Total Customer Focus™

Frequently Asked Questions

• How do you “customize” the Total Customer Focus Service Training™ program? Who owns the customizations?

  While the proprietary toolkit used in our standard Total Customer Focus™ program will be similar for all clients, the experiential components (role plays and cases) are custom-written based on interviews with key members of your team to achieve the following:

  • Immediate relevance for participants – Your company’s industry niche, products, customers, sales and service structure and culture are unique. Live experiences are designed to simulate frequently faced, high impact situations using real company names, job titles, status differences, emotional postures, etc. so that participants are practicing skills they see they can use right away in their jobs. And even though participants are initially practicing these new skills on a narrow set of situations, they will be effective in any service or sales situation they face in the future.
  • Focus on desired business outcomes – Your company goals and training priorities are also incorporated into our choices of situations for the cases and role plays and in the stated objectives of the role-players. For example, a program prioritizing new revenue generation will be written quite differently from a program aimed first at improving customer satisfaction. Interestingly, regardless of primary emphasis, the Total Customer Focus Service Training™ program is certain to yield both of these outcomes for your company to varying degrees.

  While all training materials remain the property of Global Partners Training, customizations are unique and are not shared between clients. Licensed program participants retain lifetime personal use of tangible program materials for ongoing reference.

• How is the Total Customer Focus Service Training™ program structured?

  Global Partners Training is ultimately focused on participants’ interpersonal skill acquisition and development, and therefore our programs make heavy use of live, interactive experiences.

  The standard Total Customer Focus™ program contains live face-to-face workshops, a series of live interactive coaching webinars and self-study through e-learning modules. This carefully blended sequence, along with measurement and certification systems, virtually guarantees the embedding of new behaviors while holding total cost to the minimum required to get the job done well.

• How long does the Total Customer Focus Service Training™ program take?

  Live training time (workshops and coaching webinars) for a participant in the standard Total Customer Focus™ program totals approximately 40 hours, and the complete blended experience is typically spread over a three- to four-month period. This allows time for initial learning and safe practice, application of new skills on-the-job, iterative feedback and coaching, and demonstration of knowledge and skill acquisition with a real customer case situation of each participant’s choosing.

  While nearly all clients choose the standard program, shorter-format programs targeting specific objectives and using a subset of the Total Customer Focus™ toolkit are possible and will also include a skill embedding process.

• How large are the training groups?

  Striking a balance between cost and personal attention, the optimal training group size is 12 and the maximum is 15. Groups larger than 15 require an additional certified facilitator to be present during each workshop. Coaching webinars are run with a maximum of 5 or 6 participants per session, and therefore multiple sessions are scheduled for each training group.

  Clients that have many physical locations with small teams in each location may opt for either smaller training groups (we suggest a minimum of 6 participants) or larger combined groups at a central location. We can help you evaluate the most efficient way to cover your desired participants.

• Where is the program delivered and what languages are offered?

  To provide complete, consistent, turnkey service to large multi-national clients, Global Partners Training retains local facilitators in most major countries and regions and has delivered training in over 40 different countries in the past 2 years. To minimize costs, we typically deliver face-to-face workshops in your local corporate facility or at a local off-site conference facility.

  Live coaching webinars via GoToMeeting require an internet connection and, in most cases, can be joined for audio-only using a country-specific phone number. Digital program components delivered via the Carli™ app (desktop or mobile) require an Internet connection.

  While programs are delivered in English by default, experiential exercises are done in the local language of the participants. Currently, Global Partners Training has certified facilitators who speak the following languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Other languages may be available soon, and so please check with us if you have a specific need.

  Program materials, including presentation slide decks, videos, printed and electronic materials are provided in English by default. Complete or partial translations may be available for some programs at an additional cost. Global Partners Training is continually adding to its language portfolio as training volume warrants.

• If Total Customer Focus™ Service Training is a service-oriented program, why would it make sense for salespeople?

  While pure product innovation will always give technology companies an edge over rivals, there is an unmistakable industry trend toward moving the customer to the center of corporate missions and operations – witness the rise of related concepts such as customer success, servitization, XaaS, etc. Customers are demanding integrated solutions, and with new pay-per-use availability or value-based pricing models coming to the fore, the initial equipment sale is no longer the end of the story for a salesperson.

  Long-term customer retention and expansion requires product, sales and service teams to understand each other and work together to serve the ultimate customer’s goals. The experiential components of the Total Customer Focus™ program in particular lead salespeople to wake up to the reality that they are members of a team with a larger purpose and show them how to dialogue effectively with the external and internal customers, clearing roadblocks to excellent customer experience and new, sustainable revenues.

• How is the program supported with technology?

  Global Partners Training scours the latest developments in learning technology through affiliations with training industry associations and by attending conferences such as DevLearn and ATD. As new technologies come online, we try them out and assess how they can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the face-to-face, live remote and self-service elements of our training programs. When someone invents a better mousetrap, we will not be afraid to use it to help your participants learn.

  Program participants use our customized Carli™ app, currently supported by a Training Industry Top 20 platform company. Participants can view their training program progress, access e-learning modules and other learning resources, select their webinar sessions, and access other features via desktop and mobile app (iPhone and Android). If available for your program, this functionality is included in the program license fee during the program and for at least two full months past the date of the final live training event.

  After certification and with sponsor permission, alumni of some programs are invited to access MyGPT, a free section of the www.globalpartnerstraining.com website where they will find helpful support tools, reminder cards, articles of interest, videos, free webinars and other helpful resources customized for their particular program(s) to keep their knowledge and skills fresh.

• How do you handle training logistics?

