teach us to do it ourselves …

Was the request from the customer, a travel company specialising in servicing charity organisations.

They needed to develop their in-house sales capability, with limited budget available and an ongoing need - as new people joined the organisation would also need equipping with the sales skills.

They had two challenges:

1) the target audience, their existing customer service team, were resistant to the idea of ‘selling’

2) their in-house trainers were technical trainers with no experience whatsoever of behavioural skills training, and no credibility as sales trainers!   

It’s not uncommon for customer service specialists to be reluctant and apprehensive about selling, to any level within their role. Sam has extensive experience of dealing with this challenge and such a key mind-set shift (which started with her own reaction back in the very late 90s!).

With such a psychological barrier to handle, Sam focused on this to get the design right for this customer, changing mind-set being as important as developing the skills. Not forgetting with the added (no mean feat) challenge using their in-house techy trainers - wowsers!

As the organisation wanted their own trainers to be up-skilled to deliver this programme, Sam had to carefully craft a train-the-trainer process to prepare them for the very different delivery of behavioural change training.

The end game was a bespoke one-day ‘Sales through Service’ event with a heavy emphasis on a customer service excellence driven approach to selling. 

However the key to the success of this project was the time spent with the trainers, specifically helping them understand how delivering behavioural training was going to differ from delivering technical training. The trainers were taught the psychology of change and the implications for training of this type, so that they could manage their audience skilfully. They were fully
informed about the event design and delivery principles, and the techniques needed for its skilful execution. They were even made ready for the likely challenge and push-back they would no doubt get from their audience, so they could stay one step ahead.

Their training included emotional intelligence combined with strong persuasion skills to manage their audience.

To support the trainers as they embarked on the rollout themselves, we provided them with a ‘guide on the side’ in the form of our expert, to coach and support them as they found their footing, developing and embedding their new knowledge and skills.