ManGO's DB Schenker case: remote online presentation and online negotiation training

The DB Schenker International Logistics Company saw pandemic-related restrictions as an opportunity for sales growth. Their case became yet another confirmation that online training provides an efficient and cost-effective format to improve presentation and negotiation skills.

Mission: Design and deliver a remote training program to enhance online customer interaction.

Background:
DB Schenker, a German international company, covers the full cycle of logistics services through all transport modes and operates in 35 cities across Russia. Having analyzed the optimization options available, the company realized the need for more negotiations, presentations, and discussions as a way to enhance its business performance. Moreover, the existing managerial capacity would be sufficient to provide the desired intensity of customer interactions if it wasn't for the time spent on the road. At the same time, with the DB Schenker's sales managers being underprepared for an online format, they only could hold negotiations the old-fashioned way, i.e. at face-to-face meetings. The customers, on the other hand, were willing to communicate online with the company's representatives.

Solution:
This situation and the company's business goals led to a logical solution, which was to increase the number of meetings between sales managers and customers while eliminating work trips through a complete transition to an online mode. This, however, would require the staff's online communication and sales skills to be developed. This, in turn, implies corporate training in presentation, sale of services, along with the discussion of new directions, products, integrated solutions, etc.

The company's core assumption was that absolutely any issue can be discussed and resolved remotely and this only being a matter of learning. Testing the hypothesis, meanwhile, would require delivering effective customer service training and doing so in an online format.

For the necessary skills to be developed, we designed and provided interactive training sessions.
The competitive nature of the activities, in the meantime, was to ensure a high level of engagement. First of all, the participants were divided into teams. As each team came up with and presented their homework, the coach evaluated the performances, employing elements of gamification to maximize engagement.

Apart from that, the online training incorporated other effective practices, such as small group collaboration and team-building exercises.

The key point of the training was to teach the participants to negotiate more effectively. Among other things, they acquired and strengthened their public speaking skills, including the specific ones for remote communication. Another important aspect of the program was attention management and consolidation of the above skills in practice.

All our efforts resulted in the company almost halving the number of face-to-face events and increasing the overall frequency of client meetings, something that matched our most optimistic expectations.