From Finance Training to War Games
Credit analysis through war games. Because experiential learning shouldn't be reserved for behavioural training.
How do you sell value when the customer doesn’t even know your brand? That was the interesting challenge behind one of our recent interventions for an agriscience company. The company was new. But the legacy behind the company was strong. Its parentage brought credibility. Its products brought potential. But the brand itself was still building recognition in the market. And that created a familiar sales temptation: Discount. When customers don’t know you, reduce the price.
When competitors are better known, offer something extra. When the conversation gets difficult… Discount again. But that isn’t value selling. So we designed a full-day intervention around Value Selling, with more than 100 participants ranging from leadership and sales managers to field teams. The first half of the day was focused on helping participants rethink how they approached customer conversations. The aim was not to give them a script. It was to build conviction.
What value are we actually creating? What problem are we solving? How do we communicate that value? How do we move away from price being the centre of the conversation? The session ended with the cohort building a Master Playbook, based on what they had explored during the day. The second half shifted gears completely. Resilience. Collaboration. Teamwork. Activities like Electric Fence, Longest Mile and Dominos Challenge brought a completely different energy into the room.
But there was a common thread. A new brand cannot be built only through marketing. It is built through the confidence, consistency and conviction of the people representing it. And that is where learning becomes business-relevant. A sales training program should not merely teach selling. It should help salespeople sell their particular business, in their particular market, to their particular customer.
