Selling Skills

Program Overview

Sales professionals are a unique breed that has to be thick skinned to deal with cold calling objections and sales rejections. They need amazing self-discipline, self-motivation and resilience to keep moving forward through the smoke screen of objections to find appointments & sales day in and day out. They need to be professional listeners and eloquent speakers.

Sales professionals realize that they can only survive in this high pressure environment if they begin to look at the world through their customers’ perspective and act accordingly. They employ proven rapport building techniques to gain trust and prosper. They are masters at the ability to create pictures in the prospect’s mind through what they say and how they say it. To top it all off, they require razor sharp consultative selling skills to solve customer problems through offering the most beneficial solutions.

Training objectives

Establish and maintain long term and profitable relationships with both existing and prospective clients

Up-sell and Cross Sell other products

Improve questioning and listening skills

Identify customer’s real emotions, needs and match with appropriate benefits.

Sharpen their closing skills in order to clinch the sale.

Handle objections effectively and treat them as new opportunities

Build better relationships with difficult prospects using empathy

Seek buying signals and act accordingly

Get past the 1st 20 seconds of a cold call with confidence & skill

Acquire new appointments through cold-calling

Experience substantial increase in New Sales

Administrative details

Who should attend

This program is prepared for sales representatives, their supervisors and managers.

Methodology

This programme employs adult learning techniques which include fun active learning strategies to facilitate understanding and retention. Participants will spend 80% of the time in individual or group activities which allow them to learn, develop and practice. A workbook is used to facilitate the programme.

Structured Experiential Learning Exercises, Super Learning Environment, Role Plays, Games & Simulation & Performance Coaching, Team Presentations.

Content Day 1

Understanding the team’s sales challenges

Group discussion

Identifying & responding to various prospect behaviours

Strategy discussion

The talkative prospect

The observer

The passive prospect

The difficult or sarcastic prospect…and more

Engaging Communication Flow during sales meetings / presentations

Active Listening, Probing, Empathy, Articulation

The L.I.S.T process (Acknowledge, empathize, probe, recommend, sell)

Group activity:

The diagram

The art & science of persuasion

Engaging and convincing prospects

Engaging the prospect’s left & right brain

Emotional persuasion using empathy

Triggering desired audience emotions using power words to create positive mental pictures.

Example case

– A low impact dull sales presentation

Example case

– A dynamic, interesting & winning sales presentation

Building awareness of challenges customers face without our product

Making a list of the challenges

Strategizing solutions to those challenges using product benefits & features

Communicating solutions using empathy with customers

Structure of a persuasive sales presentation

Short slide presentation: From Challenges to Solutions

Opening, selling & cross-selling attempts, closing, handling objections, gaining commitment

An impactful & persuasive sample sales presentation

Content Day 2

Presentation structure – The opening

Impactful opening statement – Getting them interested

Group activity

– Developing an opening statement

Presentation structure – The selling attempts

Interest has been generated through the impactful opening – Now what?

Asking questions related to customer challenges

Understanding and identifying cross-selling opportunities within customer responses to questions

Communicating solutions to the challenge using relevant benefits and features that focus on each specific challenge

Persuasive & descriptive benefit statements

Testing the impact of your solution and keeping them engaged

Group activity

– Developing questions, benefit statements and impact-testing statements for each selling attempt (Minimum of 3 attempts to sell)

Presentation structure – Closing & gaining commitment

Testing the water and closing question

Handling objections

The Feel, Felt, Found method

Objection handling rebuttal statements & questions using empathic persuasion

Acknowledge, Empathize, Give example, Solution found, cross-sell (if opportunity)

Testing the impact of our objection handling rebuttal in the customer’s mind

Group activity

– Listing all anticipated customer objections

Group activity

– Developing rebuttals for top 5 objections

Following up after sending a proposal

1st follow up – When and what to say?

Frequency – How often to follow-up

The 2nd and 3rd follow up email.

Group activity – Role play

The number of role plays depends upon available time left in the day.