Who should attend?
Who should attend a Workshop and become a Corporate Storyteller?
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Almost anyone that needs to deliver a persuasive message would benefit from attending a workshop. Take a look at a few examples and see if any of their situations resonate with you.
Stan
Sales Executive
Stan is a hunter in the Enterprise IT space. He has decades of experience in sales and has been through a lot of training. Taking three days to attend a workshop – and perhaps a fourth to travel – is painful because that’s time not spent with his clients. Yet he also knows that he has to keep learning if he wants to maintain his edge and continue to smash his quota – which he does.
While Stan doesn’t need to learn how to sell, build relationships or use PowerPoint, he does recognize challenges he encounters often:
• Difficulty developing and sharing new insights with his clients after the first few calls
• Having the same conversation or presentation over and over again because the client team keeps changing and growing
• Clients frequently make ‘death by PowerPoint’ comments during his team’s presentations or demos
During the Articulus Corporate Storytelling Workshop, Stan develops an actual presentation for a critical client meeting scheduled for the following week. Even better, he actually gets to practice it and receive feedback. He also learns a process that will help him be deliberate in his future messaging and make his presentations feel more conversational, memorable and authentic.
Ultimately he finds his clients are more engaged, make decisions faster and choose his solution more often.
Erica
Engineer
Erica is a petroleum engineer that provides specialized, global technical support for a company that sells products and services used in drilling wells. Much of her time is spent speaking at conferences and meeting with clients, often in support of account managers trying to sell new technology.
Erica knows her stuff. She’s comfortable discussing technology with clients, even hostile ones - but is a bit nervous when speaking to large groups. She notices a pattern in many of her presentations:
• There is always more content than she has time to present which means important topics are usually left out, not adequately covered or sped through too quickly to have an impact
• Too often the decision maker in the room has to leave before the presentation is over; how can she keep them engaged until the end… or at least make sure they hear her conclusions before they leave?
• When she asks for questions at the end, people ask her about things she just covered minutes before; they don’t remember what Erica knows are key details
During the Articulus Corporate Storytelling Workshop, Erica works on a conference presentation she will deliver in a few weeks. Practicing her delivery and receiving feedback boosts her confidence. Best of all she now has a process that will help her be deliberate in all of her messaging and shift her focus from informing others to getting others to act.
Ultimately Erica finds herself spending less time preparing content for presentations while her audiences are more engaged and remember her recommendations.
Lisa
Senior VP
Lisa is a Senior VP who leads a business unit for a company that was recently acquired. She is accountable for P&L and driving the business forward. The new CEO has laid out his strategic vision for the integrated company; now Lisa needs to translate that vision into something relevant and tangible for her organization – and get her employees to commit to the changes needed for success during and after the integration.
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Lisa enjoys meeting with and motivating her extended team. But she also recognizes major organizational change is different than most messages she and her leadership team deliver:
• She knows many of her employees are scared or upset due to all the recent changes; she wants to address their concerns and prevent loss of talent she can’t afford
• Directive communication (‘do it… or else’) to affect change usually kills engagement and damages the culture
• Each employee needs to make the decision to engage and be part of the new culture and work style
During the Articulus Corporate Storytelling Workshop, Lisa develops her core message. Her direct reports build out their presentations that support her core message but are modified for their own specific locations and functions. As a team they practice delivering their messages and responding to likely objections. The experience gives her an insight: all leaders in her organization need to be effective messengers that can motivate their teams to perform in this new work environment.
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When she and her team roll out the message, it has a transformative effect. Employees better understand the changes coming, express their commitment to those changes, and remark on it made them feel – about the company, about themselves and about her.