REPOSTED FROM LINKEDIN PULSE ARTICLE October 30, 2017
Each year at Flexera, we gather our presales field team to come together to learn and share experiences. This interactive event also provides many team members an opportunity present on a topic, or lead a workshop, or simply to be an engaged participant. We call these events a "symposium" to reflect on the learning nature of these events.
This not only ensures we all have the latest training and tools to do our job but also gives us a chance to create new ideas & capabilities with our colleagues from around the world. This year we also had the bonus of meeting our new teammates from BDNA who offer a new perspective and way of offering value to our customers
In short, it makes us a better team!
How do we do it?
We share some sessions on general skills for the whole team. These include soft skills - like how to dig into customer requirements and work out the real solutions that they need.
We then break into groups addressing the customer markets we face.
What do we do?
In these sessions, we share collective experiences and use cases of how our customers leverage our solutions. Our products are designed to work well together, and our team members need the ability to talk about our entire portfolio.
We also break into focused sessions for our individual products and solutions. While we have a need to go broad and support the whole Flexera story, we also need to be ready to go deep and know our area of focus intimately. Often it is the very fine details which matter the most to customers and can be the difference with ensuring customer success.
One of our sessions focused on a brand-new customer activity called the "Test Track". This hands-on activity showcases the value of the top 20 Software License Optimization Use Cases. It was fun to see the enthusiasm the entire team had with this new approach.
Building a team
But it isn't just about learning - it is also about enjoying time with the team, and for this team, we don't just work hard, we play hard too.
Over the years, we do our best to build in fun to our annual symposium. We regularly have daily t-shirt themes (super heroes, rock stars, sports teams), karaoke parties, game nights, and outings to sporting events. People love the opportunity to get out and enjoy time with the team, and I think it makes us more likely to help each other out as we take great pride in each other's success.
Giving Back
Over the past couple of years, my personal favorite team building event, is volunteering at Feed My Starving Children. Everyone finds this to be a truly rewarding event where we package up food parcels which then go to people in need in a developing nation.
This year we sent enough food for 85 children in Liberia to last for a year!
In conclusion, we love running this event each year as it helps to ensure our presales team is at the top of our game and have the skills that ensure customer success. Beyond productivity and effectivity gains, we get a huge payback with great team spirit and engagement!
In fact, I'm looking forward to next year's event already!