Training Services

Plant your vision,
Cherish your talent,
Reap your rewards!

The training services of MTI² make your people blossom through customized and action-oriented programs in innovation, marketing, sales, management, and leadership.

Our training methods

The people we upskill most frequently are engineers, scientists, R&D profiles, and people with commercial functions.

We deploy various training methods, either face-to-face or remote, reporting to you live from our exceptionally equipped studios. We offer e-learning modules, project-based learning, and hybrid programs.

Our involvement with clients ranges from delivering a single training on a specific topic to co-developing solid foundations for an entire learning architecture that we implement together.

Bespoke training

You have a specific training in mind for your people. For instance, you want to hire a commercial or innovation trainer/facilitator to fill a spot in a new or ongoing training program. Together we decide if the program will be deployed in a one-hour session or a sequence of sessions, and whether we’ll run it face-to-face, remote, or via a self-learning platform. We are here to help you upskill your team in your preferred way!

Training cycle

You want to organize a training cycle to upskill your people on commercial or innovation competencies. For instance, you want 2-5 training modules self-learning, online or offline, covering different subjects. We can co-develop such a cycle with you, online or offline, facilitated or via self-learning, execute the training and facilitation sessions and integrate sessions you want to do yourself or with existing partners.

Training academy

You want to set up an academy developing the required competencies for your talent to deliver on your strategy. We can help you develop and communicate an academy vision and execute the training online, offline, and through self-learning. We can help develop guidelines for other external partners you wish to onboard and integrate your academy approach into existing or new systems.

Transformational journeys

You aim to adopt new ways of working. For instance, you decided at a central level that your commercial or innovation teams should adopt a new mindset or way of operating, and now want to accelerate the adoption of this new way of working throughout the organization. We can co-design a trajectory that enables your teams – through best-of-breed tooling and templates – devise actionable plans that will ensure they adopt desirable practices, ensuring a seamless implementation of the new way of working from the ground up.
Domains we cover

While we are always broadening our knowledge and scope, in our trainings we cover the following domains

Edit Content

Distinguishing different customer types and effectively targeting them with a unique and valuable positioning should be in every marketer’s toolkit. We discuss inspirational cases of how leading firms like Nike, Starbucks, or Tesla, and firms in your industry, have made successful STP decisions and guide you through clear tooling options to make more effective STP decisions.

As a modern successor to STP decisions, customer profiling focuses on identifying customer types and adjusting the marketing approach to better fit these profiles. It also identifies ways to gather profiling information and act on it effectively. We typically train commercial roles in this new way of thinking and often connect it to customer experience thinking.

Today, it is no longer a question of being offline or online. Today, it’s a game of being everywhere at the right time for the right customer. In our training program, we piggyback on successful omnichannel approaches by Starbucks, Sephora, and Michelin and digital marketing by companies such as Netflix, Amazon, and Booking.com to leverage insights for your omnichannel approach. We guide you through tooling to clarify your objectives, set up the right metrics, understand how your actions affect the journey of different customers and set up lean experiments.

Where creativity was once considered king in marketing, now it has to share the seat with evidence-supported decisions. Our training programs highlight the superiority of this type of decision-making in companies such as P&G, Booking.com, Komatsu, and Campbell’s and help you to solidify an evidence-based attitude among your marketers without losing sight of the essential role of creativity.

The success of many firms often ties closely to the successful launch of innovations. Our training programs on launch excellence review successful launches, such as the Tesla Model S and Model 3, Eli Lilly’s Cialis P&G’s Febreze, and many more. We derive ‘Critical Success Factors for Launch’ and review your innovation pipeline together. The goal is to work together with your team to prepare or optimize plans for a successful launch globally and locally.

Many brilliant brands have been built in an extraordinary manner. Still, there are clear rules for building brand equity and managing brands. Our training programs help you make your brand stronger. We typically mix inspiration sessions with project work to achieve tangible results for your brands. We also focus on brand architecture issues, such as establishing stronger parent brand endorsement or cleaning up the brand architecture.

Our training programs can accommodate a more managerial approach to pricing, such as how to set prices, what evidence to use for pricing decisions, and how to set promotional discounts, or a more behavioral approach, such as how customers process price information, what biases they show in price processing and how to use these biases to maximize firm profits. We use cases of companies such as Starbucks, Steinway & Sons, BMW, Novartis, and Corning to showcase optimal pricing approaches and help you translate them to your own pricing decisions.

