Business Games, Business Simulations and Discovery Maps^®

AREA OF EXPERTISE > Financial Literacy and Business Acumen

Zodiak®: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy
Sales Version

Successful sales professionals possess keen insight into their customers’ financial and strategic issues and demonstrate business expertise as they open doors at higher corporate levels. That’s the kind of competitive advantage needed in today’s fast-paced business environment.

How do you develop the business and financial acumen of your sales personnel?

Zodiak: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy for Sales Professionals is a powerful one-day simulation that gives them the confidence to position your products and services within a customer’s financial and strategic framework. They learn to speak the language of business and, at the same time, better understand your own organization’s issues around price discounting, revenue forecasting and more.

Call it a sophisticated business simulation…an exercise in experiential learning…or a board game. Whatever you call it, it’s fun, it’s fast and it makes a difference in the world of business.

Overview

The Business Simulation

Zodiak, a four- to five-hour classroom business simulation, quickly immerses participants in the world of business. They become new owners of Zodiak, a company struggling to become profitable. They sign for a bank loan, attract investors and begin delivering products and services to customers. Over a simulated three-year period, they handle problems, make decisions and — at the end of each year — prepare and analyze income statements and balance sheets to understand the impact of their choices.

In small teams, learners experience the adrenalin rush of business ownership:

• Invest in the development of new products and services
• Use key financial concepts to manage the business
• Allocate overhead
• Improve processes
• Impact cash flow
• Respond to quality challenges

Most important, they realize the importance of critical business fundamentals:

• Making a profit
• Generating cash
• Increasing shareholder value

Connections — Bridging to Your Organization

Connections exercises create a bridge from the classroom simulation to the learners’ organization, customers and sales challenges. Connections for Sales Professionals is a powerful session, where learners explore the following ideas:

• The impact of sales forecasting and price discounting on the company’s financial measures
• Creating customer business and financial profiles in order to better position products and services
• Using business knowledge to build higher-level customer relationships
  

Use the exercises provided with the program, or work with Paradigm Learning to customize Connections for an even closer fit with your issues and your audience. A high-impact visual modeled on the Zodiak game board can highlight your company’s (or a typical customer’s) financial operations. Laser-focused exercises can deal with such business challenges as pricing, discounting, product mix, competitive comparisons, new-product positioning and company sales/marketing initiatives.

Connections exercises help guide employees toward discovery of their personal impact and toward a commitment to action.

Uses

Consider using Zodiak for Sales Professionals:

• As a complement to an existing sales training curriculum
• To energize and educate sales personnel at an event or meeting
• To help introduce new products and services
• To build enhanced collaboration between sales and sales support personnel

Target Audience

• Sales professionals in any industry (Select from the Zodiak Services or the Zodiak Industry version.)
• Sales managers, to enhance their own business acumen and improve coaching skills
• Sales support personnel (marketing, advertising, customer service, etc.)

Time Frame

• One day: four- to five-hour Zodiak game; 1½- to 2½-hour Connections session

Training Delivery

Paradigm Learning can train your own in-house facilitators or provide experienced discovery learning facilitators to conduct your sessions. It’s your choice!

Maximize the Results of Zodiak in Your Organization

Z Plus provides online access to ideas and ready-to-use materials to help spread the word about the power of the Zodiak program to your employees and managers, provide you with tips on how to make Zodiak more effective, and offer ideas to help maximize your investment in the program. The collection of tools will continually grow and develop, and access to Z Plus is available at no charge to all Zodiak customers. Click here to learn more.

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