  Global Partners Training is equipped to handle complete project management for training on a global basis, from booking training venues to scheduling, and emailing invitations and reminders. We strive to work seamlessly with your in-house resources, such as corporate universities and travel departments to keep costs to a minimum and enable the best training experiences for participants.

  Our central point of organization for program and learning management is our customized Carli™ app, and while it does not typically make sense to fully-integrate with your internal learning management system, we can arrange to export participant certification data in any standard format.

• My company has training resources. Can we deliver the program in-house?

  Yes, Global Partners Training offers train-the-trainer programs with complete ongoing support. While most clients prefer the flexibility of a turnkey outsourced solution, in-house delivery can work when your company has experienced trainers on staff with idle bandwidth and you are ready to make a long-term commitment to the training program.

  We will certify your trainers on the program, including experiential co-facilitation and observation-only facilitation, and provide ongoing support and updates to the program. Technology, e-learning and measurement systems are included. Please contact us if you are interested in exploring this option.

• How much does the program cost?

  Global Partners Training strives to keep your total program cost as low as possible while delivering a complete, transformative program. Lower-cost programs without client-proven methodology, a true embedding process, proper measurement systems and a rigorous certification process are unlikely to yield the changes you are looking for.

  Please keep in mind that your total program cost includes not only Global Partners Training fees, but also the cost of salary, benefits and any travel for your participants. We would be happy to help you assess the total cost and expected return for any training program. In our experience, clients typically achieve short-term returns on the order of 3-6 times their investment, and the embedded skills of your team will continue to pay dividends for years to come.

  Global Partners Training fees are quoted after initial consultations to understand your program goals and requirements, and our fees are typically structured as follows:

  Live training event fees – Per-event per-facilitator fee for each workshop, webinar or coaching session ensures you get a certified facilitator/coach with deep executive experience, often in your industry, who speaks the local language of each training group. Scheduling and logistics support are included, as needed.

  Program license fee – Per-participant fee covers the following:

  • Lifetime personal license for proprietary, proven toolkit
  • Carli™ app, as available, accessible on desktop and mobile app (iPhone and Android) offering program tracking, assignments, program materials (PDFs, videos with unlimited replays, etc.), transcripts, webinar self-enrollment, data export and more. Access included during training and for two full months after final training event
  • Measurement system, as available, with baseline skill adoption assessment, post assessment, benchmarking, quantification, action planning, mid-term and final project collection, individual reports, group reports, aggregate region reports
  • Certification process (participants follow a strict process, in agreement with their company and in alignment with internal appraisal system, when possible, to increase engagement), printing and sending certificates, dedicated LinkedIn page or web page explaining the value of the certification
  • Alumni network and access to MyGPT web-based resource center, as available, (with resources related to the program, articles, reminder cards, videos, webinars, etc.)

  Expenses – Facilitator travel and living expenses and printing and materials costs are invoiced at actual cost (no markup or admin fee). We are happy to book travel through your corporate travel program if that is more economical.

  Translation costs – Only as needed for non-English reading/speaking groups and invoiced at cost (no markup or admin fee).

• How will we know the training is working?

  Global Partners Training uses a state-of-the-art measurement system that operates at two levels:

  1. Assessment of skill adoption – Participants take detailed assessments at the beginning and end of each program, and their pre-training, post-training and change scores are benchmarked against a large historical training database. Participants are motivated by their own visible progress, and scores can be aggregated and analyzed at the group, division and corporate level to provide validation and insight for future training strategy.
  2. Achievement of desired business outcomes – Action plans, interim case reports and final case reports require participants to describe specific real-time customer case situations of their own choosing. In their case reports participants describe a real situation, what specific program skills they applied, the reaction of the customer, the final outcome, the relative impact of their new skills on the final outcome, and a quantitative description of the outcome – new revenue generated, time and cost savings (for the company and for the customer). Participants connect the dots between their new relationship skills and business results, releasing untapped power. Quantitative data can be aggregated to reveal new insights and calculate overall program short-term payback.
• What does Global Partners Training do to make sure the training works?

  To heighten your chances of training success, Global Partners Training maintains rigorous certification standards, a combination of program attendance, demonstration of skills, completion of key exercises and oral presentation of a final written case report that is validated by one of our company Partners. While certification will feel like a real achievement for your individual participants who earn it, and they will proudly display their colorful certificate, we at Global Partners Training focus intently on Certification Rate as the ultimate quality metric for our own team’s performance.

  Relationship training is often more difficult and uncomfortable for participants than technical training, and our programs involve many steps. If participants are getting certified at a high rate, we can be sure our facilitators have connected well with your participants, encouraged them to follow through on attendance and assignments, and drawn out their best efforts. We can also be confident that participants have not only learned new knowledge and new skills, but that they are actively applying those skills on the job, and your company is getting the promised benefits of your training program.

  Should you choose to work with us, you will likely hear a lot about certification. We have found that an important key to participant engagement and certification is top management and local supervisory support for the program, and we will encourage you to help build that support and accountability network.

• Why should my company invest in the Total Customer Focus™ Service Training program now?

  Clients invest in Total Customer Focus™ for many different strategic and tactical purposes:

  • Build on your service strengths to differentiate from competitors.
    Align your service offerings with your customers’ goals as part of a customer success, servitization or XaaS strategy.
  • Bring freshness and global consistency to your service language, culture and brand.
  • Develop a permanent source of new revenue from your service operations.
  • Better align your marketing, sales, product and service teams by adopting internal and external customer focus.
  • And more

  We believe a customer-focused culture creates its own success, and companies in technical industries that make customer relationship training a steady strategic priority are going to be the most resilient, long-term winners.