Week 2 was spent in Singapore working with a large global networking company delivering workshops on Customer-Centric Selling. This highly successful networking company realized that their sales teams were focused on “pushing” products and fulfilling customer needs. The company wants to change their business approach to better connect with customers business outcomes so that sales teams help customers plan for how to achieve those outcomes. This approach will help sales teams differentiate themselves from competitors and shift more into demand creation with the customers, creating “pull”.
The workshops begin a comprehensive nine month program that will include management coaching and account team development in 8 countries. The workshops combined “un-learning” with “re-learning” and role playing to see how effective a shift to customer-centric approach can work. My responsibility will for coaching management and teams in the countries of Malaysia & Thailand. In future blogs I will share our progress and challenges
The joy of business travel! Originally this would have been the halfway point of these international travels but now is only 40% complete because another week got added onto the trip. Another joy of international travel is that I lost a day on the trip from Santiago, Chile to Singapore! I left Chile on Friday morning and arrived in Singapore on Sunday evening. What happened to Saturday? When I checked into the hotel in Singapore, the clerk told me it was Sunday and I didn’t believe her! It just couldn’t be! But, she was correct and I had lost a day in transit! So in addition to losing a day, I will lose a whole week with one extra week added on to this business trip.
After a busy workshop day, one of the evenings was spent enjoying Singapore. We visited Gardens by the Bay which is a high tech city garden that seemed to combine nature with Dr. Seuss, Willie Wonka and Disney. Another evening we touch the sky with dinner at the top of the Marina Bay Sands (hotel, condos & business towers). The Marina Bay Sands had us soaring 60 stories above the city for incredible views and great food. We couldn’t take our eyes off the skyline. The workshops and Singapore are magical and fun.
Singapore is city, state and country all wrapped into one. The country is actually made up of 63 islands. It is located 80+ miles north of the Equator so the temperature is quite warm and wonderful. This is a drier time of year so the temperature and humidity are quite comfortable. There are 5 million people in the country and the country has the third highest per capita income in the world! The city & country is very clean, modern and safe. It is also a very expensive city to live in. Prices for goods, services and food are equivalent to American prices, which seemed surprising. The population is highly diverse; the majorities are Chinese, Malaysian and Indian. Reflecting this diversity, the country has four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. English is the language of commerce (business) so English is spoken everywhere which make traveling here very easy for me.
We are here quite close to the Chinese New Year Festivities which last for more than a week. The multi-day celebration is observed here in Singapore and throughout Asia. The city is all decorated for the festivities; special bakery goods are prepared and sold. There is a sense of excitement throughout the city. This is the year of the snake, specifically the water snake. During this year of the Snake, it is believed that it will be a year of inner growth, spirituality, and discovering the hidden meanings of things come to the forefront. We hope that our customer-centric selling workshops will be part of that growth.