I N T E R N A T I O N A L B A N K G L O B A L E N G I N E E R I N G G I A N T F T S E 100 S O F T W A R E C O M P A N Y

(1)

S

OME BRIEF

C

ASE

S

TUDIES TO

ILLUSTRATE

WHAT

T

AO

L

EADERSHIP

CAN DO FOR YOU

An opportunity for you

S

ALES

&

N

EGOTIATION

C

A S E

S

T U D Y

# 1 :

I

N T E R N A T I O N A L

B

A N K

C

A S E

S

T U D Y

# 2 :

G

L O B A L

E

N G I N E E R I N G

G

I A N T

C

A S E

S

T U D Y

# 3 :

F T S E

1 0 0

S

O F T W A R E C O M P A N Y

C

A S E

S

T U D Y

# 4 :

O

N

-

G O I N G

P

R O J E C T

:

B

I G

S

I X

(2)

SALES &NEGOTIATION:BRIEF CASE STUDIES

©TAO LEADERSHIP 2014

S

A L E S

&

N

E G O T I A T I O N

T

R A I N I N G

INTRODUCTION TO TAO LEADERSHIP

Tao Leadership is a brand new company formed from the merger of two

well-established training & consulting companies, both with reputations for top quality, high impact & a great return-on-investment. The founders, Haider Imam & Justin Collinge, are both leaders in their fields & Tao combines their strengths into a fresh, innovative & results-focussed business with a team of world class trainers & coaches.

HAIDER, author of ‘Straight to YES: Asking with confidence & Getting what you

want,’ in a gently challenging yet playful way short-circuits traditional approaches for developing magnetism, confidence & influence – & gets real results for clients, rapidly. In the last few years, clients have documented more than 50 millions of euros worth of return on investment that they attribute directly to his collaborations. He is a former ‘British Sales Trainer of the Year’ & his recent partnerships have been with Pentland Brands, Allied Irish Bank, Merlin Entertainments, EDF Energy & Hastings Direct Insurance.

JUSTIN, author of ‘Knowing you, knowing them: Understanding & motivating at

work’, is an authority on outstanding communication & what gets in the way of it. He possesses an unrivalled ability to zone in on the defining patterns of thinking, feeling & communicating that hold groups & individuals back. He most recently has partnered with Argos, Ann Summers, Kantar, Harrods, London City Airport & John Lewis. At Tao Leadership we have offered a wide range of

companies a wide range of Sales & Negotiation training. Rather than an off-the-shelf product which is designed to cover all bases our work is always designed to suit the client and the

specific client needs. For example, our work creating a Sales Academy with an international energy company required a very different approach & style to our work with a UK vineyard. This flexibility combined with the variety of experience & expertise allows us to create a culture-shifting programme which delivers results beyond the grasp

(3)

CASE STUDY #1: INTERNATIONAL BANK

Amid the toughening climate faced by the parent bank, the bank’s retail arm wanted to increase sales through its most sophisticated relationship managers to its contact centre to its tellers in branch, with huge variation in confidence, knowledge, experience & skill.

Our task was to train three hundred people across the GB territories to understand the psychology of sales & its practical applications, in a way that was ethical, rapportful & accessible to both new & experienced staff.

We created a half-day sales workshop, which we ran with two facilitators & groups of 40 people, to create energy & momentum. We also used the regional coaches to help facilitate, who we had trained up with coaching skills & more in-depth content. We recorded the early sessions with a professional TV crew & created DVDs of the core content for each branch, so they could use it in meetings, training session & show to people who couldn’t make the sessions.

It was very successful:



Collectively, over £1.5 Million additional return reported at just 1-2 weeks after

training only the first 50 ‘pilot’ people… (after that they stopped measuring)



Common increases of 200% - 500% in appointment generation



Widespread anecdotal increases in confidence & appetite to engage in selling activities; including those being asked to ‘sell’ for the first time

One year after, when the parent bank had to be nationalised to avoid economic collapse, the retail brand was the only profitable & growing part of the business, based on extraordinary sales results. Unlike the rest of the bank, the retail arm is being considered for sale to private investors.

£1½ Million additional return reported at just 1-2 weeks after

(4)

CASE STUDY #2: GLOBAL ENGINEERING GIANT

During their ‘year of people,’ the power conversion & engineering arm of an

engineering giant contracted us to provide a 10-day sales & negotiation programme for their international sales engineers. They’d enjoyed high business growth but a

proportion of their sales engineers had not learned the skills to maximize impact with customers.

Transaction value ranged from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions; sales cycles could last several years at times, involving lobbying, presenting, prospecting, negotiating & account management.

