QAS uses Gazing to speak the Language of Success (page 2)

Stuart and John were impressed by Gazing’s ‘matter of fact’ presentation style, can-do attitude and willingness to be measured. “A real desire to be held accountable” is how John describes Gazing.

But critically, the QAS management team were impressed by Gazing’s ‘sales cycle’ model which they felt, could offer the company some real competitive advantages. So what is unique about Gazing’s training approach that helped it win the QAS business? The answer lies in their map-based methodology and their focus on helping teams and individuals to achieve high levels of performance whilst under pressure.

John Esposito, a founding Director of the company, describes Gazing’s strengths more simply. He says “through our early work with coaching high performance athletes, we knew that the ability to deliver is largely based on the ability to cope with the pressure of the situation. We applied this thinking to the commercial world and found the same thing; having highly developed technical sales skills is irrelevant if you can’t cope with the pressure”.

Esposito’s team then translated this thinking into ‘Performance Maps’. These one-page documents contain all the elements that clients must be aware of if they want to perform at the highest level, plus - and of no less importance - an awareness of the physiological factors that can prevent that performance level from being achieved.  Gazing co-founder and CEO, Martin Fairn, explains further. He said “Maps are essentially navigational aids that help people plot a route to their destination. We have applied that thinking to our courses such that delegates can locate where they are in a situation, and then plot a route to their ultimate objective, be it to close a sale, or whatever”.

He went on “maps have the added advantage of all the required information is available on one page. Again, we have adapted that philosophy, so that all the models used in our courses can be presented on one page”. It would be wrong, however to label the simplicity of Gazing’s approach as a simple approach. All their courses are underpinned by a strong theoretical base, more especially underpinning scientific theory.

Its ‘Inside Sales’ course – one of the three courses first taken up by QAS along with ‘Inside Managing Sales’ and ‘Inside Strategic Account Management’ –recognises that the decision to buy is entirely made inside the head of the buyer. The training courses therefore focus on helping delegates learn more about the ‘predictable and consistent sequence of psychological states that a buyer moves through during any successful sale’.

According to Esposito, who helped design the course, “having a clear understanding about these stages and the practical detail of how to ‘move’ the buyer through them provides the seller with a powerful and practical tool that can guide thought and action in the interactive setting”.

For Nick Cronin, one of the many long serving members of the QAS sales team (in his case a seven year veteran and now a Key Account Manager responsible for liaising with large scale system integrators), the bigger the customer, the more useful the maps became. He said, “When dealing with the public sector, for example, the maps have proved vital in plotting where the decision-making cycle is. It also helps us locate where the customer is, rather than where we are. In other words, we can better understand their drivers and requirements, rather than simply impose our features”.