Selling Wine

This delicatessen project was quite a success, especially within Proudfoot, as we have completely rewritten and remodelled that selling skills manual they had. There was a very small project at the time, it was a vineyard in Germany, that also needed selling skills.

I was assigned to that project for a few weeks and implemented a similar programme there. This project was a very strange project, as it was more like a private coaching project for the son and heir of the vineyard rather than getting some selling skills across and the project manager was not overly happy about it.

I think the son was extremely strange and what he really needed was professional care rather than management coaching. Oh well, not for me to judge. I did my thing and on one day I got a call to move over to my biggest challenge so far - a company called Otto Bock.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (6)

And then, finally, after the management system was ready to go and the managers trained and trainers and coaches we needed to tour the country (all 4 sales regions) and train, train, train...

And I must say, the area sales managers did all an extremely good job. I was rather impressed.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (5)

So, using skills methodology we would not train the sales representatives ourselves, but we left that for the area managers to do. We trained those area managers though in how to train their employees.

So, staying within the methodology, the TTTs were for us to train the area managers as trainers (Train the Trainer), whereas the area managers trained their staff in TTE sessions (Train the Employee).

After the training we designed coaching sessions where the area sales managers were tasked to go randomly on tour with their staff and give coaching. TTCs were the Train the Coaches sessions in which we trained the area managers in how to coach, and in CTCs we coached them in their coaching effort. This system was waterproof.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (4)

Proudfoot had a standardised training programme for selling skills of which I got the manual. We had to adapt it to the client’s needs and that took us ages. We realised that the Proudfoot manual was far too elaborate for the client. So we did lots of work to tweak it and transform it into a “tailor-made” one. Well, no need to reinvent the wheel, but here we really had to sort of reinvent it.

I must say, our training programme which we finally got together was absolutely fabulous and extremely specific to the client’s needs. The role plays were all about selling salad, the language was adapted to their business, and everything was salad!

This was a very skills project. And please refer to an earlier entry where I explained skills programmes. I implemented exactly one of those. We had TTTs, TTEs, TTCs and CTCs. Anyway, something like that anyway. ;-)

Selling Furniture

The other skills area which is interesting is sales enhancement. Basically this means up-selling and more-selling by giving training to the sales force. This sales force can be either in a shop or they can travel from client to client. This does not matter, as the skills-set is always the same.

One needs to train them the "5 steps of selling", how to ask what kind of questions, closing techniques, preparation and "post"paration systems (post-paration as "what to do after a sales call?"), etc. Even though everybody talks about relationship-based selling these days, which is different to the usual selling skills, but on that commodity goods level, the usual skills-set is more than fine and appropriate. I will go into more detail when I am talking about my first project as project manager where I managed a sales programme.

So, my next project was back to the old one, the furniture retailer with 50 shops around Germany. We developed a selling skills model for them, trained it, and followed up on the newly learned techniques with coaching, mystery shoppers, audits, etc.

The project closed prematurely. The weekly invoice was too high to bear for the client. I think they tried to do it themselves with the task forces we trained. A few months later after the project has been stopped the company went bust and into administration. It does not exist anymore.

For me it was a good project as I learned everything about selling.

Skills Training

Before I describe the next project I ought to explain the other package, which I mentioned already, and which can be sold to clients, too - skills training.

As opposed to management training, which is for all management (as the name indicates), skills training is for operators and in general all concerned work force that does not manage.

Skills training has 2 main areas where it can be applied: either it is sales training, where sales staff is trained how to sell (more detail in a later entry), or it is some sort of throughput optimisation training, where operators are trained to improve the "yield" rate (explanation in the next blog entry).

Skills programmes can have the following features:
- A mascot can be created for the training programme and material. It makes it easier for employees to recognise the theme and remind them of the newly trained skills,
- Employees are not trained by consultants but by their own line management.
- In TTT seminars (Train-the-trainer) line management is being trained what and how to train the employees, coaching skills are also trained, as line management will act as coach afterwards,
- In TTE seminars (Train-the-employee) employees are being trained by line management,
- In CTC sessions (Coach-the-coach) feedback is being given to line management about their training and coaching sessions in which a consultant should be present (at least initially),
- In CTE sessions (Coach-the-employee) employees are coached by their line managers,
- Using the mascot, special training material must be developed by the consultancy company.