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Sales Training Case Study 2

This client is one of the world's most advanced and fastest-growing mobile communications companies and is the UK 's number one operator in terms of active customer numbers with over 12 million customers in the UK and over 30 million customers worldwide.

Training Project

Maguire were asked to give consideration to how they would approach the development of Advanced Negotiation Skills for the corporate sales team, charged with handling the largest value corporate contracts and winning new business at this level. Historically, the client has pursued a strategy of growth by developing market share through heavy discounting. However, having established market share the client will now deliver shareholder value through profit and so the sales team are now pursuing revenue at sustainable margins and the need to sell value, service quality, account Management Training and additional services as their USP's and not price.

Adding to the strategic challenge presented, the corporate sales team deal more regularly with procurement executives or professional buyers, whose very reason for being is to gain improved supplier relationships, measured on the whole by 'price'. The challenge for Maguire is to help the corporate sales team to change the prevailing culture of discounting and pursuing volume sales in a market that is now demanding sustainable margins and has seen the advent of ever more demanding professional buying practises.

Training Solution & Result

Maguire developed a bespoke programme based on historical examples of negotiations in which the client perceives they could have reached very different agreements with the right skills. As such the programme focused on sophisticated and high-pressure negotiation scenarios typical of this level in order to recreate the real environment in which the client operates. Following delivery to several groups, detailed evaluation revealed a 42% improvement in the delegate's ability to counter buying tactics and a 43% improvement in the preparations for any given negotiation. Overall 96% of delegates selected for the programme said the course met their needs either exactly or very closely, showing the value of developing a bespoke solution.