At a refinery, chemical plant or other industrial facility, comfortable is three or four contacts out of a site with dozens. Those relationships are real and they work, which is exactly why nobody leaves them. Going wider is a different skill. Walking up to a process engineer with no question worth asking is worse than not going at all, and most reps know it.
People go where they are comfortable.
Working Knowledge
Industrial service selling
Your team already has the access. They are already making the visits and you are already paying for the travel. What they are not doing is coming away with everything that was available on the day, because one thing a rep notices usually means three pieces of work, and nobody taught him the other two.
This asks for no additional headcount, no additional visits and no additional budget. It asks for more out of the visits you already make.
What it covers
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What is actually happening in there
What a hydrocarbon is, what the plant does to it, and the four levers every unit uses to do it. Enough chemistry to follow a conversation and no more.
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The units
What each one does, what feeds it, what it feeds, and what happens to the rest of the plant when it stops. The last question is the commercially loaded one and technical training skips it.
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The equipment, and what its condition tells you
Equipment taught as implication. When somebody mentions refractory on a heater, the rep knows the unit is coming down without being told. One observation usually means several services, and that is where the extra work comes from.
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Reading the plant
Taking one fragment and reasoning outward to a conclusion nobody handed over. Scaffolding at a reactor. A nitrogen quote. A flange that has been weeping for a month and nobody has reported.
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Asking the next question
The heart of it. A conclusion is not an opportunity. This is the module that closes the gap between working something out and walking away with a unit, a date, a scope and a name that somebody else could act on without you in the room.
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Who holds what, and what to ask them
Eight roles, what each one knows, what each one controls, and why those two things are not the same. Some of the people holding the most useful pieces are the ones nobody calls on.
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Your services against all of it
Built from your own service lines, which is why a discovery comes before delivery.
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Putting it to work
Everyone leaves with a written plan against their own accounts. Named people to call, the questions written out in actual words, and dates.
Knowledge is what creates the standing to ask. A rep who understands what a refinery does, what each unit is for, and what a piece of equipment's condition implies can open a credible conversation with a stranger in any part of the plant. The confidence follows the knowledge, in that order.
The course does not teach sales methodology. You already have one, and somebody whose job it is to run it. The course supplies the thing that methodology currently has nothing to work with: a working model of what the customer actually does all day.
The plant is only half of it. The other half is who does what inside the fence. A site runs on a handful of roles that each hold a different piece of the same picture, and some of the people holding the most useful pieces are the ones nobody calls on.
There is one person scheduling the recurring work at every unit, at every site you cover. How many of them does your team know by name?
Who is in the room
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Account managers
Already have access, presence and daily eyes on a unit. They leave able to recognise that what they are already looking at is worth money.
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Salespeople
Already have the commercial process and the relationships. They leave with a working model of what the customer does, and range across the whole site.
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Operations
The people delivering the work, in front of the customer more often than anyone in sales. They leave knowing what the commercial team is trying to do, and why the things they see on a unit every day are worth passing on.
Format
A day and a half as standard. Two days for a larger group, because the last module is per-person work against their own accounts and it scales with headcount.
Built on refining and petrochemical, where the reasoning is easiest to show. It carries without modification to power, pipelines and terminals, pulp and paper mills, ethanol, LNG, any site that runs on units, intervals and shutdowns.
Take it to your team
The short version and the detail. Nothing to fill in.
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Overview
Five slides. What the problem is, what the course does, and what a day and a half looks like.
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Full syllabus
Three pages. Every module, what it covers, who is in the room, and how it gets built around your service lines.