Investment Group - Team Development Programme
During the week of 14th ~16th April, Quest ran a team building event for one of the world's largest investment and insurance groups. They are a Fortune 100-listed company providing financial services to over seven million customers in countries such as the UK, US, Brazil and Japan.
The original enquiry requested that the delegates from their UK Sales Team and UK Key Account took part in either DISC or Insights personality profiling, and also undertook a team development challenge or task, during an overall programme to cover two and a half days. They had a broad range of detailed objectives to achieve, the key one being to focus on far closer working and sharing of skills and knowledge between the sales and key accounts teams.
A team profiling session started day one including an experiential Questask, to really challenge the teams from the start. This was followed with a DISC session, to start to give the teams real understanding of their preferred behavioural styles and to move to the main team building challenge from lunchtime on day 2.
The main challenge was entitled “Performing in the Marketplace” and was a complex team building task involving the buying (from wholesalers) and selling of goods (from market stalls) in order to earn as big a profit as possible to donate to their chosen charity, The Toy Library.
The delegates were divided into three sub-teams made up of a mixture of delegates from sales and key accounts. Their first task was to work through a set of intentionally highly detailed instructions. Then following a testingly short preparation period the three teams had to reconvene in the HQ room and present a sales pitch on their choice of whole-sale goods to colleagues and facilitators. The presentations had to be informative, slick and persuasive. Following that process the three teams were allocated cut flowers, scented candles and party goods as their final merchandise choice, and the rest of day two passed in a blur of travelling to wholesalers, buying stock, visiting the Portobello Rd market, preparing sales and marketing strategies and allocating roles and responsibilities. It was a late finish!
The final day saw one of the teams at Covent Garden flower market at the eye wateringly early time of 05.30 to buy the finest stock their budgets and planning would allow. Meanwhile the other teams stocked the market stalls prepared by Team Quest just after dawn on the Portobello Road. The market opened at 08.00 and all delegates were soon totally immersed in the highly challenging task of attracting passers-by and persuading them to part with their hard-earned cash.
Despite difficult weather conditions, all three teams rose superbly well to the challenge and stock was soon moving and cash boxes soon filling. By late morning all three teams had reached the crucial point of break-even, and with the market set for early closing at 13.00 all three were involved in price cutting decisions, sale-or return discussions and the actioning of exit strategies.
At 15.30 all three teams reconvened back at the hotel for the start of a detailed performance review, but all safe with the knowledge that they had all made a healthy profit, and in fact The Toy Library was going to be better off to the tune of £475.00.
All the delegates had experienced a very real challenge, and learned a huge amount about themselves and their fellow team members. They had all enjoyed themselves too, especially the winning team who were given the now famous words………..You’re Hired!!
