AI & sales enablement consulting & Training

Empower your team, boost employee retention, and cultivate resilience for successful change.

Accelerate productivity and drive superior outcomes with streamlined processes.

Adapt swiftly to evolving business and customer demands by rapidly upskilling your workforce.

Grow productivity & revenue by monitoring performance & driving continuous improvements.

Sales Enablement is a multifaceted approach that equips sales teams with the knowledge and skills to effectively engage with prospects and optimize the sales process. We emphasize the importance of ongoing learning and skill enhancement to stay current with the evolving market dynamics and customer needs. By cultivating a culture of learning and growth from the start, we help ensure your sales and support teams adapt to changing circumstances, ensuring the long-term success of your organization. We support sales management by assessing their team’s needs and skills and providing sales effectiveness analysis and relevant recommendations.

AI Accelerator for media & Advertising Sales

unlock smarter sales Performance with ai

Brought to you by:

The Laredo Group & Academy of Digital Media – the world’s leading digital media training and consulting company
Data Society Group – the top experts in data science training and enterprise AI solutions
Together, we’ve created the most effective and efficient Artificial Intelligence (AI) education program specifically for media and advertising sales professionals, managers, and executives.

Course Overview
The AI Accelerator provides sales teams with the knowledge, confidence, and practical insight to use AI as a competitive edge. The program is customized for your team, tools, and markets… offering direct relevance and immediate value.
Participants will explore how to use AI to:
- Prospect more efficiently and effectively
- Gather competitive and marketplace insights
- Communicate with greater clarity and precision
- Increase proposal and negotiation results
- Improve Forecasting & Pipeline Management
- Strengthen account management and improve renewals
This is not a technical course. It’s a strategic, hands-on, practical guide…with real-world exercises in applying generative AI tools to everyday sales workflows—transforming your team’s productivity and positioning them to lead in a rapidly evolving media landscape.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

AI is changing how media is bought, sold, and measured. Sales teams that don’t upskill risk falling behind. This course helps teams:

Close deals faster
Renew business more consistently
Save time and increase prospecting velocity
Make more informed, data-driven recommendations
Align more closely with marketing, data, and client success teams

Target prospecting framework^TM

Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events

Addresses the challenge of breaking through the advertising clutter in the B2B media and events space to reach marketing decision-makers and influencers.

Designed for B2B brand sellers facing difficulties in reaching their target audience among the vast options of ad impressions and events/webinars.

