 |
Customer Understanding Series
(Board Simulation)
“Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes” to gain insights about your customer’s business and how to increase the value of your offerings
 Simulation Benefits
The Customer Understanding series is a portfolio of industry-specific learning simulations from BTS. The simulations challenge sales professionals to "walk a mile in their customers' shoes" while managing a hypothetical company. Salespeople gain a deep understanding of their customers’ businesses and what drives profitability in those businesses. The simulations build on these insights, equipping your salespeople with the skills to speak their customers’ language, understand customers’ key issues, and better communicate the value of your products and services in terms of meeting customers’ business objectives. The result: more lucrative and successful customer relationships, and increased profitability for your organization.
The Customer Understanding series includes simulations specifically designed for the Banking: Capital Markets, Banking: Retail, Chemical, Consumer Goods, Energy & Utilities, Healthcare, Insurance: Life, Insurance: Property and Casualty, Retail, and Manufacturing industries.
Customer Understanding simulations help sales professionals:
- Walk a mile in their customers' shoes
- Recognize the most important drivers of their customers' businesses, and how to position your products and services in ways that focus on those drivers
- Identify the specific business triggers – those unique to each client as well as those triggered by the industry and market – that cause customers to take action
- Uncover the root challenges behind the key purchasing and other business decisions made by customers
- Understand how customers' actions impact the bottom-line results of their companies, and how to adjust the sales relationship accordingly
- Be more effective sales team members, with customers and with others throughout their organization
Simulation Description
Each Customer Understanding simulation immerses salespeople in the world of their customers, giving them the hands-on experience of managing the same daily business challenges faced by their customers.
Design features:
- One-day program (can be longer)
- 3-5 simulated years (or 3x4 quarters)
- 25-35 participants, also ideal for conferences of up to 150 participants or more
- 1 Facilitator (additional with larger groups)
- T3 recommended
Content includes:
- Decisions
- Business Challenges: Events and consequences that will help drive improvement in the customer’s business. The key business challenges chosen are related to what the salesperson is selling and how the product or service impacts the customer’s business
- Strategies—choose a strategy and execute decisions associated with it
- Revenues—impact on assets through forecasting and decisions around A/R
- Production—capacity utilization and impact on cash flow and results
- Risks—manage external events
- Power Tools
- Key customer metrics are chosen and designed as take-aways – easy-to-use cards that remind the salesperson of each metric’s importance to the customer.
- Feedback
- After each year of the simulation, competing teams receive feedback on and analysis of their performance.
- Know-How Sessions
- Group discussions and exercises are held in between each year of the simulation. This ensures that participants get hands-on experience applying strategic and tactical solutions to key business issues, and are well equipped to apply new skills once back on the job.
- Topics include: Customers’ Financial Interrelationships, Ways to Improve Profitability for Your Customer, VOC, or the company’s own content sessions.
Implementation/Customization
Customer Understanding simulations are typically implemented as one-day programs. They can be used as stand-alone learning experiences or incorporated as modules in more extensive sales training programs or initiatives. Each industry version is available in a generic, board-based format. Versions can be customized to meet the unique needs of your sales organization.
|
|
BTS is the world leader in developing and delivering customized business simulations that drive profitability and growth while supporting strategic change. |
>Printable PDF version |
