Sales to Success — Latvia

Sales to Success was a personal development training course that gave us a chance to develop our sales skills and boost awareness and efficacy about our performance attitude and competence in daily life. It is also good to mention that the event happened in the middle of marvellous Latvian nature, on the border of the village, fields, forests and lake. Accommodation in the local youth centre was clean, tidy, and sufficient; the space and surroundings were used very well, according to the program. We had the chance to explore the part of Latvia, and the food was local and tasty.

The Sales to Success training course main event happened for seven days and was delivered by experienced trainers Anna Maria, who has been creating programs for groups and individuals using experimental education and gamification for the last five years, and Brigita, who has worked in sales and team leadership for last twenty years.

The main goal and our daily bread and butter were developing our own personal project. What it means is that each of us was crafting the skills, overtake limits and training the mind and mindset in the context of our own personal proposal and their own terms. rainers gave us the framework on which we had the opportunity to work.

Afterwards, we worked on our fears and limits about our personal goals. We were taught by Anna and Brigita several valuable ways how to spot and recognise and work with our fears, the usual pattern of behaviour and biological processes in us. Since the trainers are focusing o experimental learning, it did not take a long time to go and face our physical and psychical fears in the real world.

Next day we were under close surveillance of sales master Brigita and learned how to structure the sale. During the day, we were in groups creating imaginary vision and products and planning how to deliver and pitch them. This was a fantastic exercise with a strong group dynamic about the power of the team and individual. On two other days, we learned how to recognise the needs of others and how to approach them. Now it goes almost without saying each day was structured how we end up facing the learning in the real situation and had the opportunity to reflect and learn from our experiences.

The big big outdoor event and culmination of the training was about experiencing rejection and what to do about it. In this part, we could experience unexpected events and use them to our advantage and turn obstacles into opportunities. This was achieved by a powerful technique of gamified outdoor experimental learning where suddenly all the insights from previous days were confronted with reality. In the last part, we work on how to apply the knowledge we got in the training in real life.

The fantastic thing about the project was the quality with which the trainers delivered it. There was a fantastic balance between the quality and challenge and personal safety and trust. Every participant had the opportunity to work with people from other countries in all kinds of different contexts and situations, and this was something very hard to create somewhere else. The intercultural richness and diversity make the Erasmus plus project unique, and with high-quality training, the learning could be robust and long-term lasting.

                                                                                                                                  Jan Makeš

“The program is financed by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission and supported by the Agency for International Programs for Youth in Latvia. Jaunatnes starptautisko programmu aģentūra ”