Sales and Marketing Techniques Workshop
I have conducted several sales and marketing workshops over the years through the company I co-founded, American Institute for English Proficiency; however, many of these workshops revolved around the core service, which is English and communication skills. When a client wanted to have language skills training and found out that I am also into sales and marketing, they would ask me to create specific English and communication modules related to sales and marketing. In the English language training world, we call that ESP or “English for a Specific Purpose.”
I have always been involved in sales and marketing. I can trace it back all the way to when I auditioned for a theater group back in the eight grade; I suppose that is a kind of sales pitch, isn’t it? And right at the end of the ninth grade in high school, I ran for class president and won. I did several campaigning strategies, so I suppose that is some kind of marketing as well, right? From leading school organizations to being in debate and speech competitions, I have always done some form of persuading, be it in oral or written form, which is what sales and marketing is all about. And for 12 years, I had been the general manager and head of sales and marketing for the company I co-founded. And after college, I moved to Las Vegas where I became branch manager for one Fortune 500 company and a staffing manager for another Fortune 500 company, both of which involved lots of sales and marketing; and before I came to the Philippines, I was a sales and marketing director within a market territory for yet another Fortune 500 company.
As a result, I have gained so many invaluable experiences and lessons through the years. I have not only implemented successful sales and marketing strategies but have also committed lots of errors that taught me greatly. And when I was hungry for more, I sought trainings and related workshops to help me augment my skills.
Last September 23, 2018, I finally decided to momentarily veer off from my normal English and communication training and shared what I had learned in sales and marketing as well as business development throughout the years. I had been so familiar with conducting English proficiency, public speaking, grammar, writing, business correspondence, and other English related topics. I had been working with major local and national corporations as a corporate trainer. This time, I wanted to take a leap into conducting training for a totally different topic because I wanted to grow. I wanted to go beyond what I thought I could do. I had been feeling that I had reached a stagnant point in my training career, and to have a foray in another topic, course, or module would make life more challenging once more. I needed to be awakened.
So for one day in September, after all the years of doing sales and marketing myself for the companies I worked for and the company I co-founded, I was finally able to help others who needed to improve their skills. What was even more fulfilling was that there were a few struggling entrepreneurs who attended the event because they wanted to have a specific feedback on what they were doing and what they were not doing well. I also realized that the way I conducted the training was quite similar to how I normally conduct my English and communication skills training: fun, engaging, dynamic, and critical all at the same time. I like to have a mix of value and entertainment.
I covered several topics including branding, social media marketing, guerrilla marketing, corporate narrative, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and best practices in customer service and handling sales objections. I also invited a few guests who covered different topics: Kassy Pajarillo who discussed the power of using LinkedIn as a marketing tool, Ben Francia who discussed website development and Google marketing techniques, and Jon Oliquino who covered current industry practices in sales. It was an awesome day of collaborative efforts.
Overall, it was so worthwhile venturing into the world of sales and marketing. The feedback I received was overwhelming. The participants were able to get all of these learnings for free; two participants actually gave Php 500 each because they felt that it would help cover at least the facility use. One participant even mentioned that the training he had gotten in his company in the last nine months he was with them paled in comparison to what he learned from the day’s session with me and my guests.
I will definitely be conducting another training, so if you are interested, make sure you follow me on my social media accounts and visit my website again soon and be on the look out for more details.