Course Descriptions

We offer comprehensive teambuilding, leadership development and sales education programs. Representative courses are described on the following pages. Each description provides a basic overview, the intended audience, length, skill development and the learning methodology.

There are a number of distinctive approaches to Tilden & Associates’ training:
  • Sales & Adult Education – We know them both. No other firm combines the rich understanding of teaching and learning with our practical experiences and successes in organizational development and adult education.
  • Live Ammunition – Our instruction is state of the art and draws upon sophisticated theories and thinkers. But, these are not heads in the clouds experiences. All courses actively apply valuable learning to live prospects, clients and team members.
  • Focus on Results – Most training suffers from the hideous “learning–doing” gap. We are all familiar with the problems of investing heavily in training only to have it all left behind in the classroom. We build bridges to the field and reinforce application of what has been learned. Clients have experienced measured sales performance gains as high as 483%.
  •  Customized – All of the programs described below are customized to the unique needs of the client. The summaries are intended to provide a sample of the kinds of programs we can offer and the scope of our training program.  

Successful Selling to Type: SST® 

Overview

SST® applies Carl Jung’s theory of personality types (upon which the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is also based) to the selling process. The principle objective of SST is to improve communication effectiveness by “Balancing” messages to appeal to all styles and to “Shade” them when we know the preferences of the audience.
Target Audience– Anyone who would benefit from self – understanding and improved communication skills
Length – Four half-day modules, depending on client needs.

Skill Development

Participants learn:
  • Their own preferences for thinking and communicating
  •  Similarities and differences with co-workers
  •  Tendencies to send messages the way, we not necessarily they, would like to receive them
  •  How to ask Fact, Problem, Consequence and “What if” questions
  •  Three Stage Rocket listening
  •   Four buyer influences
  •   How to “Balance” and “Shade” communication

Learning Methodology

A three-step verification to determine participants’ types is conducted. The Human Grid exercise assigns participants to positions consistent with their four- letter code. A dialogue is facilitated regarding understandings of existing communication patterns and implications for applying the model to sales prospects and clients. The Three Stage Rocket exercise develops empathic listening skills. Type alike groups plan and deliver customized messages for real life prospects and clients.

Managers Instrument Panel

Overview

The Managers Instrument Panel is introduced in pre-work and managers are asked to perform an initial self-assessment as well as one for how they estimate their teams would rate them on the six dials: Expectations, Rewards, Consequences, Talents, Skills and Tools. Instruction for the concepts and skills behind each dial is highly interactive and applied. Managers refine their assessment of their team members through group discussion and plan performance reinforcement and improvement strategies.
 
Target Audience- Managers
Length – One day

Skill Development

  •   Setting expectations
  •   Understanding that managers don’t get what they expect. Rather, they get what they inspect.
  •   Extrinsic and Intrinsic rewards and when to use them
  •   Using descriptive communication when rendering consequences
  •   Recruiting and retaining talent
  •   Understanding the important difference between talent and skill
  •   Coaching for skills
  •   Performance =  Skills X Motivation
  •   Basics of leading effective meetings
  •   Performance reviews

Learning Methodologies

This is a highly interactive course with application to real life management situations and challenges. Case studies are used heavily. Depending on class size can be offered as a seminar.
Prerequisite – None

Consultative Selling 101

Overview

Introduction to Consultative Selling provides fundamental skills and tools to succeed in sales.
Target Audience- Rookies to veterans looking for a new perspective on selling
Length – Two days

Skill Development

  •  Essential elements of a sales process
  •  Key differentiators of consultative, value adding approach
  •  Pipeline management
  • Establishing milestones
  • Market segmentation
  • Value creation by commodity, consultative and partnership buyers
  • Formulating an Account Strategy
  • Effective Questioning
  • Planning & executing the investigation with customized case studies
  •  Buyer Analysis Models
  • The art & science of listening
  • Practicing the Elevator Pitch
  • Presentation skills: summarizing, engaging the client, talking pages and incorporating stories
  • Delivering powerful presentations with customized case studies
  • Plan and deliver presentations with case studies

Learning Methodology

We use a highly interactive teaching method with participants applying concepts and tools to real life clients and prospects.

