| CLIENT CHALLENGE
The management at Molson, a major Canadian brewery, was preparing for North American Free Trade to be implemented, and realized that they would now be competing directly with larger U.S. companies and their significantly larger marketing and sales budgets. They believed that Molson's point of competitive advantage and differentiation must come from their sales force's direct contact with clients. They needed to be able to differentiate their company based on value-added sales force representation and by building long term partnering relationships with their customers. Molson also emphasized that their sales force had been through "every type of training" and it was going to be very difficult to get their attention, let alone move them towards a new way of working. CREATIVE RANGE
The client wanted us to put their ‘been there, done that’ group of sales representatives into a very challenging and surprising scenario. Learning outcomes had to focus on personal and team selling skills, strategic sales planning, marketing and sales communication, seeing the world through the eyes of the customer, and long term customer partnering and service. We did intensive research into the preferences of customers, using Goldfarb's extensive industry research. We talked to sales and marketing representatives to understand their jobs and to assess the interaction and coordination required between them (sales and marketing) to become a truly outstanding organization in the customer's eyes. We also talked to them about what they liked and disliked about the training they had received in the past. We met directly with customers in order to learn from them what they saw as the key factors differentiating average from poor performers, and the qualities of truly outstanding sales representatives. The results were valuable and, in some cases, startling for us. This extensive research effort set the stage for the development of our breakthrough learning design. e! SOLUTION…
Planet X:
The Sales Simulation “Your business team's space station anxiously orbits around the newly opened sales territory of Planet X. You can see your competition preparing to compete for the business soon to be available. Your goal is to build and maintain market share leadership on Planet X. You will need to strategically plan your approach, qualify leads, generate appointments with very fickle and demanding customers (the bar owners on Planet X), close sales, deliver products and support the relationships you establish across three competitive and challenging business years. All the while, you know that the marketplace won’t stand still… you’ll need to be ready to adapt rapidly. Welcome to Planet X… the most challenging sales and marketing experience in the universe!” Planet X is an engaging, intense and very competitive learning experience that challenges participants to use the skills of exceptional selling and marketing in, literally, another world of competition. Participants wake up in their hotel rooms, having been instructed to turn on their televisions at a designated time. Instead of the morning news, they are greeted by an alien commanding them to meet on Planet X in exactly sixty minutes. Upon arrival, participants are whisked into a surreal world of dry ice and fog, laser lights, music and strange alien creatures. They are led to their orbiting space stations and told, though an animated narrator's story, that Planet X has just opened up (due to NIFTA - the New Intergalactic Free Trade Agreement), creating a significant opportunity for the competing teams to build market share. Participants’ surprised looks quickly turn to competitive fire as they realize that, underneath this surreal setting, lies the most competitive sales challenge they have ever faced in a training program. Participants are divided into two groups - customers and business teams. The business teams are then divided into the roles of team leader, sales representatives, and marketing and promotions staff. The ‘customers’ each become the proprietor of an establishment (bar, bistro, or restaurant) on Planet X, which they will operate for three simulated years. Each of the business teams has the opportunity to build their business and market share on Planet X, by selling their own, unique brand of Intergalactic Flavored Water, to their customers (the proprietors of the restaurants and bars). The end users of their products (robots, humanoids, and quasi-animals) frequent the establishments on Planet X and each group has a set of flavored water preferences that tend to change over time. Each business team must gather and share information, develop strategies and promotions, make sales and provide service to their customers, each of whom has unique personal and professional needs and wants. Teams struggle with the challenge of resource allocation decisions (human resources, money, time, promotional programs), all the while attempting to anticipate and react to the dramatic economic, political and social changes sweeping the planet. Teams feel the effects of the entire business process and face both the rewards of long-term, beneficial relationships and the penalties of short-term thinking. As the years progress, only the teams who have been able to build long term relationships with their customers will have great success on Planet X. Planet X is a powerful, dramatic, challenging, and very real sales and marketing experience. Participants gain profound insights regarding which sales approaches work in the short and long term, what leads to a customer staying with a relationship, and what can be applied immediately to their own sales and marketing approaches back on Planet Earth. LEARNING OUTCOMES - developing a strategic sales plan and adapting this plan as more information becomes available
(balancing short and longer term plans); - understanding, segmenting, prioritizing and targeting
the market; - face to face selling skills (and essential personal qualities);
- building client relationships (preparation, understanding the customer’s perspective, adding value, leveraging information);
- leading marketing and sales teams.
RESULTS
Due to the tremendous results of the program’s rollout, Molson doubled the original number of participants that Planet X had been intended for. The company’s Vice President of Marketing and Sales said, "This was the best sales and marketing training that our company has gone through in my twenty years with Molson."
This program has gone on to become one of exper!ence it inc.’s best selling off-the-shelf solutions and is consistently billed by our clients as the leading sales and marketing experience in the world. According to our customers, Planet X is the most challenging and exciting real life sales simulation on the market today. Participants leave with a renewed commitment to exceeding targets, to growing existing accounts, developing new markets, and to understanding the real needs of their clients and customers THANKS
These great products never happen in isolation. This program would not have been possible without Kevin Lockett’s superb sales insights and wonderful facilitation, the recommendation of Bob Weile, a talented organization consultant, and the faith of our client, Greg McNamara. We are very grateful to all. |
