Selling Skills training

'Selling today is asking questions then offering a solution to match.'

Do your salespeople remember to ask enough questions to identify the best solution for clients, or do they rush in too soon to offer a solution? 

A client judges your people on the questions they ask, not by what they say in a 'pitch'.

Are your people proactive in making new customers or are they just waiting for incoming orders?  The purpose of a salesperson is to create new customers. Is your sales team doing whatever it takes to achieve target, or do they give excuses why they didn't?

Here's the biggie - do your sales people discount just because the prospect asks, or are they able to negotiate based on value?

Training your sales team yields a huge return on investment (ROI), paying for itself many times over with increased profits . . . . and morale. 

View this short video (4 mins 38 secs) on 'Mistakes people make when selling':

Program content

• Selling today – time-proven fundamentals and new practices
• Solution selling - become an expert diagnostician to match solutions to customer needs
• The 7 keys -
1. Develop product knowledge
2. Identify sales prospects
3. Self-manage sales activities
4. Present a sales solution
5. Manage buyer resistance
6. Secure prospect commitment
7. Support post-sales activities
• Become a product expert. Sell benefits and configure value-added solutions
• How do people buy?
• Avoid telling – ask questions, actively listen.
• Develop a relationship strategy built on trust.
• Closing techniques that are not manipulative.
• How not to lose the sale after the buyer has already said yes.
• Long-range view of sales emphasising partnerships.
• CRM – Customer Relationship Management, using IT for sales automation

Selling Skills Outcomes

On completion of the sales training program participants will be able to:

• Use the telephone effectively to make cold calls, book appointments,qualify customers, progress prospects and stay in touch with key customers
• Comfortably use questioning skills to open a sales call, probe for information, counter objectives and close the sale
• Understand what makes up product value and the unique selling proposition, sell on a value basis as opposed to a price basis
• Plan, set priorities and use time effectively in terms of territory planning, customer management, customer visits and internal meetings
• Gain immediate rapport in face to face appointments or presentations
• Project the caring attitude of a problem-solver
• Understand the importance of recording accurate prospect information

For a pdf of our company brochure, click here

 

Read a blog article by Nina Sunday . . .

Selling Skills: How to respond to the Hollywood brush-off, 'Don't call us, we'll call you.'

Article word count: 554 words
Approximate time to read: Under 3 minutes

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Every salesperson has heard variations of the over the telephone brush-off line, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ I call this the Hollywood objection. After auditioning, aspiring actors in Hollywood were often given this cliché response.

Nothing’s worse than your possible new customer shutting the door to follow-up with a statement along the lines of, 'I'll call you when I've read the info.’

If you respond with, ‘Well, I’ll wait to hear from you then,’ you have not asked for, nor have they given, permission to contact them again.

Use this 5-step method whenever they get a DCUWCU – don’t call us, we’ll call you – response, so you retain permission to stay in contact.

1.  ‘That’s fine.’

Your automatic reaction should be to agree with your client by saying, ‘that’s fine.’

2.  ‘And . . .’

Start your next sentence with ‘And . . . ’. Never use ‘but’, which sounds oppositional and creates resistance.

3.  ‘And If I haven't heard from you in say < 10 days / 3 months / 6 months > . . . '

Actively listen during the conversation for an implied time frame and suggest a callback after that. For example, based on your client's level of interest and urgency, if a week is implied, you can suggest a call after 10 days.

If they indicate a couple of months, suggest 3 months. If ‘not in the foreseeable future’, offer a callback at 6 or 12 months.

4. Then ask permission, '. . . is if ok if I call you then?'

Nine out of ten clients will agree to a call back within a reasonable time frame. If they say that's too soon, ask again with a later time frame, 'How about I call you back in 3 months then?

When they agree, you’ve just gained permission to continue the relationship with a future call back.

It’s written in the selling skills textbook, ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no’, it means ‘not now’; unless they absolutely have zero interest and tell you again, ‘no, please don’t call.’ That’s good to know.  You can take them off your list.

5. Start the next call referring to history.

Then be sure to open your next call with reference to the last time you spoke:

‘Hi <their name >, this is < your name > from < your company name >.

< Back in August > you asked me to phone you around this time regarding < . . . >’

Now when they hear from you, you are not interrupting them, but following their instructions. This is the elegance of permission marketing.

The task of a salesperson is to create new customers, not to wait for incoming orders.

ACTIONS

1.  Remember to end every phone call referring to the best time frame to contact again, and wait for them agree.

2.  Then make sure you make a note of the agreed callback date in client history and schedule the callback on your calendar.

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How you end a sales call determines whether the next time you contact your prospect they’ll be happy to hear from you or whether they’ll consider your call an interruption.

Selling today is about continuously asking your customer for permission to stay in contact, so they expect to hear from you, keeping the door open to an ongoing relationship.

Copyright Nina Sunday 2010.  All rights reserved.  Published in Sydney, Australia.

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Does Brainpower offer public workshops for individuals to attend?

We do not offer open workshops for individuals to attend.

Brainpower Training works inside companies and organisations with groups of their staff, usually in a workshop of around 10-16 people at a time.

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The Brainpower difference: How we present

We use brain-based, multi-sensory, Adult Learning methods to keep the workshop interactive, engaging and fun.  

Appealing to all learning styles, there'll be:    

• flipcharts created and coloured pens to use for Visual learners
• background music in the breaks for Auditory learners
• for Kinesthetic learners, as well as plasticene and pipe cleaners, brain-shaped squeeze balls with Brainpower logo to take-away.

Our facilitator adapts and
customises the presentation to suit the
specific needs of your team by

• asking quality questions
• triggering discussion
• referring to your organisation-specific scenarios
• discovering insights beyond the obvious
  

Open-ended exercises help people discover for themselves what you want them to know.

No Risk Guarantee

You have peace of mind knowing you are not only getting great value for money, but also results that positively impact performance.

Our guarantee is simply this:

If you are not 100% happy and delighted with your workshop, we will either refund the difference between what you paid to what you think it was worth or we'll continue to work with you for free until you achieve the outcomes you reasonably expected.

Call us on 1300 661 555. Our Support Team are happy to answer any questions you may have and walk you through your options.

Any Questions?

You'll find the answers to most of your questions on the Frequently Asked Questions page.

If you can't find what you're looking for, please contact us and our Support Team will respond to your enquiry with priority.