Recently, I was meeting with the managing director of a fashion chain in French-speaking Switzerland.
We were planning a sales training session. He looked at me and said, “Our people come from 16 different countries and speak 9 different languages. Do you really think it’s possible to reach them all in the same way?”
I smiled, because situations like this are part of my daily routine. They’re the reason why FinOptima’s training, coaching, and consulting often succeed where other programs fail: language as a key to unlocking doors.
I’ve been working for many years throughout the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), in neighboring France and Northern Italy, in Luxembourg, and often in Spain as well, in German, French, Italian, and English. Not just on paper, but in real customer meetings, coaching sessions, mystery shopping and mystery guesting, and sales training. Sometimes even multilingual within the same project.
For example, in a luxury boutique training session in Geneva, the team consisted of employees from German-speaking Switzerland, French-speaking Switzerland, France, Italy, and two from Portugal.
I was asked to teach in English. I started in English and, depending on the group dynamics, switched to French, then Italian, Spanish, and Swiss German. It wasn’t planned, but entirely intuitive.
The result: The participants blossomed, engaged in lively discussions, asked personal questions, and contributed their own examples. Because they felt understood and included.
And that’s precisely the point.
At FinOptima, multilingualism isn’t just a selling point, it’s a lived reality.
And quite specifically:
– It enhances the effectiveness of training sessions
– It deepens coaching
– It increases the success rate in mystery shopping and guesting
– It accelerates change processes in sales consulting
. A salesperson opens up more quickly when they can speak in their own language.
A team thinks more boldly and openly when they don’t have to translate simultaneously.
A client immediately senses whether someone is speaking on equal terms or just reciting a standard script. The message conveyed remains the same, as it’s delivered by the same person.
After my training sessions, I often hear the same thing:
“Franco, with you we didn’t just learn content. We were understood.”
And that’s precisely my goal, because it’s not about more tools or new slides. It’s about connections, and connections are created through language—culturally grounded, human, authentic.
A single thought, spoken in multiple languages, without distorting the content.
Curious? Then let’s discuss, in your preferred language of course, how we can support you with multilingual training.
Unleashing potential – celebrating success.
