The why before the how

Next Monday I'm in Switzerland pitching on a whole-of-region sales training project for a very successful small pharma company. I've done the research and crunched the numbers and written the next-to-last draft of the pitch document yet a single question nags me: -

Why do they want the project?

They're already successful and in no small part this has been driven by a strong if informal HR policy of recruiting experienced salespeople. I could even argue that by taking a successful team off the road they're losing money.

Yesterday I found an article in the latest edition of Monocle (a magazine that keeps surprising me) on European military conscription. Contrary to the 'tough love' blather of the right-wing commentariat, no sane person now sees conscription as a good thing. It is an expensive and dangerous way to staff your military and soldiers have better things to do than play some sort of stern uncle role for a generation of lost youth. One of the few European countries with a coherent justification for universal conscription is in fact Switzerland where the army acts as a transcendent and therefore unifying experience for men who might otherwise identify themselves as 'Swiss-German', 'Swiss-French' or 'Swiss-Italian' instead of simply 'Swiss'.

Maybe this is what's going on with my client.

Although they wouldn't admit it, or possibly even be able to voice it as such, perhaps the key motivator is less about upskilling the sales team and more about creating a transcendent / unifying experience. I could be overthinking things as usual but unless I resolve this in my own mind before Monday the trip is already wasted.