News Splash, 3rd Quarter 2007

Welcome to News Splash, the newsletter of Springboard Commercial Solutions. Our aim is to provide you with a quarterly update covering new developments in customer management and at Springboard CS.

Throwing Christians to Lions...not an efficient strategy for the Christians!!
You have yet another Junior Account Manager position vacant as the job has proven too stressful for yet another apparently strong candidate. The problem is – which of your up and coming Sales Reps can make the giant leap into the world of Account Management?
	· In conjunction with one of our clients we have developed a T&D solution to the above issue in the form of intensive one day tasters. · In an Account Management Taster for example the aspiring young AM’s are put through an intensive “Day in the life of an AM” ,hence they are handed a real life inbox to cope with quickly and efficiently, will be expected to sell under pressure, negotiate a good deal, handle a difficult internal project meeting and all whilst both managing and communicating effectively with both customers and their internal colleagues.

At the end of the session the staff may no longer aspire to Account Management – and that is fine. Equally, the company has had a fantastic opportunity to see how their talent pool reacted under pressure and whether the core skills are to be in place.

When that next vacancy occurs the degree of confidence in the candidate will be far higher.

For more information about ‘TASTER SESSIONS’ click on the link here to view our full article.

Too busy to train – too pressured not to!! We find that sales managers of the most senior commercial teams have a genuine challenge facing them – their team are continuously stretched by better and better buying teams and at the same time the pressures on their time make the luxury of 2-3 day training sessions a step too far. Our solution is to package all of the core skills associated with a given role into a “Deep Dive” Modular Programme – this then takes the form of a self study reference document and clearly establishes the company standards. The commercial staff have the flexibility to study in their own time and so there are no excuses for failure to adhere to the minimum operating standards. The theory is reinforced with one day intensive “Skill Builder” sessions in which the focus is not on learning theory but on real life role play and practicing the successful application of the theory previously learned in a fluent and powerful way. Staff only attend “Skill Builder” workshops when a specific need is identified by their line manager and so training is both necessary, wholly bought into by the staff attending and time efficient.

Play the Customer Experience Accumulator Positive and negative customer experiences accumulate little by little until they feel huge. We’d like our readers to help us gather some anecdotal evidence by entering the Customer Experience Accumulator challenge. Send us your customer experience stories and we’ll pick out the best one to feature in the next edition. If ‘Good’, what was memorable and what will you tell your friends? If ‘Bad’ where did the gap between your expectation and experience occur and what was your response? The winner will also receive:- a bottle of Taittinger Champagne Send us your experience to enter This quarter our customer experience examples are from:- The TelCo’s. The futures bright, but is it orange? Download the story. Car Phone Warehouse What’s Going On? Is it only me or have they lost the plot? Download the story

Springboard New Thinking

“CRM ‘Six Steps’

Companies are not feeling fully successful with CRM and the remedies having the greatest impact ‘are not the big ticket items (IT hardware & software) but the human oriented steps’.

In this paper Mark Hollyoake of Springboard Commercial Solutions outlines 6 steps to transform a technology tool into a fully integrated business process that engages with employees and customers alike. <Click here for the full article>

WE NEED YOUR HELP !!!! Springboard are currently conducting a major piece of research into training methodologies and in particular the use of Blended Learning as a T&D solution. This work will both assess the effectiveness of current methodologies and will attempt to identify the changes in approach that companies need to make in order to make their T&D budgets more effective. We would like to invite those responsible for T&D to complete our simple questionnaire – it should not take more than 10 minutes of your time and all those helping us will receive a priority summary of our research findings free of charge. Simply click on the link to let us know if you would like to be involved...

Fulfil the promise of partnering. Done well, alliances hold a lot of promise. Many promises are also made by partners entering into alliances. Sadly, few fulfil their promises. Click here for the full article. The importance of the customer experience Through recent research carried out working with a number of high street brands Richard Samarasinghe discusses the ways that brands can build relationships with their customers through the experience they deliver. Click here for the full article.

Finding future Stars

We work closely with “Resourcing Matters” a company passionate about finding future stars for progressive organisations. Lindsay Hanson a founding director explains in an article for this edition the all important ‘first five minutes’.

Click here for the full article or Resourcing Matters Ltd. UK based consultants in people selection and coaching to find out more about Resourcing Matters.

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