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Clarion Events is one of the world’s leading event organisers, putting together innovative and market-leading events in a wide selection of industries, from fashion and technology to public safety and security.
Nick Pratt has been with the business for over 12 years, during which time he’s worked on popular events including Top Gear Live and the Classic Motor Show. He now serves as the business’s head of sales enablement, ensuring that the sales team has all the data and training they need to do their job effectively.
Essentially there are two levers you can use to increase revenue; you can either sell more units or sell those units at a higher price. As a result, a large part of Nick’s role is enabling Clarion’s salespeople to pull those levers successfully and ensure they increase their volume and/or yields.
Selling in-person events suddenly became a lot harder in 2020. The pandemic affected everyone, but the events industry was hit especially hard. Live events — the backbone of Clarion’s business — were off the table.
While the company pivoted into digital markets and grew that side of the business, in-person events were always going to be the main focus. As a result, Nick viewed this as an opportunity to press the reset button and ensure the sales teams had all the skills they needed to come back stronger than ever.
“Our NPS scores went through the roof when we started running events again,” explains Nick. “People were just so happy to be back in those environments. Being able to shake hands or fist bump with somebody and to have those conversations in real time with real people… it’s just phenomenal.”
Part of Nick’s plan involved targeted training for the sales team. While virtual training and online portals were fine when that was the only option, he wanted to take advantage of in-person training. “Having people in the same room is really engaging. You get better conversations, you get engagement. You see results!”
Nick was also keen to avoid generic sales training. Clarion Events has hundreds of salespeople, ranging from junior reps to talent directors with decades of experience. To get the best results, any training had to be tailored to their needs.
The first step in the process was to assess all of the salespeople and identify their strengths and weaknesses in core competencies such as negotiating, creating value, engaging with the C-suite and so on. This revealed trends across the business, verifying the skills where training would have the biggest impact.
Having identified the key areas for improvement, Nick got in touch with Aaron and Raff at Flow State. This wasn’t the first time they’d crossed paths; Clarion Events had previously arranged for them to speak at a conference, where they received positive feedback.
“They were great, they were very inspiring,” says Nick. “People came out of the session saying how nice it was to be spoken to like a normal human being, rather than just a number. They’re not up there wearing a suit and a tie, they’re just normal guys.”
Nick explained what they were looking for and asked if Flow State would be able to provide the required training. A few days later, Aaron and Raff came back with a bespoke training programme designed to take place over one day and cover the three requested skills.
Speak directly with Raff and Aaron by completing the following form.