In a bid for a ‘World-Class’ fleet of professional salespeople, we equipped their engineers with confidence & a standardised approach to sell & broker the best deals possible across cultures. The programme was split over 2 x 5-day residential events, highly experiential, with coaching & activities in the evening. The fully-aligned core modules were:



VALUE-ADDED SELLING:concentrating on differentiating themselves from the

competition on aspects other than price. Focussing on pre-empting RFPs by

identifying prospects early, adding value & acting as consultant, thus helping shape an RFP that excludes the competition



PRESENTATION SKILLS: learning the latest in structure, persuasiveness, credibility &

charisma to deliver engaging presentations where PowerPoint is not the focus, rather they are



NEGOTIATING: using case-studies & role-plays to look at how

to engage with multiple stakeholders, build a negotiating team, negotiate internally & look past win-win to create higher value deals for both parties



CROSS-CULTURAL INFLUENCING: appreciating & utilising the

various dimensions of cultural behaviour, especially with respect to decision-making



PERSONAL POWER:evolving confidence, emotional

intelligence & ambition while being able to connect & influence a wide range of personalities in a wide range of business contexts

(5)

As well being an extraordinarily well-received programme, the clients’ HR team calculated a return of €24 million whilst the programme was still running - annoyingly, they stopped measuring after that, since were satisfied with such an outrageous

ROI...Delegates attributed these returns directly to their learning & experience. Below are the overall evaluation scores from the programme along with some delegate comments.

COMMENTS FROM INTERNATIONAL DELEGATES:

First I am confident with everything, especially speaking in front of customers. Second, I now have skill on presentation

INSPIRED!

Amazing, I have learnt more in a day than in my entire life!

(6)

CASE STUDY #3 FTSE 100 SOFTWARE COMPANY

The inbound sales team of this company carried the lion’s share of the direct sales target, meaning that if it missed, the entire department missed. Due to channel restructuring, online options & low morale, the inbound function's performance had been declining dangerously for three consecutive years, blocking an upcoming

divisional sales strategy that relied heavily on inbound consistently hitting the numbers. Our task was to reverse the trend, reinvigorate a deeply disengaged & low-skilled inbound telephone sales operation & thus enable the strategy.

After a month of diagnostics, measures analytics & talking to key stakeholders, including the team, we set off on an ambitious journey to ‘do it with & through’ the people at the front line, rather than ‘do it to them.’

We facilitated sessions where the team became mystery shoppers, calling up the inbound sales functions of well-known companies, then reassembling to create a list of what they loved & hated from a sales & service perspective, how they thought these big name brands could improve & what their personal experience of shopping with them was. They evolved this into a team standards charter that everyone voluntarily signed up to. Then, we engaged them in rewriting their call structure & core competencies from scratch, reflecting these new standards for each part of the call. Senior stakeholders were involved as sign-off, pushing back on anything that missed operational & strategic requirements. This part of the project also involved agreeing on how they would work together as a sales team.

When this was finished, we identified where the skills gaps were to being this to life & started training & coaching for a period of three

months, using short 30-90 minute sessions to ensure phone coverage, with peer-coaching & peer-call review. We then built an interactive version of the call

structure, featuring ‘click to hear’ examples of perfect execution of each competency for off-line reference & training.

Throughout this process, we consulted with senior stakeholders to ensure they were informed & on-board.

Within a year, the team was producing an extra

£1,000,000 in revenue (a +12%

uplift) & had reversed the decline.

(7)

We coached the sales manager to upskill his levels of emotional intelligence & ability to influence his team, as well as working with ambassadors with the team to become skilled in various aspects of team functioning.

Within a year, the team was producing an extra £1,000,000 in revenue (a +12% uplift) & had reversed the decline. The team was highly-motivated, high-performing & had a buzz about them. The new sales strategy could now go ahead, a year earlier than expected. What’s more, they now had a queue from the rest of the department to join the team - no longer were they seen as the place where those who couldn’t succeed ended up. They had pride, passion & purpose...and profit.

CASE STUDY #4 ONGOING PROJECT - BIG SIX POWER

COMPANY

After having their knuckles rapped in the press & by Ofgem, we were engaged by a leading ‘big six’ power company with an ambition to rebrand its 300-people strong sales & service functions in the eyes of their customers as well as the regulator. Their goal was to build a National Sales Academy that would have customers love them, drive sales performance & foster ownership of personal & professional development in their sales force, thus reversing high attrition & keeping their top performers motivated & engaged. With them, we created an academy framework that:



Mapped out a new culture & future



Reviewed & redefined measurements & KPIs, attitudes & behaviour.



Redefined the call quality framework & rebuilt an approach to measuring quality



Provided a 3-level development & progression framework for salespeople, coaches & managers



Provided cutting-edge sales, coaching & leadership training including eLearning modules



Reviewed sales induction & upskilled the in-house trainers to be able to support the academy going forward



Provided official ILM certification for all courses & graduates

(8)

We’re still in the middle of this project, so too early to share measurements. Anecdotally, we’re being told that the training is “the best training...ever” by all stakeholder levels & that the management & leadership training (which comes first) is having tangible returns throughout the national business.

IN SUMMARY:

Sales & Negotiation training is something that provides a clear, easily measured & quick return on investment. As such we are open to performance related remuneration, sharing both the risk & the increase in profits.

We would love the opportunity to pop in & chat with you about what a partnership with Tao Leadership would look like & share some of the experiences, challenges &

successes other organisations have faced when setting out to raise their game.

Inspired!

Merlin Entertainments Manager April 2013