Facilitation and design of a brand new Business Development Programme for an international Business Development Team at Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL) to change their team’s mind set and behaviours from tactical sales to strategic account management.
The brief / challenge
To develop a tailored business development programme that would equip the Business Development Team with the skills, attitude and behaviours to develop viable account strategies and successfully manage accounts as opposed to short term tactical sales. The programme also had to meet the needs of a range of job roles across geographies and time zones (stretching from UK to Ghana and Singapore).
The solution
We developed a six month-long blended learning programme, involving a combination of face-to-face workshops, webinars, e-learning modules, coaching, group work in learning sets and individual work, to ensure face-to-face time was optimised and to allow the team members to practise new skills and experiment with new behaviours in a safe environment
The programme sought to address the diverse needs of the group, which comprised managers and executives alike, whilst remaining aligned to key business objectives. It focused on two main areas:
- Sales: concentrated on skills development, such as negotiation, stakeholder mapping and the RIGHT sales model.
- Account management: concentrated on defining the account management process within the organisation and clarifying the role of the Account Manager, identifying accounts, and planning account strategies for the short and long term.
The results
Participants were able to implement newly-acquired techniques as soon as they finished the first module. For instance, using knowledge of personality styles to develop their internal network; planning client sales meetings and negotiations in more detail using the Negotiation Planner and listening more carefully to clients in order to address their needs more accurately using the RIGHT model.
- Sustained learning within the Business Development Team means that there has been a noticeable positive change in attitude, skills, and behaviour
- The team is now ready to contribute further to the development and implementation of OSRL’s account management process, whilst continuing to draw on their newly-acquired sales skills.
