The Business Simulator
It’s real play, It’s NOT role play.Our unique learning programme builds on your sales teams’ existing skills and helps them become trusted partners to the C-suite. Embedded in our ‘learn by doing’ ethos, each participant will undertake up to 10 simulated sales meetings with real C-suite prospects, either in-person or virtually.
They’ll learn to prepare effectively, ask brilliant questions to unearth undiscovered opportunities, gain commitment for the sale, and improve their performance across every aspect of this vital skill set.
Throughout the process, our global network of experienced senior leaders will provide feedback and coaching, creating confident, skilful sales teams which drive business growth.
Level 1 “Basic CXO engagement”: ensuring that your customer facing people improve their relationship building skills and confidence in identifying business opportunities, developing value propositions and their ability to pitch to CXO’s.
Level 2 “Making a Business Impact” : this gets your customer facing staff to think about “the art of the possible”, testing in a safe environment how creative and bold they can be given a specific business scenario.
Level 3 “How to become a trusted advisor”: arm your people with the required vertical or functional knowledge to become your target CXO’s trusted advisor. This can be organised by business vertical, e.g. automotive, retail, etc. or by deep dive with the CIO, CMO or CFO.
The Simulator Process
The process behind the Business Simulator is aligned to any B2B sales process and simulates multiple meetings with a team of CXO’s representing the Board of one of our case study companies. The learning process for participants follows the Plan, Do, Check, Act Kaizen improvement methodology.
Plan
Do your people prepare properly for meetings with CXO’s or are they wasting their and your clients’ valuable time?
Do
Are your sales team missing opportunities by making the wrong impression to CXO’s during business meetings and calls?
Check
Use the Business Simulator coaching process to increase the performance of your salespeople by 10-15% in two days and to continue momentum.
WHO IS THE BUSINESS SIMULATOR FOR?
SALESPEOPLE
Use the Business Simulator to practice your relationship building, discovery, value identification, winning proposition development and presentation skills with experienced C-Suite industry executives. Get valuable feedback from them, then go out and increase your sales.
SALES MANAGERS
Get honest and accurate information on staff performance when having a business conversation with C-Suite executives. Receive concrete data on how your team's sales approaches are received by CxO's in the real world.
MARKETING
See how your sales people in the field are turning corporate marketing messages into actual pitches and communicating brand values. Judge how well they have understood and applied your brand values and business value propositions.
CONSULTING, DELIVERY AND TECHNICAL TEAMS
Every day operational, architectural, delivery and other support staff have access to C-Suite executives in the course of their normal activities. How well prepared are they to have quality CxO conversations and maximise the opportunity for your business?
TESTIMONIALS
PLAN
The starting point of the Business Simulator programme is to agree a specific business case to work to. We have several, covering financial services, IT partners, public sector and the retail sector. We work with you to choose the most appropriate case for your needs.
As part of the preparation delegates are expected to undertake their own research on the chosen case to help them plan their campaign of activity in the Business Simulator. Each case study has a web site containing company overviews, investor relations documents and news items on the business. We also provide a background briefing document on the context for your company’s relationship with the business case and LinkedIn style profiles of the specific CXOs with whom they will be working. As part of preparation, delegates are also provided with access to virtual learning modules allowing them to place themselves in the “shoes of the customer”, providing hints and tips on how to approach and plan a campaign with CXOs.
Delegates have email access to the CXOs of the case study and can use this to book meetings, socialise agendas and begin the initial phase of building a relationship.
Do
Once preparation has been completed, teams enter the Business Simulator.
Over two days delegates, working in teams of 4 to 5, undertake 8 to 10 “real play” business meetings with individual CXO’s. These last for approximately 30 minutes and allow the delegates the opportunity to develop relationships with different CXO’s from different business functions. Each meeting is followed by a feedback and coaching session typically lasting a further 30 minutes.
The meetings mimic stages in any business cycle – discovery, proposition or solution development and gaining support/stakeholder buy-in. The feedback and coaching discussions involve self, peer and CXO input and follow a ‘start, stop, continue’ structure.
The Business Simulator ends with each team delivering a 20 minute presentation to all CXOs (normally 3 or 4) again followed by feedback.
Check
After the meeting and the feedback discussion, the CXOs complete a number of documents providing both numerical and textual records of the meetings.
This data driven approach allows the client to see how each individual/team is developing throughout the process, whilst also providing benchmarks across the different teams.
We check for:
- Initial impact
- Evidence of preparation and meeting structure
- Personal and company elevator pitch
- Questioning and listening skills
- Ability to deliver a value proposition
- Business and financial acumen
- Solution development
- Ability to gain commitment
- Closing skills
ACT
The Act part forms into 2 areas:
1. The individuals/teams
Delegates can apply learning immediately and also observe how colleagues behave in CXO meetings to reinforce key learning points.
The teams get constant, constructive, feedback on how they are performing in the Business Simulator. They are coached on how to improve their performance throughout the process.
2. The client
At the end of the Business Simulator we provide detailed information to management. This covers individual and team performance, how the group has performed overall, areas of strength or areas where the business might need to focus development going forwards. This can be used to target where future investment might be best placed. The feedback is data driven so that the results can be fed back to individuals if that is what is desired and incorporated into their personal development plans.
34
YEARS IN BUSINESS
1700
SIMULATORS RUN
30494
PARTICIPANTS & COUNTING
32
COUNTRIES
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE YOUD ANDREWS BUSINESS SIMULATOR
If you’d like to know more about the Youd Andrews Business Simulator and how you can use it to improve the art of selling and the effectiveness of your sales people, contact us now.
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