Richardson Launches Diagnostic to Identify Skill Gaps & Improve Negotiation Results

Richardson Launches New Negotiations Diagnostic to Help Identify Skill Gaps and Improve Negotiation Results

PHILADELPHIA, PA — March 7, 2007 — Richardson, a leading sales training and consulting firm, today announced the launch of a new online negotiations self-diagnostic tool to support its portfolio of Richardson SkillGauge™ diagnostics. The new negotiations diagnostic is a tool to help professionals self-assess their negotiation skills and close performance gaps.

Consisting of 30 targeted, multiple choice questions, Richardson SkillGauge™: Consultative Negotiation Skills provides professionals with in-depth, confidential feedback on their negotiation strategy and skills. It enables professionals to identify strengths and areas for development in six critical behavioral categories. The strategies and skills assessed in the tool are based on 30 years of research and experience in working with world-class sales and service organizations. The tool has also been tested with sales professionals from leading companies and a group of graduate students with sales experience at a leading Ivy League school.

Richardson’s negotiation diagnostic is an add-on to the award-winning Richardson SkillGauge™ diagnostic product line. The Richardson SkillGauge™ platform provides a series of pre- and/or post-training diagnostics to help individuals make continuous progress through their careers, reinforce training initiatives, and measure progress against career goals.

“We are thrilled with the addition of Richardson SkillGauge™: Consultative Negotiation Skills to our comprehensive line of sales, sales management, and service Web-based diagnostics,” says David DiStefano, President and CEO of Richardson. “The ability to develop the skills for win-win negotiations is critical in today’s business environment. This new diagnostic tool will allow professionals to identify skill gaps and build the necessary skills to affect how clients perceive cost, features, value, and benefits to create win-win consultative negotiations.”

“Self-awareness is the first step to growth,” says Linda Richardson, Founder of Richardson. “Most professionals get very little feedback and self-assessment can be clouded or slanted. Our SkillGauge™ offerings provide professionals with a practical tool to gauge their strategies and skills – in essence providing a basis for developing a training plan. I am extremely excited about Richardson SkillGauge™: Consultative Negotiation Skills because it is so comprehensive and can give such critical insights needed for on-going development.”

All of the Richardson SkillGauge™ diagnostics can stand-alone or can be integrated with Richardson’s customized instructor-led or eLearning sales training solutions. Richardson SkillGauge™ is powered by SkillMeasure, a leading performance consulting firm.