Prospecting

Overview

Prospecting may simultaneously be the most important and most neglected selling skill. This training deficiency is addressed in the prospecting course by offering a highly tactical and applied approach that uses live prospects as the raw material.
Target Audience– Anyone who prospects for new business opportunities
 
Length– One full day

Skill Development

  • Identifying High Probability Buyers
  • Formulating Initial Value Propositions
  • Top Down Prospecting techniques
  • Initial Contact & Evaluation
  • Miller-Heiman response mode model (Growth, Trouble, Even Keel and Over Confident)
  • Five steps to applying Permission Marketing

Learning Methodologies

Pre-work assignments consist of written exercises for Target Identification, Formulating Initial Value Propositions and Initial Contact. Prospecting phone calls are role played (recorded for later review) and critiqued by other participants. Top- Down prospecting letters are prepared and follow-up phone calls role played.

Negotiation Skills 

Overview

Negotiation Skills highlights the “Issues-Positions-Interests” model. Other core concepts include the Negotiations Triangle, framing arguments, establishing BATNAS (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreements) and the importance of investigating and understanding the other party. Case Studies, role plays and popular films are used as teaching methods.
Target Audience-  Anyone who sells or is involved in negotiations.
Length – One to two days depending on client needs.
Target Audience- All staff who are involved in negotiations.

Skill Development

  •  The Negotiation Triangle
    •   Investigation
    •   Demonstrating Capability
    •   Obtaining Commitment
  • Mutual Benefit versus Adversarial Negotiation
  • The power of BATNAS (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)
  • The importance of preparation
  •  Framing arguments
  •  Avoiding the trap of negotiating on “positions”
  •  How to negotiate on “interests”
  •  The importance of internal negotiating
  •  Personal styles and negotiation
  •  Defining creative “win-win” outcomes
  •  Negotiating in a team setting

Learning Methodologies

A highly interactive teaching learning method is applied. Participants use actual client situations that are role played during the course with accompanying strategies set in place for real life post –training delivery.  Film classics like Casablanca are used to illustrate negotiation skills and tactics.

Presentation Skills

Overview

Presentation Skills focuses on providing skills and tools to make effective presentations from initial qualifications to short listed finals. The course is organized around the three elements of effective presentations: Content, Packaging & Delivery. The morning is an instructor led overview. The afternoon is structured like a laboratory with each participant delivering two presentations: an initial presentation that the group critiques; and a second one that incorporates those suggestions.
Target Audience- Everyone who presents to both external and internal audiences
Length – One day to two days depending upon the number of participants

Skill Development

  • Three elements of every effective presentation:
    • Inform
    •  Learn
    •  Persuade
  •  Presentation Strategy Tree to ensure effective organization
  •  Designing the Presentation
    •  Design Crimes
    •  Choosing the right medium
    •  Limitations of Powerpoint
    •   Rehearsal
  • Presentation logistics
  • Raising your confidence
  • Engaging the audience
  • Curing presentation anxiety
  • Incorporating stories
  • Avoiding the “Ceremony of the Book”
  • Achieving closure on objectives

Learning Methodologies

Each participant presents a real–life, pending presentation to other workshop members that is video recorded for future reference. Other participants and instructors critique the presentations to provide suggestions for improvement for the revised presentation delivered later in the day. Following the workshop, participants provide their revised presentations to instructors for final review and comment.

Silo Bridging

 Overview

Amount of comment in business literature has been offered on silos and their deleterious effects, most has focused on busting them from the top down. Rather than looking at silos from the perspective of the senior level executive, Silo Bridging will examine what it takes for the mid-level person in the organization to navigate effectively when he or she needs to reach across more than one business unit to deliver value for a client, whether it be internal or external.
Two core assumptions serve as a foundation:  Number one is that successful mid-level performers require more than technical skills. They also require the ability to build interpersonal relationships. The second core assumption is that the culture of a silo is determined by the people who inhabit it, particularly the silo’s leadership. Thus, the nature of a silo is determined by its people more than its function like sales or operations.
Target Audience – Staff who need to bridge silos to be effective
Length – One day

Skill Development

Participants learn:
  • Their own interpersonal needs profile from the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO) assessment.
  • How to assess their current silo whether it be:
    • Let’s Meet
    • Salute & Do it
    • We Are Family
  • How to read and identify interpersonal obstacles in the silo they need to bridge.
  • How to build a bridge to be effective in the targeted silo

Learning Methodology

Participants take the FIRO on line and receive their interpersonal needs profile.The FIRO is interpreted in the workshop and results are explained in the context of bridging silos. Silo Bridging tools are introduced and mastered through case study exercises. Plans are crafted for implementation and follow-up conferences with the instructor are set.

Type & Time Management

Overview

This course builds on a core Jungian concept: there are natural differences for thinking and communicating that manifest themselves in our approaches to work. Once participants understand their own preferences for managing time and tasks, they are able to improve productivity and interpersonal effectiveness.

