Sales professionals face heightened competition, a more complex selling process, and increasingly sophisticated buyers, many of whom are seeking closer relationships with a smaller number of suppliers.
The job of the sales professional is further complicated by shorter product life cycles, which lead to more new product launches. This, combined with the need to develop key account strategies, often requires a team selling approach, with closely coordinated efforts from sales and marketing and from national and regional headquarters.
For many organizations, sales efficiency has also become a critical issue, driving sales teams to produce maximum results at minimal cost. At the same time, downsizing has left fewer sales managers covering more salespeople and salespeople covering more territory, often with less sales support.
Together these new demands put a premium on creative leadership and management approaches. They also magnify the consequences of every action taken by members of your sales team. Only a select few will elevate their performance to meet the challenge. Will your sales force be among them?
Experienced sales professionals have already had many hours of sales training. They are familiar with a wide range of sales techniques and they understand the importance of having good relationships with their customers.
But changes in the marketplace still leave many of them fighting an uphill battle, frustrated by buyers who remain friendly, yet seem to have less time to listen to what they have to say.
The solution isn't necessarily to work a little harder, move a little faster, or try to squeeze in one more call a day. Nor is it to besiege prospects with the same set of questions they hear from every salesperson. What's needed is:
- A completely new strategic approach, based on an in-depth understanding of each customer's business issues and a thorough understanding of the competition's strengths and weaknesses. This requires a comprehensive strategy, carefully orchestrated tactical moves, and research that goes beyond what might be surfaced in a single interview with a buyer.
- Training that focuses on the key criteria your customers use to evaluate the performance of your sales team
We have also produced a series of highly effective diagnostic instruments that enable us to provide organization-wide data on best practices and establish internal benchmarks. Years of research into the attributes of high performing salespeople have helped us develop our Sales Practices Survey (SPS), which is given to your customers to help us accurately diagnose your sales team's strengths and opportunities for improvement. The SPS provides valuable feedback for individual members of your sales team, but it also helps us deliver a training program targeted to your needs as defined by your customers. Our Performance Management Questionnaire provides sales managers with insight from the sales professionals who report to them on key performance criteria that ultimately determines the impact each sales manager has on the performance and professional development of his or her sales people.
Here are short summaries of each of our Sales and Sales Management programs. If you would like more detailed information on any of these programs, simply click on "Learn more" at the end of each description.
Sales Management Makes the Difference
In this three-day seminar, sales managers assess their management capabilities and learn practical skills for maximizing the performance of the salespeople who report to them. During the program, sales managers learn how to: identify the unique motivational needs of people and important techniques to motivate them; create a high-performance work environment; enhance their effectiveness in conduct formal and informal reviews; learn ways to get sales professionals to accept responsibility for their own development; and develop the ability to address critical performance issues successfully. Participants develop individual action plans for managing performance improvements and increasing the productivity of their sales organization. Learn more.
Selecting the Best Sales People
Hiring the wrong salesperson can have severe financial consequences. Given that most sales managers are only occasionally involved in this critical decision making process, few learn to approach the selection process in a systematic way and as a result too many hire candidates who then fail on the job or chronically under-perform. This two-day program helps sales managers move beyond their own biases and subjective reactions during the hiring process by providing them with a structured process that minimizes poor hiring decisions. Participants learn to handle interviews in a way that enables them to get behind the facade that sales candidates often present in order to learn how they really will approach the target position. Sales managers will also learn how to help candidates understand what will be expected of them in a way that enables new sales people to assume responsibility for the performance and to become productive more quickly. Participants learn how to prepare an ideal candidate profile, how to ask tough questions without fear of making legal errors, what to listen for in an interview and how to make good judgments about candidate's responses. The program helps sales managers learn how to paint an accurate picture of the job and handle the interview in a way that reflects the way they manage; thereby improving the odds of selecting candidates who are well matched to the rigors of the job and the management style of the sales manager. Learn more.