Who Should Take This Course
- B2B sales reps, marketing managers, and business development managers who want to overcome non-response and ghosting and/or need to improve sales pipeline accuracy.
- Content marketers needing to align their demand gen efforts with sales prospecting efforts.
Core Objectives
- Equip sellers with advanced strategies and methods for:
  - Effectively researching and identifying potential clients.
  - Utilizing the right channels and timing to reach potential clients.
  - Crafting value propositions and messaging that link the prospects’ challenges with the sellers' solutions
Course Description: Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events
- In today’s cluttered advertising ecosystem, with an unlimited supply of audience-driven ad impressions and expanding events and webinar options, B2B brand sellers face the formidable task of breaking through the noise to reach marketing decision-makers and influencers.
- "Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events" is specifically designed to address these challenges and provide the advanced strategies and methods needed to effectively research and identify potential clients, use the right channels and timing to reach them, and craft value propositions and messaging that connect prospects’ challenges with your solutions.
- Click Here to View or Download Course Outline
Addressing the Core Challenge
- "Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events" directly tackles, among other topics, the two critical pain points faced by B2B sellers: Non-Response and Ghosting.
- Sellers’ outbound efforts face immense challenges getting heard and seen, standing out amidst fierce competition and excessive options. Capturing the attention of your prospects and getting a response seems nearly impossible.
- By focusing on strategic prospecting techniques tailored to your vertical and solutions, participants will learn the framework for a new approach and the AI tools to find and engage the right prospects in the right way, ensuring your solutions get the visibility and consideration they deserve.
- Once you have gotten an initial response, the challenge is to complete the dialogue. The preferred completion would, of course, be a sale, but even a refused proposal is a useful completion to a sales effort since you can learn from that sale loss.
- The problem is that today many prospects, at some point in the dialogue, simply stop responding and provide no reason or conclusion…Ghosting you. This not only drains your resources as you try to get them to continue or resolve the dialogue, but also does not provide any useful information with which you alter your approach, pricing, or whatever may be the issues for them or the next prospect.
Why This Course?
- In the competitive landscape of B2B media and events, the ability to effectively prospect and build robust sales pipelines stands as the cornerstone of successful sales strategies.
- "Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events" is a course meticulously designed to address this foundational need. This course integrates developing a strategic framework based on the media planning and buying principles that your prospects use with understanding the techniques and available AI tools to assist and collaborate.
- Click here to view or download an article explaining the importance of this approach.
- In addition to learning advanced prospecting techniques, participants will learn to define and implement forecasting criteria for improving the accuracy of their sales pipeline.
- At the heart of every successful sales operation lies a strong prospecting strategy and framework. Without it, the top of the sales funnel narrows, and the lifeblood of your business dries up significantly, limiting potential growth and revenue opportunities. This course is crafted to ensure that you are equipped with the knowledge and skills to establish a solid foundation for your sales process, enabling you to expand the top of your funnel by identifying high-quality leads and expanding the criteria used for accurate sales forecasting.
The TARGET Prospecting Framework^TM
- This "Strategic Prospecting in B2B Media and Events" course reveals the TARGET Prospecting Framework^TM. This framework parallels B2B prospecting with media planning, offering a unique perspective that believes that understanding and leveraging the media buying discipline used by your prospects is the foundation for productive prospecting.
- Participants will learn to approach prospecting with the same intentionality and detailed planning as a media planner devises a campaign, ensuring that every outreach is targeted, timed, and optimized for maximum impact and engagement.
- Participants will master the art of strategic alignment, ensuring their prospecting efforts are not only well-coordinated across channels but also perfectly attuned to the preferences and behaviors of their target audience. From understanding the criticality of timing in communication to selecting the right platforms and crafting messages that resonate, this course covers all necessary bases.
- Timing
  Hone the skill of initiating interactions at the most opportune moments to maximize the visibility and impact of your outreach. Timing is crucial to ensure that your messages are both seen and felt by your target audience, making every touchpoint count.
- Alignment
  Ensure that every aspect of your prospecting strategy is in perfect sync with your overall business goals and the specific needs of your audience. This involves coordination of efforts that resonate with the preferences and expectations of your prospects, creating a seamless and effective outreach process.
- Resonance
  Craft messages that resonate with your prospects by speaking directly to their needs, challenges, and aspirations. This element of the framework emphasizes the importance of customized, relevant communication that connects on a personal level, making your messaging impossible to ignore.
- Guidance
  Navigate the competitive landscape of the B2B marketplace with confidence, utilizing AI-driven insights. This approach provides a strategic advantage, allowing you to guide your efforts more effectively and stay ahead in the ever-evolving B2B sector.
- Engagement
  Prioritize meaningful interactions by choosing the most appropriate platforms for your audience and developing compelling content that engages and persuades. Engagement is key to building lasting relationships with your prospects, turning initial interest into genuine connections.
- Targeting
  Enhance your B2B media selling strategy by meticulously targeting the right people at the right time with the right message. Developing a prospect-targeting strategy requires a deep understanding of your ICP and overarching business objectives. This approach is transformative, and required to ensure your messaging reaches and resonates with your intended audience, driving desired outcomes.

onboarding programs & training

get new staff up-to-speed quickly & confidently

Customized onboarding prepares your sales reps, support staff, and customer success specialists with the most effective skills to engage with prospects and customers and optimize the sales and account management process. Our programs ensure that your teams become more productive sooner and can address different scenarios to achieve the best outcomes.

