You may not be aware that OTD began life as an organisation that delivered single training events.
Those events often consisted of a day or two at a time. Naturally, it didn’t allow us time to consolidate learning outcomes and inspire lasting change.
It’s why everything we do nowadays is focused on effective, long-lasting customer relationships.
From training manuals to benchmarking
Take one particular European organisation.
We began working together more than three years ago, writing training manuals for a challenging product.
The project was designed to streamline and future proof the materials, so they could follow the same format whatever the product.
Susie Rixon, who has led OTD’s involvement explains: “This isn’t really something we specialise in, as our skills are better suited to designing, delivering, benchmarking and coaching. It took some hours of approval to get it right but the customer liked it and we’ve since moved on from there.”
Susie is now working with Ali Barker and Toni Addinall on a benchmarking project for the same customer. It is honing in on where the salesforce is now, where the customer would like them to be and how we can help to get them there.
The two phase programme has involved representatives from some 13 European countries, including Spain, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland and Belgium.
“We’ve raised the bar in every single country,” adds Susie. “Some countries were initially resistant to joining the programme but it has really gathered momentum. It was so well received in Poland, for instance, that an additional eight people asked to go through it.”
Product launch programme
The relationship continues to grow.
We’ve recently been involved in designing an oncology product launch programme in Germany led by Roberta Pezzarossa and Christine Woodford, with three more to come in the UK, Austria and Czech Republic.
In parallel, Louise Wilson has been working on a Key Account Management programme and we’ve also delivered Power Presenter to teams in Poland.
Susie says: “All of these people are good and experienced, it’s about how we can make them great. It’s been a challenging journey with the customer but we’ve had a lot of good conversations and have progressed from a complex training manual to being heavily involved in their launch conferences. They’re a great company and I have a really strong relationship with them.”