New Visual Concepts, Extended Learning Plan and Third-Party ROI Reporting Improve Skills Development Program Designed to Help Salespeople Justify Business Impact With Executive Buyers
LARKSPUR, Calif. – December 2, 2014 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading executive sales training company, today announced it has launched a new version of its Executive Conversations training program. Designed to optimize skills adoption, the updated program adds a blended curriculum and employs a learn-then-do rhythm that equips sales professionals with a proven, repeatable approach for engaging in relevant executive-level conversations.
As part of Corporate Visions’ differentiation strategy, this updated executive sales training program now includes a family of new visual learning concepts specifically created to increase the understanding and application of five key competencies for selling a solution’s business value: business knowledge, customer insight, financial acumen, executive engagement and return on investment (ROI). To promote immediate real-world application, participants are also required to apply the concepts they’ve learned by working on their actual accounts and opportunities throughout the duration of the program, rather than utilizing more hypothetical, case study-based training. A third-party ROI assessment is also included to help attendees track adoption, behavior change and overall business impact.
“I love the new version of Executive Conversations. It shifts the focus from accounting – the flaw of most business acumen courses – to how to use financial analysis to present a clear and useful message to a potential customer,” observed Alan Rubin, sales learning manager at CenturyLink. “It is also completely consistent with the visual tools we already use from other Corporate Visions skills training and will help us shift the focus of our sales professionals from their product to helping their customers improve their business through the use of our products and services.”
The Executive sales training programs are centered on a two-day workshop, during which participants gain the competence and confidence to engage customer executives through a structured progression of learning experiences. These include:
- Completing a 90-minute online pre-work session that prepares participants to arrive in the classroom ready to immediately begin applying and practicing the key concepts;
- Working with a seasoned executive who has spent a career making investment decisions during a two-day workshop that provides first-hand exposure and actual practice delivering your message to business buyers; and
- Sustaining skills development through systematic online application activities that immediately follow the training and reinforce a thinking process instead of just repeating information.
“Research has shown that executive decision-makers value conversations about business trends, issues and insights up to four times more than they value relationships and product expertise – but only 24 percent of salespeople are proficient in their ability to hold a conversation around business challenges,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy, and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. “Executive Conversations develops the skills needed for sales reps to have more effective conversations with their prospects about the current and future state of their business.”