Comprehensive Knowledge Transfer
- Go beyond basic training with comprehensive knowledge transfer to ensure new sales reps understand and apply what they learned so they can effectively represent your products and corporate vision.
Streamlined Learning Experience
- Streamlined learning experiences make the learning path effective, with well-organized and easily accessible materials. The format allows for a systematic and efficient learning process, ensuring new hires can quickly grasp the essential information and skills required to excel in their roles.
Increased Confidence and Engagement
- A well-executed on-boarding program boosts confidence, which leads to improved performance, empowering reps to quickly see their path to contributing to the organization's success.
Continuous Development and Adaptability
- Customized Laredo Group onboarding, especially when combined with on-going training updating and reinforcement, sets the foundation for development and adaptability within your teams.
- Ongoing learning and skill enhancement keeps your entire team up-skilled to succeed within an evolving marketplace with changing customer needs.

advanced skills training & coaching

improve staff performance at all levels

Advanced skills are about effecting behavioral change in sellers and support staff who use “power” skills to build trusted relationships, communicate value, address concerns, and learn how to respond in ways that influence how buyers make decisions. Reps and others that learn these power skills will increase their win rates, deal size, and raise renewal rates and business from existing accounts.

Active Listening
- This is the most neglected skill that needs the most practice, as it is an essential skill for creating trust and strengthening relationships.
Questioning
- Questions are starting places for every relationship and discussion, and knowing the right questions to ask at the right time will yield deeper insights and sales opportunities.
Storytelling
- The best technique for connecting with clients on an emotional level is through stories, and storytelling will simplify and inspire prospects and customers to make the decisions you want them to make.
Managing Objections and Navigating Obstacles
- These two challenges require different approaches and must be anticipated, preempted, and addressed to smoothly advance the sale.
Negotiation
- Negotiation is the most challenging part of a relationship that can derail the best sales process. The negotiation which yields the right outcomes requires learning a framework for the process, the language and process of persuasion, and understanding what influences decision-making.

QUEST TRAINING^TM

In Pursuit of Sales excellence

QUEST^TM Training empowers sales teams to thrive in the rapidly evolving landscape of digital marketing, with new and emerging technologies reshaping how we target, engage, and nurture prospects, and retain and upsell existing clients. This dynamic environment challenges traditional approaches and means new skills and account strategies are needed to seize opportunities for revenue growth.

QUEST^TM Training is Laredo Group’s acronym for how we deliver our “Pursuit of Sales Excellence” training series.

- Questioning
  - …is the most important activity for everyone on the sales team to connect with and understand clients’ needs, and craft and deliver solutions.
- Understanding
  - …the client’s business and what drives value.
- Evaluation
  - …is the process that drives how to listen and create new opportunities.
- Strategies
  - …are developed to leverage your capabilities with client needs, with the goal of obtaining long-term commitments.
- Tactics
  - …are the commitment to responsibilities needed to advance the client relationship.

The Sales Team’s Challenges
Digital transformation is morphing the marketing ecosystem with new and evolving technologies to target, reach, qualify, engage, and advance prospects into clients and upsell and renew clients. This complex, transformative, and shifting environment makes it difficult for the status quo and entrenched solutions to maintain their place on a client’s roster. It also creates opportunities for new products to replace existing and vetted solutions.

The skills and processes of the sales teams need to adapt to these new realities. The sales team needs to be…

Better at understanding buyer expectations and how marketing technology is impacting their buying journeys and decisions
Prepared to communicate their value to fight off competitors or displace existing vendors
Proficient in developing account strategies that identify, dissect and solve problems.
Engaged in active listening to find and respond to opportunities
Competent in account preparation to ask appropriate questions to motivate moving forward
Manage objections and obstacles, and support the decision-making journey
Have confidence to craft, communicate and present solutions that inspire their clients

QUEST^TM Sales Training teaches sales teams to…

Stand out and successfully compete in hypercompetitive marketplaces
Transform from transactional to consultative selling
Hone critical relationship skills and understand what influences client decisions
Expand listening and questioning skills to diagnose problems and illuminate options
Use storytelling to get engagement and gain commitments

