Why Communication Skills Training is Right for Your Team

The need to learn a new skill can strike at any moment. Visiting an art museum can spark a sudden interest in painting. A delicious meal can inspire the urge to recreate it at home. Even inconveniences like flat tires or leaky faucets can result in more hands-on knowledge. In a corporate setting, memorable presentations, stunning design, or looming goals can highlight the benefits of continuing education. Such moments can encourage process overhauls and help demonstrate how communication skills training can unlock your team’s potential. 

Ultimately, engaging and challenging experiences alike can reveal avenues to improve your skillset. Like the above examples, choosing to pursue workplace storytelling or corporate communication skills training is often the result of encountering a problem. Whether you’re facing a messaging realignment, a slump in sales, or trouble articulating product offerings, it’s essential to choose the right training to solve issues going forward.

To help illustrate how communication training workshops can augment your team’s performance, examining hypothetical situations is a terrific way to anticipate problems before they occur. While learning how to tell more efficient stories in PowerPoint® isn’t the same as becoming adept in oils or watercolors, the satisfaction of articulating ideas clearly and driving audiences to action is its own reward. To that end, let’s examine a scenario where high-stakes customer interactions collide with the team most responsible for bringing contracts across the finish line: Sales. 

1. Your Sales Team is Failing to Close 

Picture this: Your sales team is facing ambitious goals for the coming fiscal year. However, they’re falling behind on delivery. Pipeline is moving into drought conditions, and existing clients seem allergic to expanding their commitments. Recently, one of your sales reps finally landed a meeting after working hard to cultivate a relationship. However, the client walked away disinterested despite the rep’s insistence that they stuck to the script. Another pair attended an on-site negotiation that, despite remaining on-brand throughout, also fizzled before a new contract could be inked. Meanwhile, your team keeps hitting the phones and sending out emails that outline the many features that come standard in your company’s product suite. 

What gives? With all this targeted effort, why is your sales team failing to close? 

How Communication Skills Training Can Help Close Deals 

What’s more compelling: a list of facts about a product or a quick narrative that illustrates how it can solve a real-life problem? In the above scenario, the sales team is barreling ahead with the first option (Here’s why our product is great, etc.) and failing to center the customer in their sales pitch (Here’s how our product can empower your team, etc.). Notice the difference? But pivoting away from prescribed scripts and form emails to embrace a more targeted approach requires investment in a softer set of skills. To that end, the solution is twofold: shore up listening and enhance storytelling. 

Adapt Your Listening 

Putting the customer first means taking time to actually listen and understand their unique pain points. For this team, Duarte’s Adaptive Listening™ training workshops would help them evolve beyond active listening and approach every interaction with the goal of meeting speaker needs. By first identifying each salesperson’s S.A.I.D. Listening Style™, the team will be prepared to adapt their listening to account for their style’s strengths and weaknesses. From there, moving between Support, Advance, Immerse, and Discern approaches can apply the right touches to glean necessary customer information and move interactions toward offering more targeted, speaker-focused solutions.  

For sales teams, this means learning to notice speaker cues, denote frustrations, and drilling down tactfully to uncover how a product or offering could help. This is just one example of how Adaptive Listening™ can improve sales. Just think of the ways deeper relationships built on trust could encourage repeat business. Relating to customers on a human level demonstrates care and reinforces loyalty, which in turn can lead to expanded commitments and good faith negotiations: two areas the team above could stand to improve. By taking the time to gather customer pain points via targeted, thoughtful listening, learning how to tell a story that highlights a product solution is the next step in upskilling this fictional team. 

Tell Compelling Data Stories

A DataStory is exactly what it sounds like: a story told with data. But finding which narrative threads to pull and how to provide the correct framing is where pursuing proper training can come in handy. Duarte DataStory™  combines analysis with corporate presentation skills to frame existing and emerging trends as stories to highlight the risks and opportunities they offer. Once customer pain points are firmly understood via Adaptive Listening™, reflecting them back in the form of a story that includes a product solution can help empower the customer’s decision-making. According to a working paper by the Harvard Business School, “[t]he average impact of stories on beliefs fades by 33% over the course of a day, but by 73% for statistics.” For buyers seeking input and approval after a pitch, compelling stories are more likely to resurface in conversations with leaders and decision-makers over just data alone.  

