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 Workshops

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 workshops. We provide pubic open enrollment and private workshops at the location of your choice. We conduct in excess of 200 monthly sales training workshops throughout the world.

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

Students of a Sales Training Center workshop 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 Workshop:

How the Quality of Your Sales Training Workshop Will Add Value to Your Sales Results


If you were to ask any sales person what will be her biggest concern about his job, in most cases he will say "meeting my sales targets".


And if you were to ask that sales person how about making sure that we provide solutions that solve customers' problems, the answer is likely to be "Yes, we do that too, but only after we reach our targets!".


The sad fact is that sales people are usually not to be blamed for putting their own interests first before the customers'. After all, if they don't do so, they may not be employed as a sales person for very long to add value to the customer in the long term.
The pressure for achieving targets is so huge that it has become the top priority for most, if not all, sales people.


However, due to the profound changes in customers' buying behavior in recent years, sales people will have to adapt to such changes, IF they want to meet their targets. In fact, they will have to adapt to increasing customer demands, IF they want to remain in business.


Customers' Changing Needs


If you have been in sales for quite some time now, ask yourself these simple questions:
What are some of the changes in customers' profiles and needs 5 years ago compared to now?

What will be some of the changes in customers' profiles and needs 5 years from now?

The following are just some of the excerpts from some of the sales people we interviewed:

5 years ago, customers just buy whatever we sell;

5 years ago, customers typically identify with the bigger brands, and will buy from the bigger brands;

Now, customers know a lot about our products and take initiative to configure the right products to give them a better price and value;

Now, customers tend to just go for cost-reduction, and will just buy from the cheapest seller for the same product;

5 years from now, I expect customers to be even more demanding, AND they will compare the service levels of sales people, on top of product quality and price;

5 years from now, I think I will be out of a job, because customers can do the buying on their own WITHOUT the involvement of us sales people; etc.


All these feedback only points at one thing: the way we sell today may not be relevant to even today's customers' needs. Yet, the most common used response to meet increasing customer demands is to simply try harder, i.e. to call MORE prospects, be MORE aggressive in closing and get them to sign up for the BIGGEST possible deals.


Now, we all know from Einstein that the definition of insanity is to "do the same things over and over again, and expect a different result." Clearly, simply trying harder is not the answer to you achieving your sales targets. In fact, it may even backfire and make you lose a lot more deals.


According international sales trainer, Ari Galper, aggressive calling and then closing will make you lose customers' trust, which will in turn make you lose your sales in no time at all. It will also make your prospecting and sales effort a lot more stressful and painful, while making you further away from your targets.


Clearly, a better way of selling is needed to boost sales.


Definition of the Quality of Selling


So how do you define the quality of selling? There's the quality of the product, even the quality of sales management, but the quality of selling?


Here's an insight from the original management guru, the guy who created "management" as a field of study, the late Dr. Peter Drucker, "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for."


So what does the customer want? What do customers expect from the sales people who serve them? Customer research from HR Chally provides insights on what some of these expectations are:

Sales people need to be personally accountable for customers' results;
Sales people MUST understand customers' business;
Sales people MUST proactively provide advice for customers;
Sales people have to suggest the right solutions that solve customers' problems;
Sales people must be easily accessible;
Sales people have to be creative in responding to customers' needs; etc.


In a similar vein, Warren Buffet said, "Price is what you pay, value is what you get."


The sales professor, Neil Rackham, goes further by stating that "sales people MUST be value creators", and not mere "talking brochures". Customers expect sales people NOT to be persuaders, but solution providers.


One of our clients, TNT Direct Mail, provides direct mailing solutions for their customers.
In one case, they found one of their customers providing a lot of sample products in shopping malls to generate consumer interest. With this in mind, their sales person approached the client and ask if they would like to send the samples to prospective consumers through their direct mailing solutions. While this will cost more to the customer, TNT actually helps the customer to track their responses and provide follow up services upon request. That means TNT's customer will actually get to know a lot more about their consumers, which will generate a lot more insights on how this customer sell, modify their products and provide back-end services.


Is this easy to achieve? Of course not. Such a sales process may take months before the you see the final result, but what you get is a very loyal customer, simply because you created value and provided a solution that works.


Ultimately, here are 2 criteria if you really want to measure the quality of your selling. After each sale,

Are your customers looking forward to buy from you again?
Are your customers looking forward to you visiting them again?
Are your customers willing to refer others to buy from you?


While a lot has been said about "locking in a customer" so that if they switch to other products, the switching costs will be so high and hence they will have no choice but to buy from you again, making your customers looking forward to buy from you, or to see you again is a totally different concept.


The former is purely transactional, and sooner than later the customer is going to re-order NOT from you, but from a computerized re-ordering system. The latter is about managing the customers' experience. What make customers willing to see you, and refer others to you, depends on how you create value and deliver results for them.


A high quality of making initial contact with customers will also give you better results. If your job is to make endless phone calls trying to fix an appointment with complete strangers, you may actually get better responses if you spend 10-15 minutes of research to find out what are some of the concerns that this customer segment has, and structure a Valid Business Reason to make the prospect willing to see you.


The sad thing is that many sales people were trying to make lame excuses to see the customer, only to have the customer either asking the sales person just leave the brochures at the front desk, or making another excuse to get the sales person out of the door.


"But I have No Time"


If you are like most sales people, you would be complaining that given the large amount of work you are doing, there's hardly any more time to understand customers' business issues and create value to customers. After all, that "is NOT my job", as you may say. Or that is "Management's business". Or even "my manager will NOT allow me to change the way I work".


If you are ever in doubt if creating value or improving the quality of selling is relevant to you, simply as yourself the first 2 questions: How are customers different now vs. 5 years ago, and how will they be different 5 years from now. Better still, think about how your customers will be different 1-3 years from now, because the future is happening faster than you think. If your sales process do not reflect your customers' buying process and meet customers' expectations, you are screwed.


 

Source: C.J. Ng link

 

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