Coming up through Cumbria Business Growth Hub we’ve got the below free training/webinars. 

Cyber Security webinar with David Allen IT and Indelible Data

Date: 20^th April 2023
Time: 10.30am to 11.30am
Venue: Online

Join this focused webinar to find out some simple steps you can take to help protect your business, learn how to minimise the risk of cyber-attacks, keep your business operating and keep data safe. By attending this webinar, you can aim to increase your understanding of cyber security, ask questions and take steps to protect your all-important data.

Tendering and Contracts made easy

Date: 25^th April 2023
Time: 9am to 12.30pm
Venue: Online

This workshop provides a step-by-step guide to help you commence your tendering journey… from navigating tendering portals through to preparing a convincing bid!

This easy-to-follow and interactive takes into consideration the potential varied experience of participants. Attendees do not require any prior knowledge to participate.

• Introduction to Tendering Portals (including GOV.UK, ‘The Chest’, ProActis and more)
• How to Register with a Portal, Profile Creation & Maintenance, Procurement Categories, Geographical Areas and Business Specific Keywords
• Finding Opportunities, Searching Locally & Further Afield, Identifying Additional Markets
• Different Tender Types including Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQ), Single-Action and ‘Open’ tenders (ITT / RFQ), Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS), Frameworks and Imposed Pricing
• Searching the Contracts Register to source prospective Sub-Contract Opportunities
• Overview of Tender Notifications, Expression of Interest and Download of Documents
• Understanding the Client Documents; Specification, Terms & Conditions
• Asking Pre-Tender Questions – why you should ask and when!
• Making a Bid / No Bid Decision!
• Client Questions (product and / or service related; general business related)
• The Standard Selection Questionnaire (SSQ) – contained in all Public Sector Tenders (including Company Details, Exclusions, Finance, Insurance, Technical, Ethics, Social Value and Health and Safety)
• Preparing the Bid (e.g. understanding the format and how to prepare & submit a compliant bid)
• Understanding Scoring Schemes & Weighting
• Deadlines and Extensions
• Finalisation & Uploading / Submittal of the Proposal
• Tender Assessment
• Post-Tender Clarifications
• Asking for Feedback (win OR lose)

Creating a business podcast

Date: 9^th May 2023
Time: 10am to 1pm
Venue: Online

Creating and publishing podcasts is a simple but effective way of engaging with your audiences. But for many, the fear of what to say, how to record and where to put these podcasts stops them in their tracks.

By showing you free or low cost platforms to use, and how to use equipment you may already own, this hands-on workshop, by DigiEnable will help demystify the process, and get you producing your own podcasts in no time.

By the end of this workshop you will know:

• How to plan and prepare an engaging podcast
• How to record your interviews and clips with audio recorders
• Hands on basic audio editing
• Online promotion techniques and platforms to share your podcasts

Utilising social listening and dark social for businesses

Date: 10^th May 2023
Time: 1pm to 4pm
Venue: Online

With 89% of social media messages to brands being ignored, and 30% of posts not directly mentioning brands, businesses need to make sure social listening is an important part of their marketing strategy.

This workshop includes the latest tips and tools for capturing and interpreting sentiment, trends and opportunities, to help you and your clients keep visible and healthy brands.

By the end of this workshop you will know:

• What social listening and dark social is, and how it can be useful for your business
• Which tools will allow you to monitor your online reputation
• How to determine sentiment in the online world
• Tips to ensure your reputation is a positive one

Website conversion optimisation

Date: 17^th May 2023
Time: 10am to 12noon
Venue: Online

MUV will be presenting a session focused on helping businesses improve the conversion rate of their website and maximising their marketing spend.  The 2 hour online and interactive session will focus on how website owners can understand the performance of their website, establish profitable marketing budgets, and continuously work on improvements.

Some of the key topics covered will include;

• Landing page experience
• Presenting your brand
• Maximising on reviews
• Landing page experience
• Measuring performance (Google Analytics)
• Driving improvements and growth

Effective performance management webinar with Michael Bauer of Cumbria Employment Solicitors

Date: 25^th May 2023
Time: 10am to 11am
Venue: Online

Managing poor performance is key to an effective organisation. It sets the tone, pushes productivity and generally keeps standards at the level needed for successful and competitive organisations. However, it is often handled badly, with limited conviction or not at all.

Effective performance management is much easier than you would think and employment law is on your side.

This practical and “can-do” session will give you a grounding in the key issues by covering:

• How employment law gives managers the upper hand when tackling under-performance
• Guidance on carrying out a formal performance review process

In essence, the session will show you how to tackle under-performing staff and generally get the best out of your staff with the minimum of risk, hassle and cost.

To book your place email info@cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk – eligibility criteria does apply.

Through our Business Start-Up Support programme, any new entrepreneur or business under three years of trading can book onto the below free training.

