Commercial Awareness for Managers

The term “Commercial Awareness” can sometimes be used as a substitute for business knowledge. In today’s economic climate you need to be more aware of the key business drivers at play, budgets, how companies make money and decisions and the like.

In this textbook you’ll receive a thorough grounding and understanding on how your actions impact your organization’s financial standing, ability to compete and ability to perform in the marketplace.

Sean McPheat, the Founder and Managing Director of management development specialists, MTD Training is the author of this publication. Sean has been featured on CNN, BBC, ITV, on numerous radio stations and has contributed to many newspapers. He’s been featured in over 250 different publications as a thought leader within the management development and training industry.

MTD has been working with a wide variety of clients (both large and small) in the UK and internationally for several years.

MTD specialise in providing:

- In-house, tailor made management training courses (1–5 days duration)

- Open courses (Delivered throughout the UK at various locations)

- Management & leadership development programmes (From 5 days to 2 years)

- Corporate and executive coaching (With senior or middle managers)

MTD provide a wide range of management training courses and programmes that enable new and experienced managers to maximise their potential by gaining or refining their management and leadership skills.

Our team of highly skilled and experienced trainers and consultants have all had distinguished careers in senior management roles and bring with them a wealth of practical experience to each course. At MTD Training we will design and deliver a solution that suits your specific needs addressing the issues and requirements from your training brief that best fits your culture, learning style and ways of working.

Our programmes are delivered when and where you need them! We believe that training should be fun, highly interactive and provide “real world” practical techniques and methods that you can use back in the office – and that’s exactly what we provide.

1. Introduction to Commercial Awareness
   1. What is Commercial Awareness?
   2. The People That You Serve
   3. The competition
   4. The Bottom Line
   5. How This Ebook Will Help
2. Understanding Your Customers
   1. Introduction
   2. Determining Your Target Market
   3. Researching Your Market
3. Understanding Your Competition
   1. Introduction
   2. Who Are Your Competitors?
   3. What to Learn about Your Competition
   4. Rating Your Company against the Competition
4. Commercially Aware Operations
   1. Introduction
   2. Defining Your Reasons
   3. Background
   4. Objectives
   5. Scope of Operations
   6. Operational Constraints
   7. Understanding Risk
5. Basic Finance Principles in Business
   1. Introduction
   2. Basic Finance Definitions and the Balance Sheet
   3. The Investment Principle
   4. The Financing Principle
   5. The Dividend Principle
6. Basics on Budgeting
   1. Introduction
   2. Approaches to Budgeting
7. Pricing and Commercial Awareness
   1. Introduction
   2. How Important is Price?
   3. Demand for the Product or Service
   4. Your Environment
   5. Pricing Strategies
8. References