In short, stories linger. 

Taken together, investing in listening and data storytelling are two ways interpersonal communication skills training can help put the sales team on a better path. Along with giving greater attention to customer needs and relationships, this enhanced skillset will continue to pay dividends as new processes gain traction across your organization. A win/win for all parties involved. 

2. Your Organization Hit a Fork in the Road 

Here’s another hypothetical: The leadership team at your organization had a falling out with a key executive, and major changes are coming. This leader is foundational, and often responsible for many of the big picture visions that, for decades, inspired confidence in the brand. However, their grasp on current market conditions was slipping and confidence in their guidance waning. After prolonged talks, a decision was reached to part ways. But the kicker is: This leader was also the voice of the organization. In their absence, it’s unclear who will assume the mantle of speaking to customers, clients, stakeholders, and employees. Thankfully, the news is still contained within the C-suite, but it’s time to make an announcement. 

What’s your next move? 

How Corporate Communication Skills Training Can Reveal New Opportunities 

Turning points are stressful. But they also provide opportunities for reinvention or to reaffirm core values. Think Bob Dylan plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival or Apple choosing to sunset the iPhone’s headphone jack. Such moments can signal the end of an era while paving the way for the start of something new. In the above scenario, there’s nothing to warrant crisis communications since the leader in question isn’t exiting under poor circumstances. Rather, this is an opportunity to shine a light on a new path the company is taking as they look toward the future. To smooth over this transition, remaining leadership would benefit from communication skills training to articulate big picture change via a compelling story. For that, Duarte’s Illuminate™ training workshop is the perfect fit.

Shine Brighter with Illuminate™

Based on the book by Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez, Illuminate™ training workshops outline how leaders can use stories, speeches, ceremonies, and symbols to inspire audiences to embrace strategic change. With examples pulled from corporate, non-profit, and social justice settings, the training demonstrates how leaders can pivot moments of change to ignite growth with the proper narrative framing.  

For the example above, our fictional C-suite could take this moment to reassert the company’s pledge to customers and external stakeholders, while announcing the soft launch of a new campaign or initiative. As the book and training outline, this can be a symbolic gesture that’s meant to signal a turning of the page, or a celebration of the exiting leader’s time spent with the organization. How the situation is handled remains an open-ended question. However, there’s ample precedent to choose from regarding how prior leaders rose to similar occasions. 

To help get a taste for what Illuminate™ has to offer, The Torchbearer’s Toolkit™ is the perfect crash course in change communication to help kickstart any strategic realignment. From formulating your message to nailing the delivery, effective corporate communication skills training can help reveal the potential of even the briniest of pickles. 

3. Skill Specialization is Causing Bottlenecks 

You know the drill: After enduring a round of layoffs, your organization has several major projects moving through development, but day-to-day operations are grinding to a halt. After running some quick internal diagnostics, you find that multiple workflows now converge on the same people. This is creating bottlenecks in revisions and approval. Digging deeper, the reasoning becomes clear: Only a few colleagues remain who command exceptional presentation and design skills. Beyond serving as brand representatives, they’re also responsible for knowing how those guidelines should appear visually and in front of a live audience. In short, greenlighting the work of others and getting the word out about your organizational accomplishments is at risk of coming to a standstill. 

How can you remove the bottleneck and get productivity back up and running? 

How Team and Departmental Skills Training Can Help 

Subject matter experts are essential to any organization. But when they’re few and far between, they can become an occupational hazard. The best way to avoid suffocating on self-imposed chokepoints is to spread the knowledge around with ubiquitous training. For the situation above where design and brand spokespersons are in high demand and short supply, training workshops like Slide:ology® and Captivate™ could lend a hand. There’s no overnighting the career experience of a lifelong designer or gifted orator. But make no mistake: These are skills that can be taught and maintained with proper training. 

Slide:ology® Helps Put Design Within Reach

Let’s start with brand. At a high level, producing the right colors, fonts, layouts, and templates takes real thought and training to implement. But once those parameters are set, staying within that strike zone boils down to a much softer skill: having an eye for design. Slide:ology® offers the unique value-add of teaching learners how to “think like a designer” and deploy visual best practices in decks and Slidedocs®. For the situation above, making design acumen standard throughout the organization can help remove choke points by introducing additional sets of eyes to approve work. After a round of layoffs, diversifying the skillsets of your remaining workforce can ensure your organization can maintain production with fewer hands. Not to mention, with more teams attuned to what constitutes effective, memorable design, work improves across the board. 