Pricing with confidence

Date: 25^th April 2023
Time: 9.30am to 12.30pm
Venue: Online

If you have ever thought any of the below then this workshop is ideal for you:-

• I really don’t know where to begin with pricing…
• People won’t pay that much for my products or services…
• I don’t know how to handle objections about price…
• I’m not really sure what my costs are associated with my products or services…

Knowing what you are worth along with understanding the value of your products and services and understanding your costs are all vital when it comes to pricing. Getting your pricing wrong can leave you demotivated and “in the red”, get your pricing right and you’re on your way to business success.

This workshop will explore the vital factors of pricing and how to confidently price your products and services.

• Introduction: What is pricing?
• The psychology of pricing
• Customer perception
• Common pricing mistakes that business owners make
• Different pricing strategies
• Pricing a product/service
• Ways to increase existing prices

Product descriptions, positioning and innovation

Date: 28^th April 2023
Time: 9.30am to 12.30pm
Venue: Online

Businesses need to keep undertake continual reviews of their product and service mix.  Looking at the typical car manufacturer they will refresh a car model every 3 years.  It is estimated that the average length span of a business model is 3 years.

Therefore, all businesses need to review:

• Is my product description still creating value for my customer?
• What is my positioning in the market – what new products/services have come onto the market?  Have the needs of my customer changed?
• What do I need to innovate?  This can take place across a number of axis: product, position, process and paradigm

This online workshop will equip you will the information, skills and models for you to critically review your current customer offering, how to review them and developing the action plan for innovation.

The 3-hour interactive workshop is broken down into 45 minutes sessions that explore:

1. Taking stock of our current products or services.
2. Testing the relevance and gap analysis of my product/service range.
3. Identifying my skills and resources needs for innovation.
4. Developing an investment and action plan for innovation.

How to accelerate business growth

Date: 4^th May 2023
Time: 9.30am to 12.30pm
Venue: Online

Growth has to be sustainable.  If it isn’t you run out of money, or you can’t find the skill you need or you fail to manage the supply chain.  Any business with an ambition for growth has to consider and plan for these BEFORE growth happens.  They need to have an action plan for growth.

This online 3-hour workshop will explore each of the critical issues that a business needs to consider to facilitate and enable growth:

1. Defining your growth ambitions.
2. Reviewing your business model for scalability.
3. Knowing and developing your culture.
4. Developing for operations manual to create your organisational DNA.
5. Financing your growth.

Time saving social media techniques

Date: 10^th May 2023
Time: 10am to 1pm
Venue: Online

Social media eats time. The average small business could be spending up to 60 hours a month on creating social media content, finding pictures, creating graphics, writing captions, and engaging with followers.

This workshop will show you some nifty planning and organising techniques that will cut the amount of time you spend on social media in half.

• 4 x organising and planning techniques that will save you tons of time.
• How to recycle and repurpose your content so you’re not continually trying to reinvent the wheel.
• information about the latest tools and apps that make your life easier.

To book your place email lesleyr@cumbriachamber.co.uk  or call 0844 257 84 50.

The Department for Business and Trade has a great range of foundation modules, intensive series, masterclasses, sector, and market specific events coming up in April.

1. How to sell your services overseas (part 1) – 21^st April – 10am to 11am
2. How to sell your services overseas (part 2) – 24^th April – 2pm to 3pm
3. An introduction to exporting (part 1) – 26^th April – 10.30am to 1pm
4. Getting your exports from A to B (part 2) – 28^th April – 10.30am to 1pm
5. Go global with Amazon: how to sell across borders and on Pan EU – 20^th April – 10am to 11am
6. Scale your brand and advertise across borders with Google – 25^th April – 2pm to 3pm
7. Introduction to free trade agreements – 27^th April – 10am to 11am
8. Food & drink – how to move your food & drink products overseas – 27^th April – 11am to 12noon

Companies need to register and to create their personalised account here: https://www.events.great.gov.uk/website/6264/ and then pick and choose preferred events.

If you’re planning an event for Great Big Green Week (10^th to 18^th June), Cumbria Action for Sustainability can support you in the planning process, help you engage with your community and find funding.

Join them for a free webinar to find out more on Thursday 27^th April from 7pm to 8.30pm – for more details and to book click here

Sustainable Skies – ADS Meet the Buyer Event – 17-18 April

This is a “Meet the Buyer” event organised by ADS as part of Sustainable Skies 2023. This builds upon the success of the Meet the Buyer event held in November 2022 at Advanced Engineering, with over 130 supplier meetings held. The event is aimed at helping buyers/OEMs meet UK suppliers that could deliver innovative, sustainable and world leading capabilities and technologies. The ADS event at Sustainable Skies shall focus primarily upon fuel cells, and Hydrogen & electrical propulsion.

JOSCAR Live! – 29 June @ Farnborough

This is a new event aimed at Supplier members of either JOSCAR or the Hellios SME Portal (members have been contacted with an invite to register to attend the event). This is another event aimed at encouraging networking and engagement between JOSCAR Suppliers and Primes. There are a number of themed keynotes and discussion sessions as well as a specific SME showcase event, focused around innovation.