Sales-boosting facilitation skills: once again, ManGO! enhances the sales managers' performance

The Kazakhstan headquarters of Kimberly-Clark made quite an interesting hypothesis: mastering facilitation skills will significantly increase the employees' performance and bring the company's negotiations and sales to higher levels. The next step would be to devise a special corporate training program to confirm the hypothesis.

Mission: Improve sales managers' meeting facilitation skills.

Background:

We received a request to conduct the training from Kimberly-Clark's office in Kazakhstan. A year ago, 16 members of the Kimberly-Clark Kazakhstan office underwent 2-day offline facilitation and sales training. Over the following year, the participants had a chance to appreciate the benefits of the training through the ongoing practice of the skills acquired. Both the company employees and executives believe newly developed competencies to enhance the meetings' productivity, reduce time expenditures, while providing the full benefits of a structured approach to discussions and transparent, balanced, openly made decisions.

The company management also noted that the meetings themselves are not as important as the quality of the results produced. As opposing views collide, what matters most is to professionally guide the participants to a constructive and mutually satisfactory solution. This is why the question is not just about the ability to conduct various formats of discussions but about mastering the technique of facilitation and using it to ensure maximum efficiency.

Solution:

Elaborate and deliver an online training program without any quality loss but with a high level of involvement.

As a basis for the program, we employed the tried-and-true flipped classroom model, which entails self-study on theoretical material given by videos and texts, and synchronous sessions to practice the skills developed.

The program featured a total of 22 lessons, all primarily focused on facilitation techniques and technology literacy.

To maximize training efficiency, we used the facilitation modeling technique that implies the selection of optimal steps from a variety of options available. The usage of training cards, consequently, provides the participants with decision-making templates to be used during the facilitation process.

All in all, the program attendees mastered four basic facilitator's techniques:

• Never stop striving for 100% involvement.
• You must give the floor and listen to each participant.
• Create conditions for opposing views to coexist peacefully within the same discussion.
• The ultimate responsibility rests with each and every one of us.

Among other things, one of the participants' practical assignments was to conduct an online facilitation session on their own.

We believe it's safe to say that the program and its results serve as a perfect confirmation of our success. Besides, there are important conclusions we have drawn from the training as well. These are, above all, the preciousness of every minute and the great power of engagement in the learning process.