$15B Telecommunications and Networking Company

Client

Office of the Vice President of Sales

Problem

Because of heightened competition, marketplace changes, customer complexity and demands, organizational changes, and account turnover, the company needed to enhance the executive-level selling skills of its sales organization.

Deliverables

The Medlin Group designed, developed, and delivered a unique set of live role plays representing real-world executive selling situations. The role play scenarios mapped to the three broad areas of the sales cycle:

• Establishing rapport, trust, and confidence
• Iterative qualification of problem-need-solution and the trial close
• Proposal presentation, objection handling and executive sign-off to buy

Each of the company’s Sales Managers and Account Executives were asked to formally participate in these role play meetings over the course of the year. The unique thing about the role plays was that a 20+ year high-level executive and seasoned veteran in High Tech was the “customer executive” in the role play sessions, providing an enormous level of credibility to the interactions and their corollary debriefings.

The role plays and their subsequent debriefings were delivered in safe environment. No one was being ranked as to how well or poorly they did. The executive was willing to answer any questions the audience had. Different selling techniques could be tried, discussed, and evaluated. It was the sales team’s opportunity not only to test their skills but to really understand the thought patterns, perceptions, mindset, and impressions from a real executive and see things from the “other side of the desk”.