GDA's Preferred Partner

...Achieve New and Enriched Partnerships Throughout Your Account

After detailed studies and years of experience from such companies as IBM, Xerox, AT&T, and Hewlett-Packard, GDA has identified the specific activities, behaviors and relationships that consistently result in “preferred partner” relationships in major accounts. These activities have been developed into six learning modules followed by field activities to be implemented by attendees of the Preferred Partner workshop. Some of these activities will produce closed business and pipeline within days, others are designed to identify and engage the longer term, system-wide mega opportunities that many sales teams only dream of. Part training and part account planning, this workshop is best leveraged by attendance of the cross-functional sales teams. Ask yourself:

• Can you initiate new sales at will from your recorded installed base within each of your key customer accounts?
• Do your key customers make you a part of their management team?
• Do your post-installation sales exceed your initial sale for all key accounts?
• Do you have great relationships with all of the key executives in your key accounts?

GDA’s Preferred Partner – Account specific workshop to initiate new business to close within days and launch mega-deals for closure within months

Graduates of the Preferred Partner Workshop will have enhanced their customers' preference for their organization and its products and services versus all competition. Soon after completing the workshop, participating account teams should have closed near-term sales, developed very large long term opportunities and made measurable progress toward obtaining "Preferred Partner" status in their key accounts.

Specific benefits will include:

• Positioning as the de facto Partner of choice
• Early involvement in customers' strategic plans
• Delivered proposals for sole-source new orders
• Delivered proposals for sole-source repeat and volume orders
• Continuous customer investment in education on your products and services
• Your company’s presence increased throughout the account
• Continuously growing business pipeline
• Customer perception of your company as the value added business partner

This results-oriented, one day workshop is designed to establish your sales team as the Preferred Partner in key accounts. The class features specific activities, resulting in new orders, upgrades and service contracts, large project studies, demonstration pilots, competitive win-backs, and new or enriched business partnerships in selected accounts.

Call GDA at 800-966-4321 for more about Preferred Partner

Preferred Partner can be combined with Consultative Selling, Demand Generation and Quantifying Benefits to implement a complete and proven sales curriculum for record level growth

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is this class strictly for high tech or IT sales companies? Not just high tech… companies across a myriad of industries can take advantage of GDA’s Preferred Partner training to optimize existing customer relationships and potential. These are proven concepts that have less to do with the type of product and service, and far more to do with opportunities from client Partner relationships that result from focused execution of clearly defined sales activities.
2. Is this class only relevant to major accounts? No. Clearly these Preferred Partner concepts have their roots in large account sales environments, but many of these concepts also apply to territories with small and medium accounts as well.
3. How have other GDA customers utilized this training and with what results? “The Multiples Marketing techniques helped us grow one account from $20 million to over $100 million a year.” This is a quote from, Leslie Esdaile, an Account Manager who used these techniques while assigned to a major textiles manufacturer. In addition, the techniques introduced in the class have been used effectively for account teams around the world like IBM, GE, Hewlett-Packard, American Express, Marconi, RetroBox (now Intechra), Maritz and others worldwide. From among customers of this caliber: “GDA’s programs are among the best of the professional sales training courses…I would heartily recommend your programs to any group to maximize its potential” Don Jones, American Express. From some of the lesser known customers, we have testimonials like this: “The information you provided on Preferred Partner and Demand Generation is incredible! I have not had to actively sell for three weeks. Clients are coming to me and saying they do not want to use anyone else. It is exciting to come in every morning and know that I will have business waiting for me…Thanks for showing me how it is done!” - B. Wiggins, Integrated Systems Technologies
4. Does GDA recommend putting our sales team through any specific courses before taking Preferred Partner? The sales tactics and strategies have a greater chance for success if executed using sales skills acquired and practiced in GDA’s Consultative Selling. However, this is not a prerequisite and the sequence of classes is flexible.
5. How realistic is it to expect the plans produced in the workshop to be implemented back at the company? As with all sales skills training, the ability to solidify new behaviors and field practiced is based entirely upon post class reinforcement, inspection and follow-up. Without dedicated, consistent post class activities, only a few early adaptors will translate classroom lessons into territory to dos. For this reason GDA offers audio tape refresh products and post class, in field consulting services like Pipeline Generation Coaching and Epiphany. These services lend structure and management focus to help protect your return on the training investment.

GDA’s Pipeline Generation Coaching is the logical follow-on to Preferred Partner. In a passive but effective twelve month implementation that client sales managers will love, GDA will conduct regularly scheduled conference calls to instill supportive guidance and continuation after the classroom event.