Strategic Internal Business Partner

Objectives:

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
• Know how to gain access to and establish credibility with line executives

Contents:

Business Partnership 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 behavior as a business partner
• Basic principles of being a consultant business partner
• How people/departments “buy” and their levels of need
• Organizational interdependence
• Working 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 behavior
• Staying in alignment throughout the cycle
• Anticipating the buyer’s behavior
• 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 buyer to admit and own their problem or needs
• Problem diagnosis
• Vision creation and your capability statement
• Close the meeting and agree further exploration

Buyer Qualification

• Buyer (internal customer) qualification
• Negotiating the ‘sell’ cycle
• Proposal definition
• Gaining access to the real decision maker
• Sell 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