Training and Development

The number one goal of our organization is to recognize, develop, and unleash human talent. Everyone has talent- everyone. Some talent has not been developed, some talent is in the wrong job, and some talent has yet to be discovered. Only through a sincere attempt to discover and unleash talent can you assess whether or not the right individual behavior, the right management approach, the right leadership vision, and the right organizational culture exists. Talent without the right behavior at any level makes positive change very difficult. Changing management behavior is difficult, but the effect is far greater with a bigger payoff that continues well into the future. Organizations do not hire us to maintain the status quo.

The challenge with talent development and improvement for most organizations is that training is typically either a figure-it-out-by-osmosis approach or a one size fits all cram session. The problem with management-developed-by-osmosis is they are in charge of people who look up (or not) to their boss for guidance to perform their duties in line with the company mission. The problem with the one-size-fits all cram session is the program usually is not applicable and everybody resumes their old behavior two days later. A manager that is not developed properly for the position will not have a functional team. This is often worse in the sales world because many sales forces are distributed around across the country or across the world.

The Pease Group offers various training programs that help discover and develop talent at the employee level and the management level. While most of our programs have been with sales organizations, many have included entire cross-functional teams as well as organization-wide senior management. Training programs have included:

Teamwork and Communications: Getting the team on the same page, singing the same song.  You can’t have one without the other- Teamwork and Communications go hand-in-hand. The benefit of these programs is it gets employees out of the “It’s not my job” attitude where everyone does their task and then literally throws it over the wall to the next department. Instead, employees learn to focus on the bigger mission- satisfying the customer-  while they make sure that they take pride in not only what they do, but how they hand off their finished work to the next part of the process. For management, the challenge is usually the “silo” mentality, where every manager protects their vertical element of the organization chart at the expense of overall organizational productivity. Tearing down the silos by focusing on the bigger picture of the company mission leads to organizational profitability.

Sales Training: We don’t assume that the sales team is entirely bad, or that they are all remedial salespeople. That is precisely the implication in forcing a sales training system down the sales team’s throats.  Our approach is to discuss the team as a whole with the sales executives, offer a few suggestions, then come to an agreement on one or two major objectives to achieve. Even given that approach, there will be some salespeople who are more talented than others- and some who think they know it all. We understand that and know how to get all the salespeople- including the big egos- engaged.

Sales Management/ Executive Sales Development: Sales management and executive sales management development is without question the biggest need. Why? It is a rather moot point to improve the sales force through training only to have the sales team trained beyond the capability of the management team- or to have the management team “undo” what was done in the training program. Additionally, by working with sales managers and executives, the “reach” of sales team development gets wider. Working with sales executives also helps make any future sales training program much more effective, because the behavior of the sales executive reinforces the sales training program- and vice versa.  Our sales management/ executive sales management development use the following – or combination of- approaches, depending on the need and circumstances.

• Individual coaching
• Peer-to-peer Best Practices
• Train-the-trainer

“Do the right thing and the money will come”, three-time Indy 500 Winner Bobby Unser. One of the other things Bobby Unser said was, “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet”. Training and development not only prepares your organization for opportunity, it helps you see the opportunity and seize it when it is there. Seize the opportunity to prepare- contact us.