• _ Hi-Q Method™ Gap Assessment
• _ Developing Business With the Government
• _ High Performing BD Habits
• _ The Hi-Q Engagement Method
• _ BD Essentials Workbook
• _ Government BD Ecosystem
• _ The Hi-Q Method™
• _ Personal Development Plan

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Doing business with the government is different than with commercial customers. BD personnel are often told they only need to present, tell stories, and persuade customers to buy their solution. In reality, being customer-focused, empathetic, and asking the right questions is consistently the most successful approach.

So, what does it take to be an Elite Government Consulting (GovCon) professional? Elite Professionals use an empathetic mindset and specific customer-centric skills to develop high-quality intelligence and customer relationships that last a lifetime. In addition, consistently using the HI-Q Method to execute their strategy provides them access to customer intelligence that most competitors don’t have the skills to obtain. The good news is these winning skills can all be learned. This training program is designed to provide tangible, measurable engagement skills that enhance your company’s BD or Capture process.

This section sets the foundation for the course by exploring where BD fits within the many facets of doing business within Federal, State, and local governments. We reveal some Elite Professional habits and introduce a repeatable engagement method that, when put into practice, is the difference between practitioners and professionals. The 5-step Hi-Q Engagement Method will help you differentiate yourself and understand the skills needed to compete and win in an ever-changing and competitive environment.

• _ Plan for a Perfect Call
• _ Identify Customer Problems You Solve
• _ The Importance of Knowing Your Customer
• _ Target Opportunity Plan Template
• _ Call Plan Template
• _ Hypothesize Customer Problems
• _ Customer Pain & Gain

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Elite Professionals understand the impact of planning on the success of their engagements, yet most in a BD orle skip this critical step. Winging it does not work. Simply put, effective call planning improves your effectiveness on the call and significantly enhances your ability to achieve your goals. In addition, your preparation will likely set you apart, resulting in customers opening up to reveal unique intelligence.

In this section, we will cover the tools and templates the Elite have used for decades to plan and prepare for calls. With the help of these tools, you’ll understand the customer and hypothesize their needs, resulting in a customer-centric call that stands out.

• _ The Art of Customer Access
• _ Call Scripting for Success
• _ Critical Communication Skills
• _ Coaching: Opening Calls With Purpose
• _ Coaching: Powerful Questions
• _ Email Script to Drive Curiosity
• _ Call Script Template
• _ Call Script Example

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Elite Professionals know that winning and customer affinity doesn’t happen by accident or luck. Instead, differentiation—or how you and your capabilities are distinct from others—starts with how you see yourself and how you engage the customer. If the customer can’t connect or trust you, then it’s likely they won’t care about your company or solution—regardless of your features or benefits.

In this section, we cover how your success is determined by getting access to the right customer at the right time, and how to engage them in a conversation using your enhanced communication skills to uncover their needs. Planning your questions ahead of time prepares you to connect deeply and uncover customer needs at the root cause. Some of these elements may sound like common sense, but they are not common practice.

• _ Wrap-Up (Modules 1-3)
• _ Assessment (Modules 1-3)

• _ BD to the Power of Trust
• _ Get Your Customer’s Attention
• _ Hi-Q Discovery Framework
• _ Coaching: Get Customers to Open Up
• _ Call Review Template
• _ Quality of Relationship Scale
• _ Diagnostic Level Questions

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Getting access to the right customer to gather actionable customer intelligence requires you to pique curiosity and create an environment where customers are comfortable sharing openly. Often those in BD and sales roles believe they have high-quality customer relationships. However, this self-assessment is usually based on familiarity and not trust.

Trust is essential for success, because people engage entirely different with those they truly trust. When customers have that trust with you, they are more open to sharing intelligence and become more vested in your success.Your ability to make connections and foster customer affinity is often the foundation for your long-term career success.

This section covers why trust is so critical, how to engage customers in a manner that fosters trust, and an overview of the Hi-Q Discovery Framework to quickly identify the customer’s underlying needs, drivers, urgency, and the impact of those needs on the customer both professionally and personally.

• _ Diagnose the Customer’s Real Needs
• _ Impact Your Customer’s Motivation
• _ Ending With Customer Action
• _ Coaching: Improving Discovery
• _ Narrow Discovery Questions
• _ Impact Questions
• _ Ending the Call Checklist

LEARNING OUTCOMES

For role success, you must be able to uncover your customer’s needs. What they share first with you is often surface-level information, so it’s your job to go deeper to uncover their “real” needs and determine the impact of meeting that need vs. the status quo. Helping your customer understand the impact also allows them to understand how important solving the need or reaching the desired future state is to them. Your questions must be designed to help the customer understand how to solve their problems and allow them to feel the pain or relief from this course of action.

In this section, you’ll learn questioning techniques that uncover the customer’s “real” needs and the impact for them and their organization. This approach helps you understand the best solution to help them meet their needs for their reasons. We also focus on questioning skills designed to enable the customer to share the next steps, deadlines, and urgency for a follow-up meeting.

Performed correctly, the customer will tell you exactly what to do, whom to engage, and how to measure success. This is usually a paradigm shift for most people in the role as it eliminates chasing the customer (constant follow-up) and causes the customer to define the next steps for their reasons. Doing this correctly sets you up for success by placing the customer in the driver’s seat, so you’ll know exactly what will happen and what is expected.

• _ Assess Your Opportunities
• _ Call Reports Are Company Assets
• _ Call Report Skit
• _ Reliability Scale
• _ Opportunity Assessment Template
• _ Call Report Template

LEARNING OUTCOMES

When it comes to opportunities, they aren’t all equal, and every organization has limited resources to pursue and capture opportunities. Therefore, you must gather and share actionable and game-changing customer intelligence with your internal stakeholders to help them identify which opportunities are worth investment and which should be disqualified. Gathering intelligence is the universal step and an Elite skill required to make good decisions.

In this section, you’ll learn to assess your opportunities and support your internal stakeholders as they make the difficult decisions on what to pursue and what to disqualify. Often the only way stakeholders understand the customer’s needs is through your call or trip reports. Therefore, your reports must convey actionable intel that is easily understood and tailored to the individual needs of your different stakeholders. Gathering Intel and sharing internally can help you build credibility and a reputation for success.

• _ Compelling Virtual Engagements
•  Roleplay: Finding the Right Stakeholders
• _ Virtual Call Checklist

LEARNING OUTCOMES

When it comes to opportunities, they aren’t all equal, and every organization has limited resources to pursue and capture opportunities. Therefore, you must gather and share actionable and game-changing customer intelligence with your internal stakeholders to help them identify which opportunities are worth investment and which should be disqualified. Gathering intelligence is the universal step and an Elite skill required to make good decisions.

In this section, you’ll learn to assess your opportunities and support your internal stakeholders as they make the difficult decisions on what to pursue and what to disqualify. Often the only way stakeholders understand the customer’s needs is through your call or trip reports. Therefore, your reports must convey actionable intel that is easily understood and tailored to the individual needs of your different stakeholders. Gathering Intel and sharing internally can help you build credibility and a reputation for success.

• _ Wrap-Up (Lessons 5-8)
• _ Assessment (Lessons 1-8)
• _ BD Essentials Certificate

BD Essentials includes 2 wrap up series and assessments to ensure students understood essential concepts.

Once your team passes the assessment, they will receive their certificate.