We recently completed a training intervention on Consultative Selling for a large multinational electronics conglomerate. The program was designed for managers who coach and train front line sales floor associates to drive sales at the company’s dealerships and company owned retail outlets across India. The program objective was to personalizing the customer experience through consultative selling. This was in line with the company’s objective for the year to delight the customer and enhance brand visibility through consultative selling.

This intervention had 3 main steps:

• Conducting mystery audits across the company’s self-owned and multi-brand outlets. The results gathered from the experience and the discussions with the relevant stakeholders were used to contextualize the program.
• Conducting the classroom roll-out. The key take away’s for the program included exploring individual areas of strength and areas of opportunities through customized role plays and business simulations. Creation of personalized action plans for individual participants.
• Post program follow up. This included group coaching to track implementation of program learnings & find solutions for areas where participants had challenges in closing out action plan deliverables.

Post the program, the feedback from participants was extremely positive and encouraging, both for our client and for us as a team. Participants felt confident about applying consultative selling skills to their selling processes & coaching their team members on how to use this approach in different business situations.

This month we conducted a national level assessment for an automobile giant. A total of 144 contestants selected through regional contest from 18 regions across India. These participants were judged throughthe All India Selling skills contest. Our client was organizing the contest after a gap of almost five years. They wanted an innovative and unconventional assessment methodology for the contest, something that would help them create a new benchmark in their industry.

We devised fun and gamified versions for the assessments in the form of roleplays, audio-visuals, competition check, rapid fire, judges round, etc. The idea was to assess the contestants on the following sales qualities:

• Customer obsession
• Brand projection
• Transactional selling vs. experiential selling
• Objection handling
• Thinking out-of-the-box

There were separate evaluation parameters for each round and we had a mammoth task of making softer aspects of sales quantifiable to eliminate any subjectivity in assessment.

On the whole, the event was extremely engaging, well received and team Shradha HRD had a new feather of customer delight in its cap.

This quarter, we successfully completed two separate 1-on-1 coaching interventions for senior management level coachees.

The first coachee, belonged to a large consulting organization in the Finance domain. He had challenges around presenting to senior stakeholders, especially from other geographies. The challenges were largely aroundstructure of the presentation and inability to present the value proposition clearly & concisely, poor body language, monotonous voice quality. By the end of the coaching interventionthere was atremendous improvement overall presentation skills.Some of the quantifiable upgrades in performance were enhanced ability to structure presentations effectively and make them concise, elimination of monotony in speech, improved audibility and energy levels&body language in sync with the content of the presentations. This is feedback we received from the program sponsor who was the head of the business.

The second coaching intervention was for a prominent multinational bank. This intervention required us to help the coachee overcome challenges around English language including pronunciation, intonation and avoiding indianisms. Out of the 8 sound switches and corruptions observed in the pre-coaching assessment, we were able to get 2 completely eliminated and a remarkable reduction in the remaining 6. The coachee also received a lot of appreciation and positive feedback from his reporting managers in India and the UK

We conducted a series of Customer Centricity interventions across the country this year. Ouraudiencewas spread across organizations from varied sectors:  financial services technology, learning management outsourcing, business process outsourcing, engineering and project management consultancies. These interventions required us to design programs for both client-facing and back office employees. The audience profile ranged from entry-level team members to mid-level managers.

By the end of these interventions, the level 3 needle movement was observed around the following competencies:

• Taking ownership end to end
• Ability to take escalated calls in a completely satisfactory manner
• Communicate view point and influence the customer
• Build trust, rapport and come across as confident and credible
• Handling irate customers more effectively and de-escalate difficult customer situations better
• Building rapport in a virtual team environment with clients and key stakeholders

The advent of the New Year saw us designing and launching a 3-day induction program for a multinational recruitment company. This renowned company was launching its operations in India for the first time. They needed a robust induction program to acclimatize their employees with the culture of the company and its client base.

This was an end-to-end solution we designedfor our client. It included the training need analysis, developing the trainer’s kit, launching classroom sessions, conducting a Train the trainer program for the internal training team, reviewing sessions and final handover. Our team successfully reached each of these milestones. The results were so spectacular that this program which was originally meant for the new hires was extended to the experienced employees as well.

By the end of the three months of the project we hadestablished a strong induction program and had a hugely satisfied client.

Shradha HRD designed and conducted a week long learning event an Auto major this month. The dual objectives of the event were to create a buzz around company core values&build visibility for Learning & Development within the company.  The event was meant for the entire population of the company working out of four of their plant locations. It was important that the event was stimulating, engaging & fulfilled the learning objectives. so that everyone starting from the workmen to the top management could participate with equal enthusiasm.

The event as very well received across all levels. It ran very successfully across all plant locations. There was a lot of laughter and positive energy surrounding the event. We had over 2500 participant that participated enthusiastically in the event. At the same time, they went back with a reinforcement of company core values.

Over the last 2 months, we conducted an intervention for over 250 finance professionals across Gurgaon and Mumbai for a Global Bank. The division we worked with handled chat queries from across the globe from Customers of the Bank. The objective of the intervention was to raise the customer satisfaction scores by 5-7%. These scores are calculated based on a customer feedback survey sent to all customers, post each interaction.  At the end of the intervention, the customer satisfaction scores had gone up by 11%.

The intervention was conducted over 3 weeks with 3 touch-points (both classroom and through a coaching & mentoring connect). Some of the elements covered during the program were assertive writing, developing a customer centric attitude &  working with a solutions mind-set.

We recently completed a project with a Global Logistics Company. The objective of the program was to improve English language communication and consequently the overall customer experience. Given below are the excerpts of the training feedback from their manager

I would like to tell you that our working with you has been a transformational experience for us…I can see the following in individuals in the team on a regular basis

1) Increased self confidence due to improved communication skills

2) Better quality emails

3) A serious attempt to speak in English during working hours..we have a collection box on our floor..everytime someone speaks in a native language they put in Rs.10 in the box..surprisingly I have contributed 60 bucks already in 2 days as only one of the team Sagar speaks Hindi and apparently when I speak with him I lapse into Hindi too and the team loves to catch me!!

4) A strong desire in individuals to keep the knowledge chain going so they keep checking each other when they find something wrong and its taken in the right spirit

Please convey my message and thanks to the trainers who have been responsible for bringing this huge change and enthusiasm in my team

We have recently completed training  2,500 managers under this program. This is across several industries ranging from Manufacturing, Shared services, Finance and Pharma.

Participant observations on changes in their working styles  3 months post the completion of the program:

1. The program served as an eye opener on how to handle teams & I feel more in “control”.
2. I always found it difficult to handle it when female employees cried in front of me. I have been able to employ techniques of assertiveness that I learnt during the program.
3. I realized that I was relying too much on my memory while I was giving feedback to team members. I now spend at least 30 minutes collating data and preparing for a feedback conversation. This has resulted imuch shorter and more effective feedback sessions