OCO Global: Taking the Sales Pentathlon Worldwide

Engagement: Sales Pentathlon — a two-day sales skills workshop delivered across six international locations

Overview

In 2022, Delta Learning delivered the Sales Pentathlon, a global rollout of its two-day, highly interactive sales skills workshop, for OCO Global’s international teams. Between March and May 2022, the programme ran seven times across six cities spanning the UK, continental Europe, the US and the Middle East: two cohorts in Belfast and single cohorts in London, New York, Frankfurt, Paris and Dubai, reflecting the international spread of OCO Global’s own client-facing teams. 

What Was Delivered

Sales Pentathlon Workshop — a two-day, highly interactive programme run in seven cohorts designed to develop advanced sales skills, sharpen commercial acumen and build confidence and effectiveness in live sales conversations. Content covered advanced questioning skills, communicating value, and pitching to win, delivered through short plenary sessions interspersed with group activities and role-play scenarios involving professional actor-coaches playing the customer role, so participants could put theory into practice and get direct feedback in the moment.

Ahead of each workshop, participants completed two short pre-work e-learning modules — The Buying Cycle and A GRID of Questions — introducing the models and frameworks used in the training. 

Objectives

The Sales Pentathlon was designed to:

• Develop participants’ sales skills and sharpen their commercial acumen across a genuinely global, multi-office team.
• Build advanced questioning skills to uncover client needs more effectively.
• Strengthen the ability to communicate value clearly and pitch to win.
• Accelerate confidence in live, high-pressure sales conversations through realistic, actor-led role-play rather than theory alone.
• Embed learning into individual behaviour through pre-work and a personal Commitment to Action tied to each core topic.

Key Outcomes

Feedback was collected from all seven cohorts, The workshop was rated an average of 4.91 out of 5 overall, with 91% of respondents rating it “Very Good” and the remainder “Good” — no respondent rated it below “Good” on any measure. 

Participants consistently highlighted the realism of the actor-led role-play, the hands-on and highly interactive format, and how directly the content was tailored to their own client conversations, rather than generic sales theory. A number of respondents said they would have welcomed a third day to go even deeper into the material — a strong signal of engagement rather than a complaint.

“Overall that was a fantastic experience and I would welcome the opportunity to participate in similar sessions in future.”  — Workshop participant, OCO Global

“As consultants we tend to focus on technical expertise in the selling process. I’ve always found buying decisions to be also very much driven by emotions and perceptions. The training really focuses on that, which is great. It also gives you the opportunity to take a step back, challenge and improve the way you proceed.”  — Workshop participant, OCO Global