This training provides the marketing teams with guidance on how to use Generative AI (GenAI) to optimize messaging, create compelling visuals, and gain insights through synthetic market research. Gain knowledge on which tools your team should implement for more creative and effective task execution. Click here for the brochure.

Edit Content

Marketing is increasingly complemented by what is referred to as customer experience. In our training programs, we offer commercial roles an introduction to this customer-first approach. By looking at cases of companies who have a strong customer-centric approach such as Starbucks, Lemonade (an Insurtech start-up), and Nike, we bring home a common understanding of terminology and a clear call to action to put the customer first in everything you do.

Whether used in isolation or as part of a complete customer experience approach, customer journey mapping is a powerful tool and will help you better serve your customer. Our training programs show you how to utilize this tool best, how to prevent inefficiencies, and how to remain focused on the goal, which can be to make customers happier, maximize profits and rethink pricing. We bring interesting cases from telecommunication, entertainment, automotive and pharmaceuticals to inspire your own customer journey mapping.

There are many reasons why firms want to gather better customer insights and there are many methods to do so. In our training programs, we review the motivation of your firm and turn to a review of 50 years of customer insights methods – which have grown exponentially in the recent decade – to demonstrate which method is superior for which purpose. We typically end the training with a project module where we review the gathered insights and develop improvements to implement.

With customer personas we dive even deeper into the new ‘Customer First’ logic. A customer persona is a deep description exemplifying a specific customer profile. The idea is to specify customer characteristics, needs, wants and frustrations, a day-in-the-life, etc. With our training programs we help you understand the logic behind customer personas and teach you how to apply it (e.g., through deep immersion with customers)to specific cases. We expand the usage in your firm through project work.

This training provides the marketing teams with guidance on how to use Generative AI (GenAI) to optimize messaging, create compelling visuals, and gain insights through synthetic market research. Gain knowledge on which tools your team should implement for more creative and effective task execution. Click here for the brochure.

Edit Content

In our ideation training, we cover the fuzzy front end of innovation: we teach you a diversity of ideation methods (such as SIT, SCAMPER, design thinking, dark horsing, trend analysis, …), so you can apply the best of breed in your practice. Preferably, we let you practice the tools we teach in your firm’s context, effectively coming up with your ideas. You also get a workbook that steers participants forward in the ideation process. Typically we end the program with an idea pitch to senior management.

This training explains the origin and tooling of design thinking, from early need sensing to validation and experimentation of innovation ideas. We combine the transfer of tools typically with a case study on IDEO or Philips. Ultimately, we prefer you to apply the method to your own firm’s context and flow through the design thinking process with an idea for your firm.

This logic was pioneered by the late Clayton Christensen, who masterminded the term and theory on disruptive innovation. The basic idea is that we buy and consume products and services for the specific jobs they do for us. In principle, this idea goes back to the original thinking in marketing on the marketing concept, paraphrased popularly by Peter Drucker as “people do not buy a drill, they buy a hole in the wall”. Our training programs in this field explain this concept, teach you how to use the tooling associated with it, and exemplify usage by studying other cases. Participants are prompted to apply the concept in their own settings to discover customer jobs and develop new solutions.

Lean start-up started almost like a movement around Steve Blank and Eric Ries. The basic idea is to start a new business coming from innovation in as lean a way as possible. It advocates for principles such as early launch and experimentation, instead of careful and long-range strategic planning. We often study the case of LinkedIn, as it is one of the first mass applications of this concept, and explore the implications of this method for large incumbents as well by studying firms such as Michelin and P&G. We train you on the full lean start-up method, including tools and templates.

While it is also a key ingredient of lean start-up methodology when we teach assumption testing and validation of innovation, we consider it as one. Beyond lean start-up, we use our own TMRO framework and inception method. We provide you with an easily accessible roadmap, specifically for market validation. At the end of the program, we expect you to have a solid understanding of validation principles and how to get started.

The first references to business models date from the ’80s, if not earlier. In this training, we take you through three main frameworks on how to think of business models (the thinking around key activities, around the 52 Sankt Gallen types, and the Osterwalder business model canvas). We apply these frameworks preferably to your firms.

A value proposition was popularized in innovation in the business model canvas thinking of Osterwalder. However, it dates back several decades as it is what marketers originally have called the USP (Unique Selling Proposition). In the training, we trace the concept over many years and the different tools that have been developed to exploit the concept. We apply the thinking to breakthrough innovations in automotive, chemicals, and household products. We want you to walk out with a solid understanding of the concept, but also with practical guidelines on how to strengthen your firm’s value proposition and express it in your firm’s marketing and communication approach.