QUEST^TM Sales Training Course Topic Areas:
- Identifying Client Needs – A Different Approach
- Selling Solutions – Beyond Products and Services
- Understanding How Decisions are Made & Managing Client Expectations
- Questioning for Insights and Advancing Ideas
- Listening – Beyond the Assumptions
- Handling Objections with Confidence & Articulating Price vs. Value
- Using Storytelling to Create an Emotional Impact
- Negotiating with a New Framework to Find the Best Resolution
- Communicating and Presenting with Presence and Passion
- Collaboration and Relationship Building
- Action Planning, Moving Forward with Willingness and Motivation

QUEST^TM Sales Management Training is designed for sales managers and executives with a customized curriculum based on the following topics…

Challenges Faced by Sales Managers
- How to address uncertainty in today’s business and competitive environment
- How martech and adtech are impacting buyer’s journeys and decisions
- Managing hybrid employees and workspaces
Communicating Responsibilities
- What motivates sales reps
- Setting performance expectations
- Acknowledging and addressing skill gaps
- Resolving performance-related issues
- Conducting productive team meetings
Team & Skill Building
- Understanding & managing diversity
- Recruiting and onboarding
- Implementing and managing personal training paths
- Coaching to power performance improvements
Developing Sales Strategies & Plans
- Mapping the sales process
- Assessing prospecting activities
- Developing a productive lead gen strategy & plan
Managing Sales Performance
- Establishing sales KPIs
- Managing pipeline activity
- Analyzing performance metrics
- Assigning account management responsibilities
- Building accurate forecasting models
Sales Leadership
- Creating your sales culture and vision of success
- Developing strategies and setting priorities to achieve goals
- Determining and taking appropriate actions for missed goals and performance issues
- Improving your decision-making process
- Effective communications

Preforce custom

bespoke survey research & analysis

Knowledge Is Power...Be More Powerful

Customized surveys and interactions are a valuable tool for businesses seeking to gain a deeper understanding of their staff, customers, motivations, buying habits, and more.

By tailoring survey questions to specific areas of interest, businesses can extract valuable insights that enable them to make informed decisions, enhance their products or services, and strengthen relationships with both their internal and external stakeholders. Benefits of using customized surveys and interactions include:

Gain Actionable Insights From Targeted and Relevant Data
- Customized surveys allow businesses to collect specific information related to their staff, customers, motivations, and buying habits.
- Uncover trends and shine lights on opportunities.
Improved Customer Satisfaction and Retention
- Customized surveys help businesses gauge customer satisfaction levels and identify areas for improvement.
- By soliciting feedback directly from customers, organizations can identify pain points, rectify issues, and enhance the overall customer experience. This, in turn, leads to increased customer satisfaction and improved customer retention rates.
Employee Engagement and Productivity
- Customized surveys can be utilized to assess employee satisfaction, engagement, and motivation.
- Identify, assess, and address gaps in perception and performance.
Cost and Time Efficiency
- Target specific segments of staff or customers, allowing businesses to gather data efficiently and effectively.
- Gauge effectiveness of customer and employee facing programs.
Competitive Advantage
- The insights derived from surveys can provide a better understanding of customer preferences, buying habits, and market trends, enabling organizations to tailor their offerings to meet customer needs more effectively.

Bespoke survey research & analysis offers numerous benefits to businesses aiming to gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers motivations, buying habits, and more. From targeted data collection to enhanced decision-making and improved customer satisfaction, these surveys provide invaluable insights that drive success and growth in today’s competitive landscape.

SPARC

Sales Performance & Attitude Research Compendium

improve team performance & Bottom-Line Results

SPARC provides a comprehensive assessment and analysis of sales skills and is used to recognize and measure the strengths and deficits that impact sales performance. Achieve your revenue goals by…

Insights Help Achieve Growth
- Identify sales management capabilities and gain deeper insights into core sales skills competencies and motivations.
Motivate Salesforce
- Assess gaps in perceptions and performance to allow for more direct discussions on expectations and achievements.
Sales Investment and Allocation
- Focus training time on skills and allocate investments on resources that yield the highest impact on revenue.
Sales Enablement Support
- Understand and identify which sales tools impact sales operations and productivity
Talent Development
- Provide feedback for recruiting and talent development protocols