Develop skills in managing both internal and external customer relationships through proven communication and negotiation techniques.

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Balancing customer satisfaction with your own organization's priorities, values, and goals presents its own set of challenges. Leveraging the Customer Relationship helps develop skills in managing customer relationships whether internal or external, and across gender, cultural, and generational boundaries. You'll learn proven communication and negotiation techniques for handling the challenging dynamics of customer interaction. You'll discover exactly how successful salespeople increase business opportunities. And you'll find out how you can be most effective at balancing competing objectives, facilitating decision making, and ensuring customer satisfaction.

The course focuses on customer relationship management. It does not teach technical project management, financial management, or product management skills. This course is an elective in the Stanford APM curriculum.

Benefits to the Organization

As a result of Leveraging the Customer Relationship, the organization benefits from:

• Improved customer satisfaction, while maintaining organizational priorities, values, and goals
• Strengthened opportunities for new business development
• Increased employee performance and loyalty
• Enhanced working relationships and harmony in the workplace

Learning Objectives

After attending Leveraging the Customer Relationship, you will be able to:

• Build customer satisfaction and loyalty without compromising your organization’s profitability
• Diagnose different causes of customer behavior
• Understand customers with different communication styles
• Manage customer relationships across generational, gender, and cultural boundaries
• Sell ideas, products, and services, both internally and externally
• Negotiate for mutual gain

Target Audience

This course is designed for all project managers, project team members, and senior-level project management professionals who interact directly with internal or external customers or manage others who interact with internal or external customers.

Prerequisites. This course has no prerequisites.

Course Topics

Course Introduction

• Course expectations and objectives
• Course map
• Pepulator simulation

Creating and Sharing Value with Customers

• Creating value with employees
• How customers create value
• Selecting customers to serve
• Helping your customer build a business case

1-to-1 Diagnosis of Customer Behavior

• Use 1-to-1 Diagnosis to understand anyone’s behavior
• Why bother with 1-to-1 Diagnosis?
• How to apply 1-to-1 Diagnosis to customer relationships

Understanding Communication Styles: How Customers Think and Make Decisions

• Sources and characteristics of communication styles
• Assessing your own style
• Working with others’ communication styles

Managing Customer Relationships across Gender, Cultural, and Generational Boundaries

• Gender: does it really matter?
• Perspectives on culture
• Comparing national cultures
• How business cultures differ
• Working with generations

Selling for Project Managers

• What makes an effective salesperson?
• Selling tools and techniques
• Defining the sales objective
• Knowing your audience
• Asking great questions
• Moving towards commitment

Negotiating for Mutual Gain

• Two negotiation methods
• The "Getting to Yes" method for principled negotiation
• How to negotiate for mutual gain
• Negotiating across cultures