I did a workshop today for a group of sales people, and being somewhat fired up over the past couple of days about mediocrity in training, I felt like I had better deliver something special.  It was a group of 20 or so sales reps from a large travel company.

Typically, these guys are really on the ball and quite a tough group as they get a reasonable amount of professional development.  So, I knew I had to be really on my game today.  The topic was Relationship Based Sales.

The thing is, when designing the workshop, I kept coming back to an activity I had done a long time ago that is based on Bingo.  Every time I thought about it, I dismissed it, thinking..."they have probably seen it before"  " it's a bit old hat"  "it's a bit cheesy".

Long story short, I decided to go with it, and back my ability to debrief whatever happened.  As it turned out, it was the PERFECT activity.  It went down a treat, and the metaphor was really clear, relevant and powerful.  Not only that, it proved to be the activity that kept on giving....we referred to it time and time again thoughout the course.

I suppose it just goes to show that sometimes those well designed, simple activities really do the job.