Peer - graded Assignment : Reflection         August 25 , 2019 

 Design Thinking Tool : Storytelling ( Module 2 ) 

 Challenge 

 I am technical manager with organization and sales responsibilities for a new line of products within the 

 company . The new line of products requires highly technical information and the sales process lies 

 heavily on the partnership between the technical manager and the sales manager . There are several 

 sales managers located in specific territories within the country , and they interact with their customers 

 on a weekly or monthly basis . Even though application and contacts are most of the time the same , the 

 sales group has experience and training on a different line of products than the one I am responsible for . 

 Therefore , sales managers feel “ forced ” to get out of their comfort zone to explore new sales 

 opportunities and interact with different stakeholders . This task had created a discomfort in the group . 

 As sales managers are not comfortable with the new products and concepts , the interaction with the 

 technical team gets compromised and ultimately compromises the business . The main challenge when 

 the new products came in the portfolio was to motivate sales team by giving proper training , 

 demystifying the barriers with new products , and building trust with technical team members . 

 Selection 

 Storytelling was the tool of my choice because the goal was to address the “ difference between solving 

 a problem and creating a cause ” described in the “ Storytelling Tool ” video by Manu Do . The idea 

 was to use storytelling to avoid the classic meeting set up of PowerPoint and problems listing and 

 discussion between the technical and sales group . Meetings had been usually interesting and ideas were 

 generated ; nevertheless , past the meetings , the ideas discussed did not go into action . Following the 

 description that “ a cause is something that ignites people and unites people ” , storytelling could 

 potentially help solving the challenge of creating a team work between technical and sales to shape 

 knowledge and access customers . Inspiring and motivating the sales group was the main step towards 

 reaching the sales opportunities . 

 Application 

 Within the sales group , one of the sales managers , before retiring , had a different approach and broke 

 out of his comfort zone with the new product , by using his knowledge and contacts in combination with 

 the technical team skills . This generated a good story of a successful partnership between technical 

 members and a sales person that led into sales and further product usage expansion . The story was 

 reinforced with trial data and sales figures and used to get the attention of the rest of the sales group . 

 The idea was not to “ sell ” it as a formula , but to be an inspiration and serve as an example where 

 someone with the same “ limitations ” trusted a technical counterpart and worked together to achieve a 

 goal . However , sales team convinced themselves that such story was only true because their 

 counterpart had more time than they actually had and the accounts were smaller with easier changes of 

 success . Even though some facts were relatively true , sales group convinced themselves that this 

 scenario would not work for them and went back to status quo . 

 Insight 

 Even though the successful story could catch their attention , it was clearly not enough to create 

 motivation . As described in the video of George & Geoff , “ we approach things that are pleasurable and 

 avoid things that are painful ” . For several reasons , this topic was still “ painful ” and unachievable by the 

 sales team . The technical team had to transform their view of the challenges into a view of 

 opportunities , something rather “ pleasurable ” to be able to achieve successful sales . 

 Approach 

 Next approach is to present new possibilities and show that there is a way to get this solved . By 

 “ transforming ” their mind into thinking they do n’t need to have all accounts at first , but rather focus on 

 small wins . Small wins could be very similar to the wins from their counterpart story and would lead us 

 for bigger wins in the upcoming years . Also , to raise the level of engagement when the comes to 

 technical , one next approach is to change the presentation of trials results into a more visual image , to 

 get the concepts easily “ digested ” by sales team to help them increase their confidence on the new 

 products . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Peer - graded Assignment : Reflection         August 25 , 2019 

 Design Thinking Tool : Storytelling ( Module 2 ) 

 Challenge 

 I am technical manager with organization and sales responsibilities for a new line of products within the 

 company . The new line of products requires highly technical information and the sales process lies 

 heavily on the partnership between the technical manager and the sales manager . There are several 

 sales managers located in specific territories within the country , and they interact with their customers 

 on a weekly or monthly basis . Even though application and contacts are most of the time the same , the 

 sales group has experience and training on a different line of products than the one I am responsible for . 

 Therefore , sales managers feel “ forced ” to get out of their comfort zone to explore new sales 

 opportunities and interact with different stakeholders . This task had created a discomfort in the group . 

 As sales managers are not comfortable with the new products and concepts , the interaction with the 

 technical team gets compromised and ultimately compromises the business . The main challenge when 

 the new products came in the portfolio was to motivate sales team by giving proper training , 

 demystifying the barriers with new products , and building trust with technical team members . 

 Selection 

 Storytelling was the tool of my choice because the goal was to address the “ difference between solving 

 a problem and creating a cause ” described in the “ Storytelling Tool ” video by Manu Do . The idea 

 was to use storytelling to avoid the classic meeting set up of PowerPoint and problems listing and 

 discussion between the technical and sales group . Meetings had been usually interesting and ideas were 

 generated ; nevertheless , past the meetings , the ideas discussed did not go into action . Following the 

 description that “ a cause is something that ignites people and unites people ” , storytelling could 

 potentially help solving the challenge of creating a team work between technical and sales to shape 

 knowledge and access customers . Inspiring and motivating the sales group was the main step towards 

 reaching the sales opportunities . 

 Application 

 Within the sales group , one of the sales managers , before retiring , had a different approach and broke 

 out of his comfort zone with the new product , by using his knowledge and contacts in combination with 

 the technical team skills . This generated a good story of a successful partnership between technical 

 members and a sales person that led into sales and further product usage expansion . The story was 

 reinforced with trial data and sales figures and used to get the attention of the rest of the sales group . 

 The idea was not to “ sell ” it as a formula , but to be an inspiration and serve as an example where 

 someone with the same “ limitations ” trusted a technical counterpart and worked together to achieve a 

 goal . However , sales team convinced themselves that such story was only true because their 

 counterpart had more time than they actually had and the accounts were smaller with easier changes of 

 success . Even though some facts were relatively true , sales group convinced themselves that this 

 scenario would not work for them and went back to status quo . 

 Insight 

 Even though the successful story could catch their attention , it was clearly not enough to create 

 motivation . As described in the video of George & Geoff , “ we approach things that are pleasurable and 

 avoid things that are painful ” . For several reasons , this topic was still “ painful ” and unachievable by the 

 sales team . The technical team had to transform their view of the challenges into a view of 

 opportunities , something rather “ pleasurable ” to be able to achieve successful sales . 

 Approach 

 Next approach is to present new possibilities and show that there is a way to get this solved . By 

 “ transforming ” their mind into thinking they do n’t need to have all accounts at first , but rather focus on 

 small wins . Small wins could be very similar to the wins from their counterpart story and would lead us 

 for bigger wins in the upcoming years . Also , to raise the level of engagement when the comes to 

 technical , one next approach is to change the presentation of trials results into a more visual image , to 

 get the concepts easily “ digested ” by sales team to help them increase their confidence on the new 

 products .
### Output: 