Introduction and Overview
Clients make purchasing decisions for their own reasons and follow their own process for doing so. Clients do not buy for the sales person's reasons or following the sales person's process when making a purchase. Therefore, it is imperative that one understands the client's buying process and matches one's selling process accordingly. Throughout this program, you will gain an understanding of the client's decision-making process and explore new ways to plan, develop and execute a sales strategy that aligns the selling process with the client's buying process to ensure a mutually beneficial outcome.
Linking Goals to Activities
How do you know that the activities you perform each day will help you achieve your goals? Without proper planning and analysis, how can you possibly gauge your effectiveness? Setting your goals and creating a plan for achieving them measures the effectiveness of your activities and determines which activities are most beneficial to meetyour goals.
In this module, you will focus on how to identify the activities that net you the most return on your investment and to help you move potential clients through the sales process.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Develop S.M.A.R.T. sales goals and objectives.
- Identify the different categories of potential clients and link them to sales activities that will move them from one stage to the next.
- Determine how your weekly activities contribute to your ability to meet your goals.
- Implement techniques to better manage your time
Communicating for Success
What skills do you use to communicate? How do you uncover information about your client and their situation? The single most important tool you have is your communication skills, which are used throughout the selling process.
In this module, you will focus on the skills necessary to interact with clients throughout all stages of the selling process.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Identify key communication skills.
- Build rapport with clients during an interaction.
- Use active listening during client interactions.
- Ask questions to gather information.
- Identify non-verbal cues during client interactions.
Pre-call Planning
This module will emphasize the importance of planning before each sales interaction to ensure sales consistency and greater call efficiency. You will learn how to benefit from pre-call planning by establishing clear sales objectives for each call, how to influence the decision-making process, and how to close each call by getting the customer to commit to some action.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Describe all the different types of sales calls that occur in your sales cycle.
- Determine the desired outcome for each type of sales call.
- Plan appropriately for any sales call to maximize your effectiveness in moving the sale forward.
- Use a Pre-call Planning form effectively.
- Record Post-call notes and plan for future calls.
Prospecting Smarter
Wouldn't it be nice to know that the activities you perform are contributing towards your sales success? How do you know that you are targeting and focusing your activities on the opportunities with the most potential? By prioritizing and pre-qualifying your leads, you will focus on those activities that ensure the greatest return.
This module will focus on prioritizing and evaluating the quality of leads you have as well as techniques for handling the initial resistance often encountered when prospecting.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Describe the buying process and discuss how it links to the Sales Activity Pipeline.
- Pre-qualify and rank leads to ensure you focus your time on the best opportunities.
- Describe the techniques for successful prospecting.
- Set sales appointments using the telephone.
- Overcome resistance encountered during prospecting.
Qualifying and Exploring
During the Consider stage of the buying continuum, suspects will clarify their needs and beliefs and size up the sales person and the sales organization. At this time, you should also Qualify and Explore whether the opportunity is likely to result in a sale.
This module will focus on how to gather information about suspects to qualify the opportunity, explore needs and beliefs and determine the buying process within the suspect's organization.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Identify factors used in qualifying an account.
- Describe the process for identifying needs, beliefs and risk tolerance levels within a client account.
- Determine the decision-making process within an account.
- Identify stakeholders, champions/coaches and influencers within an account.
- Determine the competitions' role within an account.
- Develop an account strategy for moving a client forward in the selling process.
Communication Styles
This module will focus on the human factors of the relationship between you and your clients. You will learn a practical model for understanding and communicating in a way that can be tailored for each client you meet.
All communication between sales people and their clients can be improved by paying attention to the other person's communication style - the way a person talks and acts. This observable behavior reveals how a client thinks, makes decisions and prefers to be treated.
This knowledge is valuable because it gives you the information you need to provide clients with solutions and services that will best meet their needs. It also enables you to adapt your behavior to sell most effectively to your clients.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Describe the two behavioral dimensions of power and emotion.
- Describe the observable behaviors of four different communication styles.
- Use a Communication Style Recognition Form to identify the style of another person.
- Describe how to adapt your behavior to the other person's communication style.
Differentiating Your Solutions
To successfully position the value of your solution, you need to understand your client, their needs and situation. This means that you need to develop a solution that aligns your unique selling points and your elements of value with the client's perception of value. In the words of Michael Porter in his book Competitive Advantage , "Buyers will not pay for value that they do not perceive, no matter how real it may be."
This module will focus on positioning solutions to help you articulate the value of your solutions. You will learn to determine, position, and present a solution.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Develop a solution that takes the multiple needs and beliefs of the decision-makers into account.
- Describe the reasons why clients decide to buy.
- Position a solution in a manner that adds value to the client and meets the needs and beliefs of the decision-makers.
Managing Resistance and Obtaining Commitment
What do you do when a client has a concern or issue with your solution? How do you address the concern and then resolve it? What skills do you use to close a sale? How do you know that your client is ready to buy? As we discuss the skills and techniques required to manage resistance and obtain commitment in this module, those questions will be answered.
Objectives - After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Identify the different types of obstacles and how to overcome them.
- Identify the root cause of obstacles.
- Address the most common obstacles.
- Describe the process for closing a sale and asking for the business.
- Identify client-buying signals.
- Describe the transition from selling to implementing the solution.