvis, was recently tasked with coaching and developing the team at RS Sailing, a sailboat design and manufacturing firm. The joint MDs of RS Sailing used the quieter trading period of the first COVID-19 lockdown to invest in their staff.

Most of the relatively young team at RS Sailing had worked for the company for several years, but the speed of their advancement had made it tricky to train them. Mark was given the opportunity to upskill RS Sailing’s staff across the business, from the C-suite down.

Taking a tailored approach

Having worked with Padua Communications in the past, Mark asked its Managing Director Nicky Rudd to devise and deliver the content to train the marketing and sales manager at RS Sailing, Lynn Billowes. After receiving a brief from Mark, Nicky devised three, hour-long sessions focussing on the main pain points for the trainee (communications, collaboration and strategy), delivering the one-to-one training over Zoom.

“I look for two things in a collaboration like this – a happy client and only a small amount of work from me” says Mark Jarvis. “Both of those have been exceeded. The client is delighted – in fact, one of the MDs rang me to comment on how good the marketing plan was that Lynn had put together for 2021.

“I wanted to get the most out of the opportunity that RS Sailing gave me to improve my skills,” adds Lynn Billowes. “Sailing is a very specialised industry, but Nicky understood it straight away, with an immediate grasp of our customers and the characters in the office. Each session was tailored to my needs, and we focussed on specific challenges I was having at work.

“Nicky helped me with the strategic side of my job and gave me some tools to help me manage my team. I have used a lot from the sessions, and it helped that Nicky was able to give me a useful perspective on working in a mostly male environment. I would definitely recommend this to others.”

Highly recommended

Back to Mark for his thoughts: “From my perspective, it was very light touch. I didn’t need to micromanage – I just sketched out what I needed, and Nicky ran with it. The element of trust is very important here. The client would not have been as prepared to open up as she did if she did not trust Nicky up front. And I certainly would not have asked Nicky to do the training if I didn’t trust her.

“I would definitely use Padua Communications in the future, both for PR and communications work as well as this sort of training. I always enjoy working with them. It has never been hard work and always been an enjoyable experience.

“I have used the Padua Communications team wherever I have been and recommend them to others, who have always been positive about their experiences with Padua Communications too. It’s nice when you trust someone, you recommend them, and that person goes on to trust them as well.”

If you want to talk to us about how we can help to upskill your staff, give us a call on 0203 282 7570, or email [email protected]