Target Audience- This course targets all people who are interested in improving their personal productivity.
Length – One day

Skill Development

  •  Goal setting
  • Personal planning
  • Scheduling
  • Procrastination
  • Time management tools and disciplines
  • Pack rat syndrome
  •  Work station organization
  •  Work habits
  • Managing the tyranny of the urgent
  • Scheduling a Schultz Power Hour

Learning Methodologies

This course begins with a personal productivity assessment that pinpoints both strengths and areas for improvement. Type and Time always generates good-natured humor as natural differences in approaching time and task management are explored and shared. The program concludes with an action plan for each participant. Skills and disciplines from this course apply to all time management tools whether paper or electronic.

Customer Service

 Overview

Sales and customer service are hand and glove functions that represent the primary value adding opportunities for modern businesses. They also require fundamentally similar skills of asking good questions, listening and helping customers and clients solve problems.
Target Audience- All staff who have regular contact with customers and clients.
Length – One day

Skill Development

  • Economic implications of customer retention
  • Mastering the “Customer Service Flow Chart”
  • Key customer service questions
  • Listening skills
  • Defusing irate customers
  • Feel, Felt, Found technique
  • Five forbidden phrases
  • Terrorists and Apostles
  • Importance of follow-up

 Learning Methodologies

This course employs a mix of instruction with practice that calls upon real life experiences participants have had both as customers and in customer service. Each case is taken trough the Customer Service Flow Chart to reinforce the importance of using a systematic and replicable approach with customer issues.

Team Selling

Overview

SST® is built on the same model as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Carl Jung’s theory of personality types. Like the MBTI, SST® can be used as a foundation to improve teamwork and team selling.

Target Audience- Groups desiring to become teams and teams looking to improve sales performance

 Length – One to two days depending on client needs

 Skill Development

  • Similarities and differences among co-workers
  • Team problem solving style
  • Conflict resolution
  • Z Problem solving method
  • Team strengths and weaknesses
  • Descriptive versus Evaluative communication
  • The hideous “Yes, but…”
  • Group task and process
  • Team Leadership roles
    • Task
    • Process
    • Challenger
  • Principles of Team Selling

 Learning Methodologies

This course begins with the same three – step verification to determine personality type that is employed in SST®. Follow-up methodologies consist of social laboratories where the understanding of the model allows the team to apply it to conflict resolution and problem solving. Real life issues are tackled using the Z –Problem-solving model with team members rotating through the different roles of Task, Process and challenger leadership

Adaptable Leader Program

What is it that motivates people to perform at the highest levels? Is it the promise of extrinsic rewards like bonuses or salary increases? While every organization offers monetary extrinsic rewards, the research (Deci, 1985; Kohn, 1993 & Rackham, 1991) shows they are only part of the performance formula.

Indeed, when it comes to working smarter, offering a carrot at the end of a stick has little to no impact. This is when the often neglected intrinsic rewards are required to fuel engagement and motivate team members to do their best work.
While intrinsic rewards cost little in terms of dollars or euros, they require an investment in understanding what makes each team member tick. Our Adaptable Leader program, successfully conducted for hundreds of leaders around the globe provides easy to understand insights on how to provide the unique intrinsic rewards that will drive performance to the highest level.
The foundation of Adaptable Leadership is the seventeen page Leadership Report based on two assessments: the MBTI and FIRO. Both models have rich histories stretching all the way back to applications to military assignments in World War II. The MBTI helps us understand similarities and differences in how we think and communicate. Offering a valuable complement to the MBTI, the FIRO enables managers to recognize and address the different interpersonal needs of their team members.
Length- The Adaptable Leader program can be delivered in either a one-to-one coaching format or a blend of group instruction followed by briefer coaching sessions.
Skill Development – 
  • Leadership style based on MBTI
  • Leadership approach based on FIRO
  • Bases for power and influence
  • Preferred roles in teams
  • Problem solving
  • Parallel Agenda
  • Organizational culture
  • Sources of power and influence
  • Probable leadership strengths & weaknesses
  • Dealing with change and stress
  • How to adapt to interpersonal needs of team members and provide intrinsic rewards to drive performance

Learning Methodologies- MBTI & FIRO are interpreted in a group or one-to-one coaching sessions. Topics listed as bullets under “Skill Development” are coached, taught and learned. One by one, interpersonal needs of team members are determined and adaptable leader strategies set in place for implementation. Results are reviewed in follow-up coaching sessions.