Whitten & Roy Partnership sets out to democratise access to leadership programmes for social entrepreneurs in emerging markets
Working in cohorts with leaders of several organisations at the same time is an effective way to democratise access to learning and development for social enterprises in emerging markets, says leading international sales consultancy Whitten & Roy Partnership.
Whitten & Roy Partnership created their cohort approach in response to an urgent need of social start-ups, which, due to a lack of financial resources, often do not have the luxury to access necessary capacity-building programmes. In the absence of this kind of support, many start-ups in emerging markets just roll up their sleeves and learn by trial and error. Unfortunately, this approach often comes with a significant risk of failure and potential negative impact on consumers and communities involved.
The new executive leadership sales and management cohort programme offers a shared, peer-to-peer learning and capability building experience. Typically, whilst diverse in their business operations, the cohort members share a common thread of business experiences or face similar sales leadership challenges. The programme’s aim is to enable top company leaders to become key accelerators of sales transformation for their companies. Trained leaders become the ambassadors and vehicles to build highly effective sales and management cultures.
Scott Roy, Whitten & Roy Partnership’s CEO and co-founder, says: “Learning in groups has the big advantage of social interaction. Participants can learn from shared experiences and exchange best practice ideas over a three to four month embedding period that results in a deeper understanding of how to apply what they have learned.”
Scott Roy adds: “Creating training cohorts has been a great development during 2020. As a matter of fact, it is now our biggest growth area. In many ways this is a win-win situation: for our end client it is a more cost-effective and affordable training solution and it gives us the opportunity to reach out to a broader market.”
A single training cohort consists of four to six companies represented by two top leaders from each organisation. The programme begins with individual diagnostic consultations for each organisation that inform the bespoke design of joint training sessions for all participants. The group training experience is aimed at generating the outcomes that participants want from a common learning experience. It is followed by a three to four month period of individualised coaching and consulting sessions for each organisation. These sessions are dedicated to issues and challenges specific to each participating enterprise and result in customised tools and playbooks for each company that contain knowledge, strategy, and skills that participants can share within their organisation.
To-date, three cohort leadership programmes have been completed and two are underway with very positive feedback from participants, businesses, and funders, with many participants reporting increased sales results for their social enterprises.
The cohort leadership programme is not only of interest to individual social enterprises but specifically to funders who are keen on seeing their investment have a bigger impact in emerging markets. As such, Whitten & Roy Partnership completed a cohort leadership programme funded by a leading international foundation, that included seven promising African social enterprise partners.
Scott Roy concludes: “As a result of our new cohort leadership programme many of the funders’ partners have made significant progress in rethinking their markets and their approach to selling and developing their sales conversations. We expect there to be a real long-tail of benefit realization from the programme.”
Since 2009, Whitten & Roy Partnership has led hundreds of sales transformation projects in over 40 countries. The sales consultancy works with a wide range of organisations, from large western commercial companies to small social enterprises in emerging markets.
In their upcoming book, Sell Well, Do Good, Whitten & Roy Partnership’s co-founders share the details of their sales approach for social enterprises, which has been shaped and refined over the past 12 years. The first book ever dedicated solely to selling for social enterprises, it is the companion title to last year’s international bestseller Decision Intelligence Selling, which is geared to business-to-business selling (B2B). Due for release on 01 June 2021, the latest title applies Whitten & Roy Partnership’s DQ Sales® framework to social enterprises in their work to do good for society.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES
Katharina Winkler – PR Consultant
Email: kaleidoscopepr.newsdesk@gmail.com/ telephone +44 (0) 7940 510 008
Davide Castorina – Marketing Consultant
Email: davide@wrpartnership.com/ telephone Tel: +33 6 64 17 27 77
EDITOR’S NOTES
About Whitten & Roy Partnership
Whitten & Roy Partnership is an international sales consultancy that helps leading businesses and organizations transform their sales results. Founded in 2009 by sales experts Roy Whitten and Scott Roy, Whitten & Roy Partnership today comprises a network of consultants operating in 40 countries around the world.
Drawing on many decades of sales experience in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, and with backgrounds in psychology and business development, Whitten & Roy Partnership offers an ethical and effective sales approach that is fit for use by socially minded organizations that are genuinely concerned with the well-being of their own people and the clients they serve.
Published in September 2020, Decision Intelligence Selling, the first book by Roy Whitten and Scott Roy became an international bestseller on Amazon. The companion title Sell Well, Do Good is the first ever book on social enterprises and selling. Due for release on 01 June 2021, it applies Whitten & Roy Partnership’s selling framework, DQ Sales™, to social enterprises in their work to do good for society.
For more information visit: www.wrpartnership.com
Linkedin: @WhittenandRoyPartnership
Facebook: @WRPartnership
Published on PRFIRE