Building The IPC Sales
Team
At IPC, Britain's leading consumer magazine publishers, well over
100 sales specialists have crucial roles in the success of IPC and
its publications. They sell advertising space within titles such
as Woman, Homes and Gardens and Mizz, facing fierce competition
for customers' budgets not only from other popular magazines but
also TV, radio, poster and newspaper sales teams. Each title has
to build relationships with leading media specialists as well as
brand owners so teamwork is not only beneficial among the group
on a particular publication, it is also highly valuable throughout
IPC.
Under the theme "Playing to Win", IPC brought its sales
staff together for a motivational sales development seminar. John
Syer of SyCon - The Sporting Bodymind Group was invited to develop
sessions dedicated to teambuilding.
John Syer says, "The overall aim for this session was to increase
contact between members of the sales team. It was also to increase
appreciation of individual styles and patterns of behaviour and
to deepen a personal sense of belonging to the whole team".
The session began with a sequence of warm up exercises that allowed
each person to tune in to where they were, how they were, who they
were with, their experience as a team member, their purpose for
being there and finally the agenda. This included a short explanation
of how a team develops through an awareness of self and of others
and appreciating differences. This produces better contact, greater
respect, trust and team spirit.
The main part of the session reinforced the value of descriptive,
as opposed to evaluative, feedback. Working initially in pairs,
each person described what they saw and heard their partner do,
with plenty of time for feedback on similarities and differences
and checking out the truth of intuitive judgements. The result was
greater understanding, improved communication and real contact between
individuals.
Mike Baker, Advertisement Marketing Director of IPC at that time
found the approach stimulating; "This kind of feedback was
very interesting, both to give and to get. The observation process
was very active and encouraged a holistic view of one's self and
colleagues in the team. The team as a whole developed a clear sense
of group identity which was translated into significantly developed
measures of motivation on return to the workplace".
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