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Attitude & Action for Achievement
Delivered on stretched sales goals

Pabulum * is one of Australia's leading food companies, producing and distributing a wide range of goods to outlets under several key brands.

Challenge

For the new financial year, the national retail sales were set new sales targets that many believed were unrealistic and unachievable. With such high targets, Pabulum's senior management wanted to ensure its national sales team was prepared to achieve their goals. Pabulum called ABT in to help in the development of their national retail sales account team. Pabulum wanted to change the attitudes and behaviours of their sales people to increase their confidence and resilience and maximise their sales opportunities.

Pabulum wanted to implement a training that instilled the team with the right attitude for meeting their target. It was also an opportunity to focus and energise the team for the new financial year and develop a common motivational language.

Solution

Achieving beyond the ordinary often comes down to mental toughness. ABT collaborated with Pabulum to customise a training program to develop the sales team members by concentrating on their mindsets. Research shows that high performing sales people are high in emotional intelligence. They understand their customers' needs and are resilient, so can move on quickly from setbacks. In fact, optimistic sales people outsell their pessimistic colleagues by up to 40%, on average.

The first step was to find out about the thinking styles of Pabulum's sales people. ABT gave each participant a self-assessment tool to measure their explanatory style. The results showed each person how optimistic they were in the sales process. This increased their self awareness and showed them the relationship between optimism, mental toughness and sales productivity.

ABT then developed the course content, customising the materials and exercises to match the needs of the sales team. The workshop combined the latest research with practical exercises to ensure long term benefits in the workplace.

The workshop aimed to develop their self knowledge, positive attitudes, self management and relationship skills. It showed participants how to build their mental toughness, to be able to deal constructively with setbacks and move on from failure. By demonstrating the business case for emotional intelligence combined with practical exercises, the sales team were exposed to a new insight into selling.

The workshop was then followed with individual coaching sessions. The coaching focused on specific development activities set out at the training workshop. Coaching has proven to increase the training outcomes by up to 60%.

Results

The team achieved its high targets and largely attributed its success to the training. Besides outstanding figures, the intervention helped the sales team gain a new understanding of their thought patterns and behaviours. Their new attitudes and skills encourage proactive behaviours to manage their relationships more effectively. Like many of the courses ABT run in mental toughness, several participants comment that the program not only changed their approach to work interactions, but to all their relationships.

Their comments during the coaching sessions revealed that they saw themselves as:

More self aware.
More effective communicators.
Better able to self motivate and pursue sales goals.
More confident and mentally tough.
Having increased ability to gain commitment from key decision makers and move the relationship forward.

Here are some of their comments made after the workshop:

"It's me who makes me feel and react. By knowing this I can now change my reactions."
"I'm able to deal with customers better."
"I'm not putting things off now and I'm doing the difficult things first."
"The course has changed me permanently."
"I have been working much better. I push through so much more work and it all seems to flow so easily. I'm surprised at how much I'm getting done."
"During a meeting with an unhappy customer I was able to stay detached and unemotional and able to ascertain what the customer really wanted."
"The course has consolidated the team and we're now able to function better as a team."
"My ability to resolve difficult issues in a prompt manner and gain a positive outcome has increased."

By changing the way they think, the sales team is now able to deal more effectively with customers, meeting their needs and seeing new opportunities. Being an effective sales person relies on exceptional relationship skills.

The Evidence

Participants were asked to rate themselves before and after the workshop on the target areas. Their perceived improvement is significant, as illustrated below.

performance comparison

The sales members were also asked to rate the value of ABT's program. The average score across all areas was more than 9 out of 10, indicating how important participants regarded the workshop.

course rating