Consultative Selling Skills
Our research has shown that the traditional selling skills taught to sales professionals are not strong differentiators between high and low sales performance, particularly in the case of complex sales that involve multiple influencers and decision-makers. In fact, we often find that sophisticated buyers are aware of conventional sales techniques and may be negatively influenced by their use. This two-day program teaches a three-part process that enables sales professionals to: uncover key customer business issues and problems without subjecting buyers to a series of predictable questions; develop credibility and trust; minimize objections and prepare customers for internal selling. The goal of this program is to help salespeople become an integral part of the client's problem-solving team; someone who is valued by clients for understanding and meeting the client's business interests. This program can be expanded to two-and-a-half days by including the Sales Practices Survey that enables sales people to compare their self-assessments with direct customer feedback on their effectiveness against critical key customer-driven performance measures. Learn more.
Breakthrough Negotiating
This two-day program shows help sales professionals learn how to negotiate from the same side of the table as their customers in order to achieve optimum results for both sides and to forge lasting trust and customer confidence. After assessing their own negotiating style, sales representatives practice a five-phase, non-adversarial negotiating process that establishes and maintains an atmosphere of trust. Seminar participants learn how to deal effectively with sophisticated buyers, pre-establish criteria, justify their best-case proposals so that they can ask for high-margin orders without losing credibility, make constructive concessions when called for and address the underlying needs and interests of their customers in a collaborative style that avoids fixed positions or demands. As a result of this process, sales professionals are more able to: maximize revenue and profit; create a smoother and mutually satisfying negotiation process; get full-value for their products and services; avoid price-only negotiations; use value-added services to their advantage; and negotiate effectively with difficult people. Learn more.
Building Customer Relationships
A simple and obvious truth in selling is: People are different. If you want to sell them, you must do it in the way they want to buy, not how you like to sell. In developing customer relationships, salespeople have two choices: adapt their selling approach, or find another customer who has a compatible style. While adapting one's selling approach is more challenging, it more often than not also proves to be a profitable option. This two-and-a-half day program teaches sales professionals to: develop rapport with others quickly and use it to pace and lead customers to make good decisions; recognize the motivational needs in themselves and their customers; and assess their selling styles and adapt them as needed to build more effective sales relationships. Learn more.
Time & Territory Management
This one-day program helps sales representatives center themselves on the purposes and values they want to guide their daily decisions. It encourages them to use their professional and company objectives to maintain focus on those goals which are most important to their success - regardless of conflicting agendas or other demands on their time. In this workshop, sales professionals will learn how to: clarify their goals; prioritize their job responsibilities; analyze how they are currently spending their time; assess their current time-management capabilities; and identify opportunities to improve their effectiveness. Participants learn a very practical set of time and territory management techniques that can be applied on the job. They also develop an action plan for eliminating or minimizing the effects of current time-management problems, and put together a daily work schedule that enables them to meet their high-priority responsibilities and reduce the time they are currently devoting to low-priority tasks. Learn more.
Advanced Account Strategies
This two and a half day workshop provides an innovative, strategic approach to selling that enables sales professionals to: achieve partnership relationships with customers and lock out the competition. The program shows participants how to build an effective sales strategy based on a clear understanding of the difference between strategy and tactics. They learn a practical framework for identifying customers' critical success factors and examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of their own products versus the competition's, so that - for each key account - they can effectively differentiate their products and services. Participants also learn how to use team strategies to focus resources on key national or regional accounts. In addition, our Sales Practices Survey, filled out by customers prior to the workshop, provides direct customer feedback on participants' strengths and opportunities for improvement. Participants come away with a fully developed strategy for a key account. They refine their ability to build credibility and trust with customers, reach real decisions makers, develop a different level of relationship with buyers, deal effectively with customers' internal politics and make better use of resources; helping to drive down the cost of sale and shortening the sales cycle. Learn more.