Technical Professionals. Need to Sell.

Situation: Professional services firm. Talented, yet highly technical, staff. Competitive presentations are how they get new business. Regular update meetings are how they keep clients informed, happy, and hopefully coming back for more.

Engagement Objective: To empower staff at various levels, from partners to project managers, to be sales people for the firm by helping them articulate their vision and the value of their expertise, while taming the urge to download too much technical detail.

Training Sessions: Delivered in four parts over a few months, two groups of 20 participated in highly interactive training sessions that involved games, exercises, scenarios, individual and group work, as well as some teaching at the white board and lots of discussion. Everyone was trained in the SmartMouth methodology for developing an effective presentation and received the mobile app –“The SmartMouth Public Speaking Toolkit” – instead of traditional handouts. The core training sessions culminated in mock presentations by each participant, in which they received peer and professional feedback.

Result: Not only does everyone in the firm now have the same vocabulary for how to be more audience- or client-centric, but they now brainstorm and plan presentations and meetings that are more succinct, more compelling, and more memorable. More polished presenters. More business. Happier clients.

Beth Levine
Skills

Posted on

May 7, 2014