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Understanding and Influencing Your Customer
A Programme to Develop Your Consultancy Skills

Why this programme?

In recent years there have been significant
changes in the business environment and particularly in supplier/customer relationships. One thing which has become very clear is that the competitive edge has been achieved by those individuals and organisations who not only provide good products or services, but also deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction.

Understanding & Influencing your Customer introduces you to the skills and techniques which help the development and maintenance of long-term relationships with customers within which you can deliver your products, services and expertise in a way which provides significant business added value – the key differentiator between you and the competition.

Designed originally for Business and technical consultants within the IT industry and further developed for those in Financial services, Understanding & Influencing your Customer adds significantly to participants’

ability to manage customer relationships at different levels within the organisation and to develop business solutions to meet customer requirements.

It has been delivered successfully within blue chip organisations such as IBM, AT&T, NCR and Allied Dunbar in the UK, Europe, USA and Asia Pacific.

Understanding & Influencing your Customer is aimed at developing three major competencies:

Making sense of complexity
Developing and maintaining effective
relationships
Influencing the process of change

These ‘Consultancy‘ skills represent an emerging core capability for many individuals whether they work with external customers or indeed with internal clients in other departments within their own organisation

Outputs Participants can expect:

Increased knowledge, skill and awareness relating to the successful management of business relationships, including the participant’s own current strengths in this area
A coherent set of models and frameworks that can become a shared approach or common language so that teams and organisations benefit from improved quality, speed and effectiveness in dealing with customer facing situations
A practical action-plan for moving forward or solving a current and real customer situation – an action plan to which participants will feel genuinely committed

Method The main processes used on the programme will be a mix of input and hands-on practice

Skill practice sessions with feedback and coaching
Small group work
Full group discussions
‘Real-life’ problem solving exercises
Detailed programme notes
Role play exercises are not used – the focus is on real world problems

Content Course content is structured around two main themes:

Understanding and Influencing Individuals
Understanding and Influencing Organisations

The professional working relationship is examined in terms of which skills are required and what issues have to be managed in achieving business goals.

Key Topics include

Building & Deepening the Relationship

Looks at how and why we succeed in establishing an effective business relationship with some individuals or organisations and not with other

Understanding Clients & Client Organisations

Explores individual and corporate motivation, buying decisions, the complexity of personal style, together with organisational culture and behaviour.

Bringing about Change

Looks at the skills and issues involved in influencing individuals to change their views and behaviour. At an organisational level we look at the range of possible options which will realistically bring about change within the organisation or any subset thereof.

Achieving Agreement

Deals with the contracting issues and skills, which have to be dealt with throughout the influencing process in order to ensure that goodwill and good ideas are converted into action.

Managing the Relationship Over Time

Explores how the investment
made in creating an effective
relationship can best be utilised and protected. This session focuses particularly on creating longer-term, effective customer relationships

Key Models and Frameworks

Personal Style Model
A well researched and easily assimilated model to understand and predict personal motivations and behaviour.

Organisational Culture Model
A simple yet effective tool to understand Organisational motives and predictable business norms.

7P Model
An effective and versatile tool to enable practitioners to develop an in-depth analysis of organizations at any level of complexity.

Cloud Model
A deceptively simple graphic which demonstrates the internal and external relationship issues which have to be confronted in any consultancy situation.

Hilltop Model
A model which highlights and reinforces the key role of accurate empathy in establishing relationships with customers and organisations.