Building Confidence and Conversion at Mercedes-Benz World with Absolute Taste

The Absolute Taste team at Mercedes-Benz World reached out to us to help them improve confidence, conversion rates, and ultimately revenue across their sales function.

The team structure was split between Sales Executives, who handled initial client enquiries and conversions, and Event Co-ordinators, who managed event planning post-contract. Several members of the team were in their first-ever sales roles, and although motivated and eager, they needed a clear structure and base-level sales skills to build upon.

Leadership recognised a requirement for:

• A structured sales training programme to ingrain core skills and confidence.
• A better consultative approach to larger enquiries, rather than transactional responses.
• Tools and processes to improve upselling, proposal quality, and the overall client journey.
• Practical training that would benefit not only the sales team but also empower event co-ordinators to recognise sales opportunities.

The Selling Savvy team created a structured, phased project which combined assessment, training, and strategic workshops to meet the client’s goals.

Phase 1: Mystery Shopping to Benchmark Current Performance
We began with a round of mystery shopping, which was to evaluate the team’s handling of initial enquiries, proposal responses, and client engagement. The insights revealed opportunities for improvement in consultative questioning, upselling confidence, and proposal personalisation.

Phase 2: Core Sales Training – The Art of Consultative Selling
Next, we delivered our signature Art of Consultative Selling programme, tailored to the Absolute Taste team’s roles and venue-specific requirements. The focus was on:

• Moving away from transactional conversations.
• Building rapport and asking insightful, qualifying questions.
• Tailoring proposals to reflect individual client needs.
• Understanding and navigating the sales process from enquiry to conversion.

The training we built was practical, interactive, and immediately actionable!

Phase 3: Follow-Up Mystery Shopping to Measure Progress
Following the training, we did a second round of mystery shopping to assess how well the training principles had been embedded. The results were extremely positive:

• An average 9% increase in enquiry response scores.
• A 12.7% improvement in the quality of proposal responses.

These figures demonstrated measurable progress and gave the team renewed confidence.

Phase 4: Strategic Workshops for Long-Term Impact
To build on the progress already made, we introduced two further workshops to support their development:

• Processes & Proposals - A facilitated session focused on reviewing and redesigning the team’s current sales process. Looking at any opportunities to streamline communications, embed consultative touchpoints, and create more personalised proposals.
• Re-Imagining Showrounds - This session helped the team take a fresh look at how they conducted their venue showrounds. We worked through strategies that would align with the walkthroughs using a consultative sales approach, which would result in increased conversion rates.

The combination of mystery shopping, structured training, and hands-on workshops led to significant, measurable improvement across the team.

Sales Executives felt more confident, structured, and professional in how they approached client interactions, while Event Co-ordinators gained greater awareness of their role in the sales process and became more proactive in identifying upselling opportunities.

“Thank you so much for all your help training the team the first part of the year, you’ve made it super easy and it’s been great to get to know you.”
“The team are definitely more confident - not just within the sales team but also in the coordination team as well to upsell, so it’s been great.”
Becky Berrett, Sales & Events Manager, Mercedes-Benz World