Outclass Your Competition for Sales Professionals

An interactive one-day workshop on etiquette and protocol for sales professionals

It's much harder to get business than it is to lose it. Consumers have never had more choices for researching and purchasing products. Tero's Outclass Your Competition workshop, customized for the unique needs of sales professionals, will train your staff to take advantage of your most precious competitive assets - your relationships. Participants in the program learn the skills to interact with others such that healthy relationships take center stage. After all, it's less expensive to get business from existing customers than it is to find new ones.

Vic Hunter, author of Business to Business Marketing, indicates it can be 30-40 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to manage existing customers. A 5% increase in customer retention equates to a 25-55% increase in profitability! U.S. businesses are now losing half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one, according to Frederick F. Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect. Customer retention is the cornerstone of healthy business. Customer churn costs companies millions each year.

The ability to Outclass Your Competition has never been more critical. Skillfully handling interpersonal interactions leads to retention of existing customers and to an improved perception of your organization by future customers.

According to research conducted by Harvard University, Carnegie Foundation, and Stanford Research Institute, 85 percent of job success is based on people skills. Tero International, Inc. helps professionals master the critical but often overlooked skills needed to Outclass Your Competition. At Tero, we call Etiquette and Protocol a Business Intelligence, or B.Q., and we believe it is an intelligence you cannot afford to be without.

Business Etiquette

Have you ever thought about the difference between the person whose career seems to be taking off, and someone equally skilled that can't seem to get the same breaks?

More often than not, that star employee has a good grasp of something called Business Etiquette, a knowledge of the proper form, rules, manners, or customs required in specific situations, as well as how to carry out those requirements.

Outclass Your Competition will increase your business intelligence by informing and instructing you in the vital skills needed to thrive, not just survive, in any business environment.

Dining Skills

Astute professionals equate good manners at the table with competence in business. Whether a new hire, or a seasoned executive, dining skills play a major role in business today. The business breakfast, lunch and dinner have become the venue for important meetings, networking opportunities and interviews.

Whether you are a host, or a guest at a business function, Outclass Your Competition will prepare you to dine and entertain with skill and confidence.

Have you ever thought about how business etiquette skills contribute to your bottom line? Consider these tales from the trenches.

A Vice-President of Sales took an important prospect out to lunch. The customer was seriously considering doing business with the VPs company until the soup course arrived. Maybe it can be blamed on the soup that activated his sinuses and "blew" the contract, but when the VP blew his nose into his napkin, the appalled customer withdrew any notion of doing business with him.

In another incident, an eager new hire hurried into his first board meeting and sat down quickly. Unfortunately, he chose the seat reserved for the Chairman of the Board, and was asked to move. Regrettably, he gave the perception that he was unobservant and unaware. Attributes that may or may not be true, but certainly leave a negative impression.

Ready for one more faux pas? This one is a reflection of global concerns. On being presented a business card by a visiting Japanese client, an American executive proceeded to make notes on the card, and then slide it into his back pocket. The executive failed to understand why he did not get the client's business. He did not understand that to the Japanese, a business card is a reflection of a person's identity, and is handled with the utmost respect.

The experiences of the vice-president, the new hire, and the unknowing executive affirm a recent quote from a Fortune 500 CEO: "Manners may not be considered an executive skill, but it is especially hard to imagine why anyone negotiating a rise to the top would consider it possible to skip learning the requirements. It makes one wonder, what else did they skip?"

Scenarios such as the ones cited above (and sadly there are too many of them) have prompted executives to ask:

Could acquiring this knowledge affect my company's bottom line?

For more than two decades, Tero International has enjoyed a reputation for translating the most recent, relevant research and knowledge on personal and interpersonal skills into fun, interactive, educational workshops. Skills and knowledge that are guaranteed to make a difference.

Outclass Your Competition is no exception. The curriculum for this program is drawn from the extensive research from The Protocol School of Washington® in D.C.

The Protocol School of Washington, and its President, Pamela Eyring, are dedicated to researching the topics of business etiquette, dining skills and international protocol, critical for success in today's competitive business environment. The same curriculum taught in Tero's Outclass Your Competition program is taught at the highest levels of business and government. There is no better resource for the latest information about these important subjects.