Dental practice management and sales training coach, Ashley Latter, recently put on a course to help coach young children in public speaking and sales – Enrica Latter discusses what the children learned and why the course was so inspiring.
On Saturday 1 April, Ashley Latter and I held a course for young people at our training centre in Manchester. The aim of the course was to give them the opportunity to learn how to speak in public and gain essential sales skills that they could use throughout their life.
At 8:30am, 12 young, ambitious individuals aged from 15 to 20 turned up at our office. It was clear they were very nervous and apprehensive about the day as they did not say a word to one another. The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop.
As the course started, all 12 of them honestly told us that their parents had sent them on this course without much choice. However, it was our mission to turn these individuals around, take them well out of their comfort zone and work together in teams throughout the day.
‘We were blown away’
In the morning session, Ashley taught them key presentation skills, ways of expanding their comfort zone, and ways of building self-confidence. It also included preparation to stand up in front of the rest of the group and give a two-minute presentation on a major achievement in their life.
Within the morning session, they gave two presentations each, one-by-one for up to two minutes on a major achievement in their lives and selling a product or service to the group. Either myself or Ashley coached them from the back. We could not believe the standard that we were presented with so early on.
From entering the room unable to even introduce themselves to one another to presenting at the front of a group within four hours of arriving was phenomenal. I would also like to add that the level of presentation skills that these individuals showed us was outstanding. We were blown away.
After lunch, the final part of the day involved the individuals being split into three groups where they each represented a different hotel in the Lake District. Ashley, Lissa Mann (our business manager) and I were different staff members of a hypothetical engineering company.
This company had done very well in the final year and wanted to hold a conference for the whole team to celebrate their success. Our brief was that each of us wanted different things from the conference which ranged from aspects such as food and beverage choices, activities within the conference and setting up of the conference.
‘Extremely impressed’
After teaching them the basic steps of the selling process, including how to build rapport with clients and how to ask the right questions to find out what a client truly wants, we set them the task of interviewing each one of us. They were given time to prepare questions to ask us to find out what each of us truly wanted from the conference.
Following this, each hotel was set the difficult task of preparing a sales pitch based on the answers to the questions to pitch to us on why we should opt for their hotel to hold the conference. Ashley, Lissa and I judged them on how well they presented to us, if they had listened to us and how well they then catered to all of our needs in their sales pitch.
Again, we were absolutely blown away by their presentations to us. Every single individual contributed and got involved. They showed us top presentation skills as they addressed each one of our needs attentively. We found it very difficult to choose a winning team as we addressed what we thought each team did well in particular.
The reason we chose the winning team is because they used no notes whatsoever when presenting to us which indicated they took on board what they learnt in the morning session. They also used eye contact with all three of us. In addition, they provided additional attention to detail as they drew out a map of the hotel grounds which we liked.
The participants were outstanding to a level we have never seen on a young person’s course before. We were extremely impressed with the level of selling skills they showed us along with their confidence and presentation skills.
Feedback
It was a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring day. The £3500 that we made from the course was donated to three different charities, including Bridge2aid, Memusi Foundation and Heathlands Care Home.
Here was some feedback from some of the delegates on the day:
Antonios Rossos, age 17: ‘It covered the basics of salesmanship, public speaking and how to present business ideas and it managed all that in just seven hours. It left me wanting more.’
Annabel Farant, age 16: ‘I stepped out of my comfort zone, speaking to a group of people that I’ve never met before.’
Dhillon Shah, age 18: ‘It was a lot better than I ever expected and I thought the skills were conveyed in a very clear and interesting way.’
A parent from last year also contacted us to say that their child got accepted into their top university choice of St Andrews, all because of what they had learnt on the course.
We are running another course in April 2024. For more information on this please visit our website or contact [email protected].
Follow Dentistry.co.uk on Instagram to keep up with all the latest dental news and trends.