Arrest Audience Attention with Captivate™  

The same principles apply to brand representatives. Knowing the values and goals of an organization should be second nature for anyone working under its umbrella. But articulating them eloquently is another matter. Captivate™ provides presentation skills training for speakers to confidently connect with any audience to achieve a clear purpose. From determining the goal of a talk to ensuring it leaves a desired impression, Captivate™ workshops can turn any team into highly functional spokespeople for tradeshows, conventions, and company gatherings.  

Like cultivating an eye for design, public speaking training offers new ways of framing and communicating information. By democratizing these critical skills, your organization can avoid siloing talent and kneecapping productivity. Plus, encouraging interpersonal communication skills training for teams and departments alike can inspire more comprehensive alignment and 1:1 connection.  

Which, speaking of miscommunications… 

4. Your Team is Failing to Align on Key Projects 

OK, last one: Imagine that your organization has several major projects heading to market. Each has moving parts attached to each rollout that must be coordinated and approved. However, as due dates approach, consensus around how key tasks should be prioritized, or who’s responsible for what, is muddied. Some teams are even misaligned on specifics within tasks, creating even more confusion. As a remote-first company, you’re already shelling out cash for several project management tools. Plus, your tech stack is fully integrated across departments. And yet, there’s still a wide disconnect between teams around both content and execution. 

How can you ensure your next project rollout goes smoother? What needs to change? 

How Interpersonal Skills Training Can Increase Collaboration 

Connecting virtually for work is increasingly ubiquitous, but it makes thoughtful communication more crucial. In the above scenario, no amount of technology can supplant human mishaps or the inclination to skim vital details. However, with attention spans fraying and mounting distractions vying to impede productivity, a new approach is needed. Given this reality, the best defense against sloppy communication is encouraging thoughtful, engaging connections. But how? In short, connecting virtually requires the ability to present virtually. And maintaining a consistent drumbeat of well-received communications requires taking audience strengths and limitations into consideration.

Command Any Screen with Presenting Virtually™

Duarte’s on-demand Presenting Virtaully™ training workshop enhances interpersonal communication skills for the digital era that takes distance into account. Unlike commanding a room, earning and sustaining audience attention in a remote-first setting requires a different approach. When team members are far flung and availability is parceled into buckets, circling back and closing loops can be difficult. Think of the difference between popping over to someone’s desk versus troubleshooting over email, chat, and in-platform messaging services. When written communication is spread across multiple channels, cohesion runs the risk of falling out of sync. That’s why it’s crucial to make the most of virtual gatherings to achieve and sustain consensus. 

Presenting Virtually™ covers choosing distraction-free backgrounds, feedback-free sound setups, and accompanying virtual presentations with clear, concise visuals. Plus, the workshop’s on-demand convenience makes it the perfect addition to other training offerings to maximize their overall effect. Applied alongside the curricula of Slide:ology®, DataStory, and/or Adaptive Listening™ can help strengthen team alignment further. 

With the help of coordinated training, design gets crisper, recommendations are reinforced with data, and audiences remain rapt to attention. In an optimized environment, details are less likely to slip through the cracks, keeping your major projects on track and delivered on time. 

How Duarte Communication Training Workshops Can Help 

Now for the tough question: Does any of this sound familiar?  

Little about the above is unique to any single organization. In-person and remote-first teams could all stand to listen more deeply, design better, and tell more compelling stories. Taken together, this can drive customers to greater levels of satisfaction. But it takes courage to admit a shortcoming, and sometimes even more to seek the guidance to set it right.  

To begin charting a new course of efficiency at your organization, or to nip problems in the bud before they take root, book a call today with a Duarte training concierge. Our knowledgeable experts can help you choose the right training package for your organization. Whether you’re looking to increase productivity, limit miscommunications, or re-center the customer experience, bespoke training packages can help your team rise to any occasion. With the right combination of skills, your team can focus on making the most of every meeting, pitch, pivot, and product launch all while worrying less about misalignment. 

What are you waiting for? Start making your team’s success tangible and your problems where they belong: purely hypothetical.