Sales Training:

 

Sales Training Classes

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 classes. We provide pubic open enrollment and private classes at the location of your choice. We conduct in excess of 200 monthly sales training classes 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 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 Class:

Is the Customer Buying Process the New Sales Cycle?


I admit I have used a business to business sales cycle in every job and every consulting engagement for decades. But now I realize that I have been wrong! You see sales cycles are merely abbreviations for a series of sequential sales activities that sales people use to define where they are in their sales process. That's good, but doesn't that ignore the prospect?


What's more important is the definition of where prospects are in their BUYING PROCESS. Think about it...both consumers and companies go through a series of related steps from needs discovery through contracting. Consumers usually hold this process at a subconscious level while companies dedicate substantial resources to ensure due diligence to their buying process.


A standard B2B sales cycle is usually some variation of the following;


1. Suspect
2. Prospect
3. First Presentation
4. Needs Analysis
5. Formal Presentation/Proposal
6. Negotiation
7. Contract


In contrast a company buying process would usually include the following steps;


1. Needs Discovery
2. Situation Analysis
3. Desired Impact
4. Potential Solutions Survey
5. Identify Potential Providers
6. Request for Proposal
7. Negotiation with Favored Provider
8. Contract


So it's easy to see that sales people can misread where the prospect is in their buying process and can just as easily apply to wrong sales activity. For instance; sales person A can be awaiting word on the proposal he/she submitted while the prospect is still trying to agree upon their desired state. Clearly the sales person is accurately defining their sales cycle step by inputting step 5 (proposal submitted) into the CRM system as the last step completed, but waiting for that decision will have the same outcome as waiting for your cat to bark. And to make the situation worse, the sales manager will apply increasing pressure on the sales person to get a decision which will ultimately erode the credibility of the sales person.


These "misreads" of sales pipelines are going to have negative impacts on sales forecasts, revenue projections, budgets and every other metric that sales leaders depend upon.


I am not suggesting that companies try to migrate their CRM systems or training from sales cycles to buying processes, but I am suggesting that field managers use their knowledge of a buying process to validate where sales people tag their prospects.

If this makes sense to you as a sales leader I would recommend the following steps;


1. In the next gathering of your top performers lead a session to define the buying process of your typical new customers. Try to keep the step descriptions simple and try to keep the number of steps under 10.

2. When you meet with customers you know well ask them to help you validate the buying process.

3. Begin to train your 1st level of field managers on the buying process and make them accountable to use it as a basis to validate whether prospects are accurately portrayed in your CRM system.


The benefits to understanding customer buying processes are many, but there are two main advantages. First, your sales people will do a better job probing where prospects are in their process. This will lead to better accuracy in the CRM system and more reliability in your sales forecasting. Secondly, your sales people will have improved credibility with buyers because they will be viewed as hard helpers instead of hard closers! And do you want to know something? Assuming equal skills, hard helpers will always outsell hard closers!


 

Source: Gregory Deming link

 

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