What our clients say

I recently had the pleasure of working with Julien Lepetit when he delivered a sales training program to a group of our associates. The feedback regarding his delivery has been extraordinary. His clear ability to adapt to meet the needs of his audience makes him one of the best presenters I have ever seen.

We have been working with Keith for close to 3 years now as part of our drive as a business to become closer and more valuable to our clients. In order to do this it is critical that our team build the skills and confidence to have broad business conversations at all levels of the organisation. This not only gets us away from a price war, but helps us to better pinpoint the problem that the client is trying to solve, and subsequently position ourselves to provide the best outcome. Keith has really helped us work out which of our team are capable in getting to this level and in developing the skills of those who are. In addition, Keith has managed to introduce us to a cross section of business leaders who have similar thinking and many of whom are now our clients. Finally and most importantly, our thinking has evolved – our approach to people, both internally and externally, as well as how we position our value proposition. By building better relationships with our clients we are better leveraging our own intellectual capital and ultimately creating better, more sustainable working relationships.”

We have been working with Keith for 15 months now. We have put most of our senior people through his program and have also engaged Keith to coach specific individuals. Keith has also been helping us with some of our marketing messaging to become more client centric. Keith has really helped us change the way we think about our clients and how we need to bring them value in every interaction regardless of whether that value has anything to do with the services we offer.

I had known Keith for a while in a previous role and had seen how his work really helped engineers have better conversations with clients. So when I was involved in changing and growing Aurecon in Christchurch I had no hesitation in bringing Keith into the change program. The work that Keith did was a key element of the change and building the ability of our team to have more commercial conversations with our clients outside their normal technical areas of expertise. The ultimate measure of success for us, as well as the significant growth we experienced, was the feedback from the business community: ‘We are not quite sure what Aurecon are doing – but it is different and we like it.

In my first year with one consulting engineering firm I brought in $100,000. In my second year I brought in $150,000. I then attended the ENGAGE program and in my next nine months I brought in $500,000.

I am extremely lucky to have the opportunity to work closely with Julien. He is a true inspiration to me and each session with him as a business development coach brings me and the team to a next level. Julien gave me the tools and the confidence to develop my accounts in a way that is truly client centric. He challenges me in a positive way and after every discussion with him I feel enthused to approach a challenge from a different perspective. He knows how to really listen, he cares and genuinely wants to help. If you are lucky enough to work with Julien, I highly recommend you to take this opportunity and enjoy the journey.”

We’ve developed our people, as consultants in the marketplace, by having gone through ENGAGE. It’s raised our game.

I attribute the skills I learnt at the ENGAGE course to making my targets in my first year. I did the course in October and did 50% of my annual target in the 2 months leading up to the following June. I feel the skills I learned allowed me to build the relationships that saw me hit my numbers last year.

After leaving ENGAGE training with Keith Dugdale I feel enthusiastic and empowered. The biggest benefit to me of attending the training is that it’s helped me gain confidence – this was the missing ingredient for me when building relationships with partners and clients.

I have attended dozens of sales training courses and read almost every business book about sales and building relationships over my 20-year sales career. Out of all of them, I am only willing to recommend one. Keith Dugdale has literally written the book on building relationships as a deliberate sales strategy. He walks the talk and is a genuine expert in the field second to none. The great thing about Keith's philosophy is that it stands the tests of time and application in the real world. There is no hint of 'slick tricks' with Keith, just proven methodology and right mindsets that get results.

I experienced Julien as a sales coach putting the client in the centre of our actions. Not what we can possibly sell but what does make sense for the client and his needs. His advice was spot on and pragmatic and easy to put into action.

I bought Smarter Selling a while back and it is having a profound impact on my career as an engineer. I love your work!

Working with Keith has given me a new outlook on building relationships with prospective clients that are ‘real’, and by that I mean relationships focussed on understanding and delivering what clients actually want, while working from a position of mutual respect and trust.

I often tout the value of the training you gave to our team as an example of the importance of proper relationship building. I use the example of my experience as an outsider coming into Australia and in less than 6 months developing strong client relations and eventually growing our work in the areas of the business where I was focused. I won’t give you all the credit since I feel like relationship building was always a strength of mine, but I saw a lot of value in the training, guidance and direction provided in your sessions. The use of the I We U approach, really helped improve my chances of getting in the door. The combination of a more focused approach from your training, and something of value to offer our clients made a very powerful combination.

In business, it doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is – it is always useful and necessary to find people that can take a holistic approach, apply the right methodology and maintain an objective view to help you clarify, implement and grow your idea, concept or business. For us at By Maria, as we are preparing to launch our offer – this person has been Julien. My journey with Julien has not only helped my start-up and my team but also been invaluable as a CEO to clarify some business concepts (including sales), confirm our ideas and hypotheses and give me the confidence to execute a plan that I believe will allow us to achieve our goals. I have found working with Julien challenging, enriching and fun.”

I had the opportunity to work with Julien in the context of a firm wide Sales Culture Transformation. In such a complex organizational development, Julien demonstrated both sharp analytical thinking, and mature stakeholder handling. For me, Julien brings inputs with the right mix of brain (intellectually challenging), hands (pragmatic) und heart (what's in it for everyone).

We submitted a tender and were invited as the second stage of the tender process to conduct a presentation. Prior to presenting, we allocated a lot of time to prepare as a team, and also conducted research on the client, completed a PEST analysis, analysed behavioural profiles and likely concerns of the people who would be in the room, and identified what we could foresee were likely to be the top five key issues for that organisation going forward (and not necessarily where we could provide a legal solution).The organisation was blown away! We think they probably asked about five firms to present. They initially were looking to appoint a panel but decided to appoint us as a sole provider and said that they had no choice but to do so! By putting the client at the centre of the conversation, we were able to demonstrate our knowledge and understanding of their business beyond just our legal technical skills. This is a significant win for our business not only because it is of high value, but also because we have been courting them for two years without much of a nibble. So, thank you. We will be adopting this approach to all of our presentations going forward.

I had the pleasure to work with Julien on several occasions. He was always able to make an impact during the pursuit journey, taking it a step further getting the team engaged and provoking new ideas to win new business. His commitment brought the team new-found confidence and reassurance. I appreciated his professionalism, knowledge and energy he brought to the table. Spending time with him was always time well spent.

The Sales Coaching delivered by Julien brings tremendous value to our proposals as he is singularly focused on the best possible pitch and maximising PwC chances. I closely watched Julien make a huge difference to the oral presentation for a major opportunity, both in content and delivery. The proposal team needed a lot of guidance and support to execute a compelling and client centric story, which Julien offered with great commitment. For the team this was a steep learning curve, and Julien engaged each individual to give them ideas and suggestions in a constructive and effective way. Such input is extremely valuable.