Marketing
Training Exercises and Resources

A particularly useful problem solving technique is to see a given problem from the point of view of a 10 year old. This view point usually helps to simplify both problems and solutions and as a result creates clarity. It is also a form of devil’s advocate analysis; if you cannot describe your products or problems to a 10 year old, you may need to work harder to increase your understanding of the problem.

When making a call, it is important to formulate an objective before making the call. This allows you to focus on what you want and not to get side-tracked. In this exercise, delegates can practice sales skills and learn how to make effective call objectives.

This is a quick exercise in getting the delegates to think about the “benefits” of a product for a particular feature. The emphasis is to quickly convert a feature to several benefits on the fly and learn to do this effortlessly. Benefits are free of jargon and are centred around the customer so they are always better understood.

This exercise is ideal for delegates in sales and marketing roles where they have to describe a product to a customer.

This exercise helps delegate to practice understanding the difference between benefits and features. It is an efficient exercise to encourage sales and marketing people to use “benefits” when describing products rather than complicated “features” full of jargon that customer may not fully understand.

We are exposed to many brands every day in our environment as well as direct advertisement. It is estimated that an average American sees as much as 16000 brands every single day! What does each brand mean to us? How do we respond to each brand? How should brands be marketed to have the highest impact? How do brands compare?

This is where marketing comes into place. With so many brands competing for attention, we have little time to notice them all. We have learned to filter out a lot form our complex environment so we can focus on what matters to us. Only a select few brands can stand out and become memorable or at the extreme end of the scale, come to define a particular way of life on a global scale.

This engaging exercise is designed to kick start a discussion on branding for delegates who attend a course on branding, marketing or a similar topic. It can be used for:

• Branding
• Logo design
• Brand familiarity
• Analysis on use of colour, shapes and common patterns in logos
• Typography
• Social trends
• Behavioural patterns

The exercise requires a pre-course activity where delegates have to prepare materials and bring them to the class.

This fun activity helps delegates to exercise their creativity and use their whole brains (left and right side) to solve the problems presented here. You can also run this exercise as a competition between groups and provide a prize at the end.

In this exercise, delegates practice delivering a quick sales pitch. The structure of the pitch is based on the FAB methodology; Features, Advantages and Benefits. Most people miss the advantage and instead focus too much on features. This exercise helps them to understand the significance of benefits and advantages over features.

Use this exercise to get delegates describe themselves as they like and showcase it to others. There is a lot you can learn when people have to state something about themselves. The choice of words, pictures and diagrams can mean a lot on what their life priorities are which can be surprising at times. This exercise is suitable for team building and helping a group of a people to understand each other better.

This is a creativity exercise in a form of a template that you can customise in a variety ways. The format is that the group comes into possession of a large number of a certain used old product. The groups need to think of creative ways to sell them. Naturally, teams that can work together and use systematic creative methods have a higher chance to come up with novel ideas.

This series of exercises help the delegates to practice writing by observing and improving a variety of different sources. The list is intended as a starting point so you can get ideas about potential exercises. You can extend this list by thinking of many other ideas.