Make it hold
A sale is a promise. This is the part that decides whether it was true.
We train leadership, operations and enablement teams the same way we train sales teams. Same method, same working sessions, pointed at the people who have to deliver what was sold.
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Differentiation that only exists in the pitch is a liability.
A sales team learns to say something true and specific about why this company is the right call. Then the work begins, and the difference the buyer was promised has to survive contact with scoping, delivery, support and everyone who was not in the room when the promise was made.
When it does not survive, you have not just lost a renewal. You have taught a customer that the difference was a sales technique.
So this pillar is the delivery of what we sold, and everything operational that supports it. We started in sales because that is where a company feels the problem first and most expensively, and then we could not run from this part. It runs both directions now, and plenty of companies come to us with no sales question at all.
“How many times have you gone into a leadership class thinking you wouldn’t learn anything new? If you want a fresh perspective with someone who has managed teams and carried a bag, I highly recommend Michael Crain.”
Karen L. Washington · Managing Director, VMware
“During the planning stages for our leadership training, Michael performed extensive research by speaking with key members of our team… We regularly look back at what we learned from Michael’s sessions and integrate these lessons into our team practices.”
David Warfle · Marketing Director, Sun Valley Construction
“From the moment Ted walked into the room I could tell this session was going to be different… He held our attention for nearly 9 hours, facilitating some of the most robust and meaningful conversations the team has ever had.”
Bradford Remley · President & COO, Baseline Energy Services
The same method, built for the people who deliver the work.
This is usually a one- or two-day session, held in person or online. We use the same method we use with sales teams, but adjust it for people whose job is not sales. That is on purpose. The method was never just about selling.
Your team will not spend the day watching slides. They will talk about what good work looks like in their part of the business. Then they will work through real problems they are facing and share their ideas with each other.
The goal is simple: give the team a shared way to make good decisions, talk through problems, and raise concerns clearly.
We cover things like how to run a meeting so another meeting is not needed, how to make a 1:1 more useful than a status update, how to start a hard conversation, what to do if that first conversation does not work, and how a team decides what it should not take on.
Customer service fits here too. How a customer is treated after the sale is part of how the business operates.
Then we come back and use the material on the real problems your team is still working through. This part matters. It is easy to try a new idea in a training session. It is harder to keep using it when the work gets busy or difficult.
Ted Baird, our Sr. VP of Executive Coaching, leads much of this work. Some topics work well in a group. Others are better handled one-on-one. Leaders do not always want to say everything in a room full of people, so Ted often leads both the team sessions and the individual coaching.
Something you can use before we ever talk.
Too many meetings start with a question nobody says out loud: why am I here? People sit down not knowing why they were invited, what is being decided, or what they are walking away with, and the energy is gone before anyone speaks. Four lines in the invite fix most of it.
Topic
The purpose or title of the meeting.
Objective
Why this meeting matters.
Agenda
What we will cover, and who is leading each part.
Deliverables
What we are walking away with.
A real TOAD in action.
- Ted opens with the TOAD and confirms agreement
- The client sponsor outlines the team’s current challenges
- The sales leader provides context about the team
- The executive sponsor defines what post-training success should look like
- Michael asks clarifying questions
- Ted closes with questions and proposes a path forward
Five minutes to write, and it does more than tidy up a calendar invitation. It is the first thing a client experiences of how we work, which turns an ordinary meeting request into a small demonstration of the difference we are there to talk about. That is the whole argument, running on something as unremarkable as an invite.
A promise that has to survive the handover.
A leadership team whose decisions do not survive the next reorganization.
An operations group absorbing commitments nobody scoped.
A manager bench that avoids the conversation everyone knows needs to happen.
A company that wants the promise sales makes to be the promise operations keeps.
Same qualifier as everything else we do: teams with a good reputation already, whether they are sure of it or sure something is slipping, who want to be even better. The one team we do not pursue is the one certain it has nothing to improve.
If your sales team already went through this with us, this is the part that keeps it from wearing off. If they have not, that is fine too. It does not start in the same room every time.
Book a call.
The first call with Predictive Wins is free and runs twenty-five minutes. A conversation about where the team is now, and where it could be even better.
We don’t get paid for second place. Neither do you.
Accelerating your ability to earn the market share you deserve.