Sales Call Essentials is a sales training program designed to provide a common sales language for your entire sales force. It can be
modified to be used with your entire sales force from new hires to your existing account executives. The sales training program explores and develops the core sales skills required to do a superior job in creating customer value by focusing on the following key skill areas:
- Building the customer relationship
- Asking questions
- Active Listening
- Demonstrating capability
- Establishing credibility
- Opening and closing the call
- Handling tough objections
… all tailored to your marketplace.
In today’s market a sales force must not only be able to sell a competitive advantage; they must be a competitive advantage. In order to do that, they must develop the core sales skills to a new and higher level of proficiency. They must sell and communicate value.
Value is all about fit – the fit between the customer’s problems and your solution. Top performers take the responsibility for uncovering the problems and connecting the dots; they help the customer see the fit.
Sales people cannot communicate value to their customer and separate themselves from the competition by simply doing a great product pitch. They must have the ability and confidence to carry out both a technical and business conversation with the customer about how they can uniquely help them address their issues and leverage their opportunities. They must get on the customer’s side of the table.
Take a Deeper Dive into Sales Call Essentials …
Features and benefits – a new look at old friends – The Feature-Benefit distinction has been around for a long time. Time of course can be a double edge sword when it comes to bring clarity to any construct – so is the case with this distinction. Re-visiting this important old friend from time to time is therefore a useful exercise.
Don’t not forget the commitment when pre-call planning – Top sales performers know that closing a call means obtaining a commitment from the customer that moves the sales cycle forward. Top performers optimize the probability of achieving that goal by planning the commitment they want from the customer during pre-call planning.
Active listening – 7 keys to sales success – Sales calls are business conversations, with a smooth flow between those participating. This necessitates the sales person not only hearing what the customer says but actually listening to what’s been said. And, the customer must know you have listened. This means listening isn’t a passive activity – it’s an active sport. This post shares 7 active listening best practices.
Selling and the power of familiarity – Skillfully using analogies, storytelling, or both can be very effective for helping customers become more familiar with what you’re selling, especially during face-to-face sales calls – developing customer comfort by the power of familiarity is fundamentally a good idea. Read why.
Sales conversations are more engaging – Sales conversations are simply more engaging than presentations. Successful sales people incorporate conversation into their presentations to build success.This post shares why.
Selling and the perfect crime – In many sales forces there are a fair number of sales people in the double-digits when in comes to years in the business. So what is the potential crime? Well, while they may not all have held their position for 25 years – like Catherine Russell holds the distinction of acting in the same play (The Perfect Crime) for almost 25 years. In these situations, it’s easy to fall into “been there done that” traps. This post shares Catherine’s insights into avoiding that trap – and the implications for sales training.
When handling objections, less is more – Initially the logic of not handling an objection immediately may sound counterintuitive – but when it comes to dealing with objections not only what you say but also when you say it is key to success. This post introduces the ACT objection handling model.
