Headquartered in the North East with offices in London and the West Midlands, Gradvert's core business centres around helping businesses attract and develop talent.
A key USP is its 360° diagnostics tool, which evaluates an organisation’s people needs so a tailored training solution can be put in place. Here Perry Deakin, sales and marketing director at Gradvert, talks about the programme the team has put into place for leading national hospitality and events business, The Concerto Group. The Concerto Group is one of the UK’s leading hospitality and events businesses. It comprises over 16 services and divisions, with seven offices and over 120 full-time staff. With a unique ability to provide lifestyle events and experiences through one point of contact, Concerto offers everything from event management, venues and bespoke catering, to entertainment, bars and restaurants.
Through the group’s wide expertise they are able to deliver exceptional experiences in incredible settings. From an internal perspective, this means they have complex staff training needs across a range of locations. In 2016 The Concerto Group decided to take a more strategic approach to its people development. Not long after, Gradvert was appointed to deliver a bespoke training solution. Gradvert’s role has been to provide a commercial account management programme that empowers sales teams and builds key client relationships.Making the most of Concerto’s staff investment Concerto is making a significant investment in the development of its sales teams. Our training programme builds on their existing sales skills and provides them with the tools and confidence that will help them deliver an exceptional customer service and build long-term client relationships. But it’s not as simple as it seems.
Getting to the delivery stage with a training provision that is tailored to the required organisational outcomes takes time and in depth knowledge. Which is where Amplifier by Gradvert has come in. Our Amplifier by Gradvert service enables us to improve our clients’ business performance by improving their people. We help companies understand and enhance their development programmes and ensure these are aligned with management goals. We use a 360° diagnostics tool to help us understand the employer’s workforce challenges and culture and design a solution that evolves as the organisational needs do.
We make sure this works across all the development pathways, from graduate entry level to management; and from senior management to director level. For The Concerto Group, this has meant helping the company’s various divisions collaborate more to share best practice; the delivery of an unified customer experience across the board and engendering confidence in the wider team where engaging with potential clients.
Management buy-in aids success Gaining management buy-in for our work from the outset is always critical to success. We need to understand the directors’ expectations of the programme and use this to inform our delivery. It’s well worth the effort, solidifying the relationship and enabling us all to celebrate success. As Adam Elliott, The Concerto Group CEO, said: “When it came to finding a training solution that would help us enrich our talent, Gradvert was the obvious choice. “We’re confident our employees will be inspired by our new commercial account management programme and look forward to its implementation. It is crucial for us to nurture our talent and we are fully committed to investing in our teams. We are dependent on our people and we want them to develop and grow with the Group.” We look forward to continuing to work with The Concerto Group in future and watching it grow.
For more information on Gradvert, please visit www.gradvert.com
