(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Reimagining Sales

How To Grow In a Context of Lasting Crises?

Reimagining sales is a program that answers the strategic question many leaders ask themselves: Have an organization and sales teams that adapt and change as quickly as the market requires.

By 2030, 99% of companies face two significant challenges:

• They operate in mature or declining markets. Core target customers are decreasing; new targets have different expectations and purchasing habits.

• They are in the context of lasting crises. Wars, climate change, health, or economic crises, one crisis replaces another. Change is permanent and becomes the norm.

Companies are realigning themselves and defining new strategies to maintain or recover growth: Acquiring new business, diversification, penetrating new markets, and improving the customer experience. Whatever the chosen method, the most essential part of their implementation involves sales transformation.

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Until recently, companies took little interest in their commercial organization as long as turnover grew. Investments were reserved primarily for technology and innovation, sustainability, digital transformation, and the supply chain. When a change in strategy becomes vital for a company, it is not uncommon to make the following assessment at the sales force level:

• Sales managers have become “jack-of-all-trades managers”. They are overwhelmed and spend little time meeting with their customers and salespeople.

• Salespeople have often worked in the same sector and with the same clients for many years. They know their products and customers well but have strong habits. They do not see the need to change and often need help developing an agile and aggressive commercial attitude. They are often distraught when the company asks them to conquer new markets or sell products utterly different from those they were selling.

• The company did its digital transformation without modernizing and updating sales methods and processes. Salespeople apply simplistic argumentation and negotiation techniques inherited from the industrial era. They need to be more suitable for the digital era with a customer who carries out 70% of their purchasing journey alone and only requires the salesperson for the closing.

• The more sales fall, the more indicators we put in place to measure commercial performance. Reporting becomes a full-time activity. Salespeople must collect much data that only some know how to interpret.

• Business productivity is not considered an essential element of growth. Salespeople’s tasks and productivity are not tracked. Salespeople invest much time in activities not directly related to sales that are the responsibility of other departments.

• The remuneration systems are the same as elsewhere and do not interest ambitious candidates with exceptional qualities.
• Sales coaching is not regular or non-existent. The company has yet to understand that managing a sales force is like preparing athletes to win matches or competitions. No training, no results.

• Finally, implementing the new strategy is often limited to creating one-shot sales training lasting 2 to 3 days without upstream pre-training action and post-training follow-up with downstream coaching.

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Industrialize and Personalize a Permanent Sales Transformation Process to Strengthen the Company’s Market Competitiveness.

Assessment of your commercial agility

The starting point of this 12-month program will be to help you complete an assessment of your organization and sales team. You can measure the turnover or margin you lose daily due to a sales organization that needs to be faster to integrate the changes that are a matter of survival.

There are four types of organization in Sales Reengineering, which are the result of two dimensions:

The first dimension is process orientation. It is the ability to define and implement processes that save time, automate, and simplify commercial tasks with low added value or apply best practices that enable more sales.

The second dimension is customer orientation. Customer orientation is essential when faced with prospects or professional buyers who carry out 70% of their purchasing journey alone. The salesperson must provide value and service that the customer needs help to obtain. He no longer sells but advises the customer in his purchase. Customer orientation is also the ability to deviate from the process in the event of unforeseen events or unique customer requests not formalized in the methods.

Depending on whether your company is weak or strong on one of these two dimensions, you will belong to one of the four categories below, and we will be able to determine your work priorities during our program.

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Simplification and optimization of commercial processes

Sales is initially a question of process and mathematics. It involves analysing the pre-sales, sales, and after-sales processes. The objective is to simplify and save time by removing heavy processes that have existed for years without any real impact on increasing sales.

Checking commercial mathematics means analysing whether the salesperson’s available time is allocated logically and reasonably. Do your salespeople’s customer portfolios have the right size or geographic distribution to occupy the market? Is the distribution between tasks not directly related to sales and those related to sales fair? Is your salespeople’s time and how they use it to sell measured and optimized constantly?

Concerning the processes directly linked to sales techniques and commercial behaviour, we will translate them into simple reflexes that are easily communicated and applicable daily. Sales is also about excellence, the sum of many admirably managed details.

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Develop a new vision of customer knowledge.

You cannot say you know your client simply because they expressed their expectations and answered a few standardized questions during a 20 to 30-minute briefing. Reimagining sales involves a new vision of customer knowledge—a vision from neuroscience. When the salesperson meets his customer, he speaks to his brain. With around 85 billion neurons and numer