This two-part training equips innovation leaders with cutting-edge GenAI techniques to improve the front-end of the innovation process. Learn how to leverage AI for dynamic idea generation, customer need identification, trend analysis, and quick idea validation, improving the creativity and efficiency of your innovation teams. Click here for the brochure.

Edit Content

Persuasion is a method of communication that aims to influence the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of others; in sales, it concerns sales reps influencing (prospective) customers. In our programs, we often approach persuasion from a Customer First mindset and we ground our approach in behavioral economics. We teach a practical understanding of persuasion techniques, and how to optimally apply and use them in your sales practice.

In sales, handling objections is key to being effective. Prospects often raise such objections in sales conversations and overcoming them is key to closing a deal. In our sales training, we explain to participants the behavioral rationale of such prospective customer objections and we categorize the different ways in which we can handle them. We ask you to imagine different practical situations where objections about buying your products or services could arise; The training is designed to leave you with a deep understanding of the buyer’s mind and practice different objection-handling techniques.

Our training typically starts with understanding what makes an account important. For this, we often use a tool that contrasts the growth (or volume) of a customer with the type of relationship we (want to) have with this customer. We ask you to apply this tool to your firm and come to solid conclusions on which account types you want to grow or nurture. Next, we review the different ways in which this can be achieved and let you make an action plan to achieve this in your own business. This plan has a clear structure connected with objectives and themes, so it’s very actionable, and we discuss potential implementation issues in the firm’s systems. Sometimes, our training has components firmly grounded in the firm’s internal systems to optimize its usage.

Our training on CRM can take many forms as it is a very large field to cover. We often cover the historical evolution of CRM to come to a clear and shared understanding of relevant terminology. We explain the different metrics that exist in CRM and document their appropriate usage (also explaining when the usage of certain metrics is not valid). Sometimes our training includes a systems component, where we work on optimizing the usage of the CRM system the firm has in place. Finally, we enable teams to work on improvements they can generate in specific customer relationships or the firm’s CRM approach.

This is one of our favorite training in the sales domain: we typically take sales and region managers on a transformation journey. We teach different leadership styles and let you discover your style. In the program, we show how you can improve in leading your teams. We also let you reflect on the current competencies of your teams and those that are currently missing. We exemplify transformation journeys in sales teams in a variety of industries such as technology and biopharma.

In some industries, sales reps and managers are asked to embrace data and bring strong value demonstration of their products to customers. For some reps or managers, this reliance on strong data and analytics requires a rethinking of how they sell and which techniques they use. Our programs guide you through the whole journey of selling based on data evidence: what does it mean for your specific role in your firm and how can you evidence-sell effectively?

Train your team on Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance sales processes. Increase your team’s productivity and help them improve lead qualification with tailored AI insights. Accelerate time-consuming tasks with GenAI. Engage with live demos and AI-driven role-play scenarios that provide practical experience and instant feedback. Click here for the brochure.

Our way of working

Connect

Get in touch!

You’re looking for a training partner because your talent needs upskilling: don’t hesitate and get in touch to discuss your needs!

 

 

Listen

Get to know!
We set up a call with our training architects and listen to your needs and the desired outcome. To generate value for you as fast as possible, we dive right in with in-depth questions on the different layers of the knowledge, competencies, and attitudes you want to train your talent on.

Qualify

Assess the match  
If we feel that there’s a match between your needs and our capabilities and that your interest is sincere (this is very important for us), we move forward.

 

Align

Establish burning platform
We always entertain a dialogue with you on how to develop your training: we super-customize the training to your needs and co-design it together to align it with a clear business result you want to achieve.

 

Agree

Let’s commit!
After 2-3 contact moments, we will ask for a hard commitment from you, which is either to: (1) buy the approach we have co-designed; or (2) buy further training architecture design services on a retainer fee basis.

 

Retain

Let’s sustain!
Ultimately our purpose is to build meaningful relationships for the long term with our clients. Whether a 2-3 hour training or an entirely new training academy, we strive to make a lasting impact along an inspiring journey together.

 

Client stories on our training services

Atlas Copco

Facilitating viable improvement projects: a marketing and sales training for Atlas Copco’s technical employees.

Novartis

Improving patient’s quality of life: An inspirational and action-oriented marketing training cycle for Novartis

Dechra

Building the Dechra Commercial (Marketing & Sales) Academies

How can we help?

On which journey would you like to embark with us? Let's explore it together!

If you haven't found what you're looking for, reach out! We customize our offering to our client's needs.