Business Infrastructure Workshops and Customized Consulting

Growth Development Associates, Inc. has developed its strategic support programs around the understanding that business growth and service excellence must be planned and can only be sustained through organizational infrastructure. With the proper infrastructure components, organizations can ensure outstanding results from the newest employees through their very best performers, consistently uplifting results across the organization.

Growth Development Associates Inc. will help clients develop all or part of these infrastructure components to integrate them into daily practice. Every Growth Development Associates engagement is customized to meet the needs of the client. However, our business infrastructure workshops take on a few basic forms, including:

• Tactical Plan Workshop
• Strategic Planning Services
• Recruiting, Hiring and Managing the Outside Sales Force

GDA's Tactical Plan Workshop ...Integrating Your Business Infrastructure

Growth Development Associates, Inc. (GDA) has built its programs around the belief that business growth and service excellence must be planned and can only be sustained through organizational infrastructure. With the proper infrastructure components, organizations can ensure outstanding results even from otherwise average performers, consistently uplifting results across the organization. The GDA philosophy is as follows:

• Corporate strategy must be clear, visionary, and embraced by every member of the organization.
• Managers must manage to it daily. If individuals can attain self-actualization without dealing with the difficult parts of the strategy, their behavior will not support the desired strategic results
• Hence, the organization’s compensation and reward mechanisms must directly support the corporate strategy.
• Customer delight must be integrated throughout the infrastructure.
• Finally, employees cannot execute if they do not have the skills. More important than these components are the lines of process and communication that sync them together.

GDA’s Tactical Plan Workshop–Integrate current year objectives with management, compensation, recognition, customer satisfaction and skills to produce this year’s sales result

The GDA Tactical Plan Workshop is customized to client specifications and needs. The workshop includes incorporation or the development of clear and quantified objectives that serve as the basis for planning and development activities. A trained GDA facilitator leads attendees to determine the linkages and interdependencies between each of five pivotal elements as they pertain to the accomplishment of these objectives. The result is a clear set of tasks, programs and action items that serve as the infrastructure framework for new tools, incentives, communications programs, and training refresh and reevaluation systems.

GDA’s facilitated planning session feature the following deliverables.

• Preliminary GDA assessment and reporting services
• Clear and quantified objectives that serve as the basis for evolving a new sales culture
• A comprehensive infrastructure integration process to assure the expectations of this new sales culture
• Trained GDA facilitation by experienced former sales managers and executives who are skilled at achieving consensus or breakthrough
• Supporting linkages and interdependencies established and planned throughout the process
• Cross referenced, tactical plan documentation produced and distributed by GDA

Call GDA at 800-966-4321 for more about the Tactical Plan Workshop

The Tactical Plan Workshop  can be combined with Managing Performance and Mentor to implement a complete and proven performance management culture.

Strategic Planning Session

The structured Strategic Planning Session process available from Growth Development Associates, Inc. has been described as the most comprehensive, breakthrough planning methodology that participants have ever seen. The key differentiators between this product and others readily available from consultants worldwide include the integration of the structured planning components, the role quality and interaction of the facilitators, and the patented output-tracking document produced by Growth Development Associates at the conclusion of every session.

The results of this business infrastructure workshop are delivered in just three days. The session involves the senior executive and his or her direct reports, plus key cross-functional executive representatives, for three consecutive days in an off-site planning environment. The planning team will develop and gain 100% agreement on the organization's:

• Mission: The mission is painstakingly structured in a sentence that conveys the business of the organization and its long-term vision of success.
• Objectives: From the mission, the team develops a set of short-term objectives that collectively indicate significant progress toward that mission.
• Obstacles: All known internal and external obstacles are identified that could prevent or hinder the accomplishment of the objectives.
• Action items: Action items are created until the team sees how to remove or overcome every obstacle to success.
• Responsible parties: The participating managers accept responsibility to see that each action item gets completed by the date assigned.

Every point is discussed until the group is in unanimous agreement. The entire organization embarks on a focused, unified march toward success.

The GDA facilitator plays three key roles to the success of the process:

• As an "outsider" with twenty-five years of in-field experience, the facilitator skillfully probes, pushes, pulls, and incites the interactive discussion without bias, emotion or political fear.
• As a scribe, the facilitator frees the participants of note taking and future discrepancy of perception.
• Equally important, the facilitator prepares documentation in our copyrighted format that fosters execution of the plan. The facilitator's documentation of the session includes every point, cross-referenced to the specific objective, obstacle or action item it references, and a personal section (also cross-referenced) that reformats the action items in date sequence for each participant. Unlike most strategic plan documents that are completed and filed in the bottom drawer for the remainder of the year, this document is structured for accountability and use.

The benefits of a GDA facilitated Strategic Planning Session are enormous. The two most often cited benefits include a powerful focused direction with detailed tactics and a deep sense of team trust and commitment. Other benefits include:

• Executives and their direct and indirect teammates achieve unanimous agreement over the direction, strategies, and tactics of the business.
• Each functional area is refocused on its role as an integrated part of a whole, and acquires new and renewed assurances of support from the other departments.
• Any walls born out of reporting structure, politics, lack of communication, differing measurement systems, or administrative systems are replaced with forward-looking teamwork.
• Our facilitators are also trained consultants, sales managers, and instructors, and are frequently called upon by the group to "break role" in leading a discussion around sales strategy, management process or business plan recommendation.

Participants gain tremendous value from the process and substantive, personal growth from the interaction between the Growth Development Associates Inc. facilitator and all involved. Some of the organizations very pleased with the Growth Development Associates Inc. Strategic Planning Process include American Express, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, the US Department of Education, Ingram Micro and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Recruiting, Hiring and Managing the Outside Sales Force

It's no secret in business that you win by recruiting, hiring, and managing the highest quality people. The best companies start with their strategic plan as a basis to find, assess and recruit the right sales people.

In Growth Development Associates Inc.'s class Hiring and Managing a Sales Force we outline a sound process used by top-flight companies. We use the output of what is typically achieved in our Tactical Plan Workshop session, in conjunction with in-class exercises. These exercises prepare the customer for the hiring process to include desired product skills, sales skills, industry skills, application skills and personality traits. We outline strategies for attracting, interviewing, assessing and selecting from your candidate base.

To get optimum results from your sales talent they must be managed effectively. Performance Planning, Development Planning, and Counseling are the basic professional building blocks of personnel management. See our Managing Performance page for more details on our management training course.