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INDUSTRY: Professional Services

Helping new managers understand what selling means in their world……..

BACKGROUND

This large accounting firm (just outside the big 4) promotes a large number of people into manager roles each year. They move from being primarily focused on “doing” to having to learn quickly to become effective and efficient managers. Those involved are very intelligent and the individuals have proven themselves in the early part of being a manager and now that role develops even further. Their Academy programme helps them understand that transition. JA contributes the BD part of the whole intervention and builds on a number of key areas related to them becoming great managers.

THE CHALLENGE

For some of these people, especially those in regional offices, business development has been part of their “upbringing”. For most, the whole concept of doing BD is scary and often does not fit their image of what being a professional is. Addressing that confidence issue in a challenging, yet safe, environment is the key to success.

HOW THE CLIENT BENEFITTED

The key here was building the confidence to ask challenging questions that gives managers the skills to spot and, most importantly, develop opportunities. And then to take those opportunities to a different level thus qualifying-in the most promising ones.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Stage Two of the Academy programme is a three day intervention that blends a whole range of learning experiences. We developed a series of session to build on the non-business development elements they are exposed to. That has helped create a whole range of connections so the participants understand how to use their learnings across a range of situations. We tell them about what the deep research says the best do and then get them to apply that to two complex case studies. We used visualisation techniques to further develop their view of how things can be different. The beauty of the design is it appeals to all. Each person relates the outputs to where they are in their own business development journey. We blended both selling and pitching using the same detailed case studies that are highly contemporary. This blend of knowledge transfer with “having a go” in a safe, supportive and challenging environment means confidence levels increase dramatically. A recent evolution of the programme has been a new internally focused negotiation simulation where the delegates have to apply their newly acquired learning about negotiation to an internal business challenge that mirrors what they do every day.

RESULTS

A number of participants reported that they immediately applied the skills. In one case that was the following day and resulted in spotting an opportunity for ~£90000 worth of new work which was then further developed in to a new assignment for the firm. The sessions we run and the whole intervention gets very high ratings. The programme is seen as key to catalysing manager development and other elements give challenging exposure and indenting of strategic challenges solutions to which are pitched to senior partners. As an indication of the power of those, a number of the suggestions pitched have been implemented.

What the client said

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“The great thing about JA is they bring external and internal perspectives that they weave together thus helping us better interact with our clients.”​

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Other Case Studies

All the work we do is based on deep experience and we utilise the most comprehensive research sources to ensure that whatever we do will deliver results. Our broad experience means we can quickly make interventions that are pragmatic and built on what the best do – and often brought to life with real case illustrations.

Check out more examples.

The JA Consulting Proposition

JA Consulting delivers development capability across a range of business environments – from the Defence industry to professional services – the typical situations dealt with range from few £ thousands to £ billions – and at all levels in industry.