Open Enrollment Sales Training Seminars:

Location  Date
Charlotte, North Carolina Oct. 6th
Denver, Colorado Oct. 11th
Boston, Massachusetts Oct. 24th-25th
Dallas, Texas Oct. 25th

 


Sales Training:

 

Sales Training

Welcome to the Sales Training Center's comprehensive resource site for effective, performance-based sales training and sales development programs. Over the past thirty years, sales professionals and sales managers across the world have benefited from our highly interactive sales training seminars. We provide pubic open enrollment and private workshops at the location of your choice. We conduct in excess of 200 monthly sales training courses throughout the world.

For free, no obligation information on how we can help you please contact us today.

Students of a Sales Training Center class course will learn to:

  • Communicate more effectively with customers
  • Develop the ability to build positive chemistry and rapport

  • Deal with multi-levels sales structures—users, authorizers, and purchasing agents

  • Use post-sales call measurement to assess their own performance and identify key customer issues by thinking and responding like a business consultant

  • Recognize basic styles of buyer behavior and determine how to adapt to each style to create positive "chemistry"

  • Analyze what sales people say, reducing the potential for misunderstanding

  • Effectively manage and control anger, conflict and difficult situations

  • Develop active listening skills to focus on what customers are saying

  • Be able to facilitate, guide, and close discussions in one-on-one and group settings

  • Build and give appropriate credit for other peoples ideas and avoid putting others on the defensive

  • Make a positive impact on the quality of teamwork and productivity within the work unit by effectively giving and receiving feedback

  • Sell long-term relationships rather than price

  • Incorporate interviewing skills into the sales process in lieu of pitching products

  • Apply the appropriate sales techniques based on the buyer and behavior type

For free, no obligation information on how we can help you please contact us today.

 

Sales Training: Are You Ready For the Phenomenon of Social Sales?


Arguably, social media is contributing to the democratization of information and, armed with this information, customers will demand different things from sales people and companies. Customers are tuning into online communities, blogs, forums, and social networks to gather information and make buying decisions.


For instance, the retail car market is undergoing significant changes with customers firmly in the driver's seat. With the emergence of the information age consumers have far more knowledge about what to buy and where to buy it. On the whole, customers are doing their research, checking with their networks and peers groups, reading or viewing the latest comments online, and have potentially even made a buying decision before they step into a store. This is fast becoming the norm in car sales. No longer is the sales consultant one of the first to engage with the prospective buyer, today they may be near last when the customer walks through the door. Smart businesses will realize that engaging with the customer has changed and to speak with and meet viable prospective buyers they need to migrate to a new level.


In the B2B (business to business) space buyer behaviors are changing too. The buyer is either a purchasing agent or decision maker and they are armed with far better information well before they interact with a sales person. This will demand a different relationship.


If sales people see their role as only being 'educational' they will be unable to match the requirements and expectations of customers. People are getting tired of the old sales model of 'shut up and listen', especially if the information they are getting is patronizing, know-it-all, we're the best, readily available on the web and in some cases incorrect or outdated.


It is important that sales people recognize that customers are likely to be as informed about the product as they are (or at least believe they are). Customers are influenced beyond the boundaries of traditional businesses and long held relationships. We, the sales person, are unlikely to be the first person the customer will go to, even with established relationships. The long held tradition of key account management where every person of influence in a customer account is mapped on a 'blue sheet' and armies of account teams are marched to surround the customer are numbered. In many cases, they are now surrounded by social media.


Customers are using social media to build up independent knowledge, and compare and contrast information and opinions. This knowledge gives the customer power, and that power fundamentally changes the dynamics of the sales relationship. The web has also opened up communication channels which has changed the landscape forever. The old model is magnified; where in the past consumers used to tell 5 others if they were happy with an experience and 11 or more if they were unhappy, they can now communicate, positive or negative, in real-time with other consumers on a massive scale.


B2B customers are demanding a different relationship. They want to interact with a sales person that legitimately questions, challenges ideas and innovations, and can clearly articulate how they will work to bring value beyond the product.


Rather than go and talk to buyers alone, sales people and businesses need to go to the social networks to listen to, observe and interact with customers to help find a footing and take note of the consumer voice.


Social Sales will also demand that the sales team work in collaboration with the marketing group to help seed the right information about their offerings into their markets and networks where their customers look to for information and to exchange ideas.
Customers want to see your work in action and get feedback from the sources they trust.

Entering into the Social Sales world also requires sales people to put aside their reluctance and adopt new technology. Social Sales is the dawn of the new salesperson that doesn't shy away from using information and systems to their advantage. The Social Salesperson will make the most of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems interlinking CRM functionality to connect with social media, marketing, campaigns, networks, etc. to track the threads of customer conversations, opinions and ideas. CRM can no longer be ignored or treated as a telephone directory by sales people and businesses.


The responsibility for Social Sales doesn't just reside with the sales team either, it needs to go all the way along the whole sales chain and beyond. At a recent leader's conference, a speaker asked the 500 heads of business in the room whether they use social media including twitter, FaceBook and the like. Somewhat alarmingly, only 5 raised their hands. We need to use CRM and social media tools to make strategic calls - the CEO, CFO, COO, and CIO will be asking 'Tell me what you see behind the numbers'. This request is referring to the patterns of information, customer comments, buying decisions, influences, customer experiences, emotions, and feedback that will influence what we make, how we interact with our markets and much more.


In 2010 and beyond, leaders, sales teams, and businesses will need to invest time, resources, and money to learn how to interact in these emerging social spaces. Why?
Because the traditional channels to the customer such as email marketing, trade shows, and face-to-face meetings will be less effective. In some cases you may not even be interacting with the customer directly but with their 'recommendation network'. The real challenge for sales will be to identify and engage with these new networks. Social Sales involves different skills, leadership, and a culture values a collaborative model of free knowledge exchange.


Social Sales is likely to change selling fundamentally - so are you and your business ready?


 

Source: Sue Barrett link

 

For free, no obligation information on how we can help you please contact us today.