Things Of Interest Blog

Nobody actually knows what ELTCall stands for, which was a pretty embarrassing note to start off on, but this was actually a pretty cool course. Two days, July 8th and 9th. Day one was mainly theory. We were walked through the ICBM client call model ("call" can equally mean "face to face meeting", in this context). This comes in five basic stages, six if you count your preparatory work. On the one hand it is very useful to have the various stages in a client call boxed out according to their various properties: it provides a framework in which to understand what is happening, and what one needs to make happen, during a call. Advice like "ask open-ended questions instead of closed ones" and "listen more, talk less" is perfectly valid. "Give numerical, not qualitative assessments; don't say 'soon', say 'within three months'." "Be curious, interested, not interrogative." "If the client goes silent after a question, wait as long as s/he needs." "An objection can be a buying signal." "If you are getting 'close now' signals, do not under any circumstances keep talking!" We did a few practical exercises just to try out stuff like greetings and played a highly enjoyable round of Ultimate Chinese Whispers which demonstrated the importance of writing stuff down.

The following day, though, was entirely practical stuff: here is a brief, here is some time to prepare for your meeting, and then you roleplay the scenario out with one of the lecturers, in front of three of your peers (and then it's their turn!). The briefs were nice and varied and pretty interesting; the lecturers apparently had been briefed to drop useful hooks into conversation. I don't know how much about the course I'm allowed to reveal but the original briefs combined with the notes I scribbled over them - before and afterwards - make for pretty interesting reading. I did very well in the first scenario, not so well in the second. Lessons to learn: don't interrupt or talk over the other guy; don't promise something that you cannot necessarily deliver (this one was mainly a matter of me misunderstanding my own role: I had assumed I was a high manager at the company I was representing, when actually both I and my opposite number had managers to report to); takes notes, but don't bring in a piece of paper that's already intimidatingly full of them; don't assume too much and don't overprepare because this colours your reasoning and limits your flexibility.

In the end I think I learned a lot. The real question is how useful it's going to be. About half a dozen of the people on this course were from the Foundation which means that they had to travel into our offices from elsewhere to attend the course; they work with clients as their main job and they have to actually pass four of these test calls before they're allowed to progress in the Company, whereas for us software types it was mostly a wash. In fact, the course was costing the Company money to send us on (even though the people presenting it were internal) - we wouldn't even have been sent on it if it hadn't turned out to be too late to cancel.

I would kill for some genuine technical training.

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