Participants on the Strategic Internal Business Partner training course will be able to:

• Know how needs develop in the mind of department heads
• Know how internal customers make the decision to “buy”
• Know how to strategically align yourself to the “buyer’s” psychological buying phases
• Know how to handle risk objections
• Convince the internal customer that you understand their business
• Get the internal customer to admit and focus on problems you can address
• Diagnose business problems with a bias toward your capabilities
• How to gain access to and establish credibility with line executives

Content:

Business Patronship Skills

• Consulting, selling, and persuasion difficulties of participants
• Identifying where internal customers are having problems
• Background to the role and responsibilities of business partners
• Managing your behaviour as a business partner
• Basic principles of being a consultant business partner
• How people/departments “buy” and their levels of need
• Organizational interdependence
• Work with sponsors and decision-makers

Understanding Your Audience

• Shifting concerns throughout the ‘buy’ cycle.
• Phases of the buying process
• Addressing buyer objections by phase
• Alignment of buying and consulting behaviour
• Staying in alignment throughout the cycle
• Anticipating the buyer’s behaviour
• Closing without closing and vision creation
• Developing solutions when the buyer has complex problems, and you have intangible capabilities.
• Conducting a thorough diagnosis of needs
• Leading the buyer to an agreed vision

Leading, Motivating, and Securing Strategic Alignment

• Strategic alignment
• Initial meeting introduction
• Meeting objective and your positioning statement
• Transition into vision creation
• Getting buyers to admit and own their problems or needs.
• Problem diagnosis
• Vision creation and your capability statement
• Close the meeting and agree on further exploration.

Buyer Qualification

• Buyer (internal customer) qualification
• Negotiating the ‘sell’ cycle.
• Proposal definition
• Gaining access to the real decision maker
• Cell cycle control emails
• When to use key consulting steps
• Consulting activity by phase
• Competitive strategies
• Building tactical competitive tools using the language of your internal customer

From Theory to Implementation

• Negotiation skills
• Buyer’s and the business partner’s emotional hurdle
• How to negotiate the ‘sell’ cycle in advance
• The five components of cost justification using a specific cost justification model
• How to maximize utilization of technical and other in-house resources
• How to work with third-party consultants
• Course summary and review

Training Methodology

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.