Workshops and Courses

Our aim at Holis is to deliver deep and long lasting commercial change.   For you to take away tools, skills and attitudes which will change your way of doing business for ever - by Turning Selling into Buying. You will no longer be tempted or pressured into randomly ’spraying & praying’ everything about your offering in the hope that some of the ‘pitch’ will stick; you’ll no longer relinquish control of the direction and level of the conversation to the client; you’ll no longer have the pressure of ‘the close’ pressing down on every sentence….

You’ll master how to ensure that communication flows both ways, without misinterpretation, creating a complete understanding for you of exactly what the client needs and how your capability aligns with that requirement.  Yet always structured in a friendly and facilitative way that leads towards the outcomes you intend and create a desire to buy in the other party.

The ‘Gold Standard’ of the the BCI Programme™ is the Fearless Selling Certification.  This can be gained in several different ways (which we can tailor to a company’s situation), but usually comprises the three main modules:

Module A:

Communication is a Two Way Street - Aligning your Offering with what your customers Actually Need

Module B:

Connecting with the Customer - Transforming a Business Conversation into a Request to Buy

Module C:

Making It All Happen - Applying Powerful Customer Insights to Seal the Agreement

plus the

Management Module:

Keeping the Furniture Shifted - Secure your Investment by ensuring that Change really Sticks

A simple ‘way in’ to the programme is via a (usually one day) ABC Analysis™ which precisely translates your offering into what would motivate someone to buy it.  It transforms the many and complex features & functions of your capability into a set of fundamental psychological drivers why someone would do business with you - the TakeAways™.  These go much farther than ‘Value Propositions’ and ‘Benefits from Buying’ - and generate you an objective measure of the sale in a way that no other way does.

Much of the reason for a lack of success in opening, managing, predicting and closing a sales opportunity comes from the pressure that a person feels to succeed and the unconscious actions and re-actions that come from those demands.  This can create dangerous guesses & assumptions, unease about what they are selling, ‘dark zones’ where they fear to go (such as pricing discussions) and sometimes even downright fabrication to ’get the sale’.  As in so many situations, knowledge is power.

Whether it’s just an ABC Analysis™ of an offering into a market, or a Full 5 day Certification Course, students create an immediately useable set of TakeAways™ and, just as importantly, the skills to replicate the exercise on other offerings, in othe markets.  In the full course, they learn a wide variety of techniques to use these, and the associated Convincers™, so that they can then focus their energy on their real strengths - domain knowledge, creativity, integrity, enthusiasm, technology etc.  Where’s the fear now…..?

The programme focusses on how people work operationally - every day and face-to-face.  They find that they can now quickly and fearlessly elicit what the customer wants to take away from working with them, its true, not assumed, value, and the information needed to make that person an advocate of buying what is offered.  This training is not just for sales staff - the skills taken away can be employed by presales, support, management, customer service or marketing staff alike to improve the profitability and effectiveness of the operation.

The BCI Programme™ is compatible with every other major corporate methodology and adds immediate value to an existing operation.  But if a startup or new division has no consistent way of running sales, it can be the base for building a complete management, marketing, support and product management structure.

Who should attend the Fearless Selling Certification Course?

  • new business sales professionals and account managers
  • entrepreneurs and startup business owners
  • technical and business pre-sales consultants
  • sales managers/directors
  • marketing and product management
  • anyone with ideas, services or concepts to ’sell’ to someone else
  • project managers and technical or business analysts
  • inside sales and inbound call centres
  • senior budget holders who need to create a win-win for them and suppliers
  • senior purchasing and contracting professionals
  • anyone who manages downstream resellers, distributors or VARs
  • investment bankers, venture capitalists and M&A specialists

Our Foundation Course in Advanced Business Communication© is for absolutely everyone.  It is as useful for the person on the reception desk as for the CEO, the head of production and everyone else in between; even if each person uses it in a different way.  ABC© focuses on tearing down the old ’spray & pray’ method of getting ideas across and converts the process into a far more effective Two Way Street.  This is a challenging but indispensable course that focuses on the practical learning, exercising and consolidation of a range of powerful new techniques in communication, awareness, influence, persuasion and understanding.  ABC© is based upon many years of business experience and the latest studies of cognitive and behavioural psychology.  Many of its techniques and structures come from the ‘everyday use’ of Neuro-Linguistic Programming to broaden and strengthen its applicability and repeatability.

The course delivers a set of practical skills and insights that can be applied directly and immediately to the area of work or interest of the attendee.  For many students this course will be a life or job transforming experience; for some it will be a source of inspiration for applying their own expertise better; for others it will be a source of mould-breaking tools to add to those skills they already possess.

For full details, please download the course description:
ABC Foundation Course Description (pdf format).

Who should attend the Advanced Business Communication Course?

Those who will gain most benefit from this 3 x 1/2 day course include:

  • sales professionals – salespeople, sole traders or sales management/directors
  • senior budget holders, managers
  • customer service at every level - both face-to-face and remote
  • purchasing & negotiating professionals
  • marketing professionals – analysts, product management, creative and media
  • commercial management, business development and HR
  • finance – broking, investment banking, settlement, retail and wealth management
  • distribution, channel management, reselling, logistics and transportation