Sales success is the lifeblood of a successful business.

Whether it’s devising a new marketing campaign, selling face to face, or following up a sales pipeline, they are all important in any business.

It’s not just the skills of the sales team that matters. In many businesses, after sales support and other departments can all assist the business by knowing how to spot and follow through a new business opportunity.

Whichever department you are in, this course will help you develop practical marketing and sales skills

We provide this course either as in-company course or a public course.

• Click here for public course prices and schedule.
• Click here for in-company course pricing.

Course Aims

By the end of the course you will have improved your skills in :

• Market Research
• Identifying the prospect’s real needs
• Matching needs with the features of the product or service
• Handling objections
• Understanding your own selling style
• Handling different prospect personality styles
• Making best use of your selling time
• Handling long running campaigns in large accounts with multiple decision makers
• Managing your pipeline of current prospects
• Using appropriate negotiating methods and skills.
• Planning for and managing contract negotiation meetings.

Course Structure

This two day on-site or public course includes classroom teaching and lots of interaction. People learn by doing so there are many exercises throughout the workshop

Course Schedule

Day 1

Session 1 - Prospecting

As a professional sales person needs to continually search for past, present and potential clients that are ready, willing and able to purchase a product or service that you sell.

This section covers:

• How best to choose your prospects
• Getting the best from prospecting systems
• Direct mail Do’s and Don’ts

Session 2 - A structure for a successful sales process

No two people sell in the same way.

However many studies across all industries have shown that a methodical approach to selling will give you the best results.

This course introduces a clear set of steps underlying sales success.

Investigate

Before any sale you need to gather sufficient information about your market, competitors and products

Opening

The opening words can have a major impact on whether the sales process gets off the ground at all.

You need to be sensitive to their approach and either recognise or stimulate their curiosity and interest.

We discuss different ways to start up a dialogue with a prospect.

Probe

At this stage you need to get to know everything you can about the prospect. You should get to know as much as possible about:

• Is there a real need
• What is the real need
• Who is influencing the sale
• The timescale for any purchase
• Does he/she have access to funds?
• The prospect’s preferred way of receiving information (Some people like to hear information, others like to see something in writing)

We’ll help you see ways to tell the difference between time wasters and those who really want to buy.

One of the biggest pitfalls in selling is talking and not listening.

At this stage it is crucial that you :

• Listen carefully
• Demonstrate to the customer that you have listened.

The course includes lots of exercises to practise and develop your listening skills.

Apply

This is the time to show precisely how the product or service will meet the needs already identified.

You’ll convert the features of the product to benefits that:

• Meet identified needs
• Match his/her communication style
• Where possible show the cash benefit of the product or service

We outline ways to distinguish features and benefits and use them to best effect. A demonstration might also be right at this time.

Close

If you’ve had the chance to really understand the prospect the next stage usually follows naturally. It can involve both negotiation and the sale of add-on services.

Topics include :

• Knowing when and when not to close the deal.
• Keeping the deal alive when a close is not possible.
• Careful use of language.

Session 3 - Handling objections

Objections are very common in any selling process.

We help you :

• Distinguish between genuine and false objections and handle them accordingly.
• Avoid feature by feature combat against a competitive product

Day 2

Session 4 - Negotiation

Think of sales negotiating, and what usually comes to mind? Haggling? Giving in? Dropping the price to save the deal?

We introduce tips and techniques to help guide you through this stage:

• Knowing in advance your own limits on price or terms of business.
• Discovering the customer’s limits
• Training yourself to avoid seeing price as the most important issue - at this stage it usually is not.
• Handling the “professional buyer”

Session 5 - Selling Add-on services

This is also the ideal time to add additional products and services. Again you’re best to reflect the customer’s personality style and also highlight the real benefits of each add-on.

Session 6 - Managing your sales pipeline

If you have multiple prospects active at the same time then managing your sales pipeline is crucial to your success. We discuss how computer systems can help and highlight some additional simple techniques for keeping organised.

We’ll show you :

• What to record for each sale
• How to make sure your sales pipeline is balanced - this is important if you are to avoid the feast and famine type of sales results.
• How best to provide a sales forecast. Many sales people are born optimists ! We provide a foolproof way to improve the accuracy of your sales forecasts.

Session 7 - Large account selling

If you handle large customers or prospects, then you may be faced with longer buying cycles and multiple apparent decision makers. We introduce some extra approaches you can take to ensure greater success in this environment.

Session 8 - Looking after existing customers

Studies show it a lot easier to sell more products or services to an existing customer than to go out and find new customers. We look at how to put this into practice.

A satisfied customer may tell a few people about their experience. A dissatisfied customer will tell many more people.

Customers who complain and find their complaint is taken seriously are even more loyal to a business than those who have never complained.

We discuss the steps you can take to minimise dissatisfaction and quickly address any problems that arise.