Professional Selling is the lifeblood of any organisation. No matter how competent the individuals are or how good the products are, it is unlikely that they will sell themselves without formal selling and account management.
The program is a hands-on, interactive sales class that focuses on building customer trust and loyalty, team selling and presentation skills. Professional selling is a complex subject and often the challenge is; where does one start? There is a different starting point for existing clients, new clients, prospects and leads.
Selling requires a formal discipline to be applied to the sales life-cycle. This includes strategic research into potential clients, their marketplace, their needs and challenges, so that you can sell to specific needs. In addition, selling is a numbers game and requires persistence and follow up to ensure success.
APPROACH
Because selling is a competence, it is critical that the delegates practice their art and are allowed to critique each other and view themselves in action (recorded sessions). For each major technique, delegates will be required to display the competence in action.
Key Components of Professional Selling Skills
Strategic Market Analysis
• Identifying your target market
• Comparing that with your current market
• Researching your target market
• Identifying your niche
• Determining market viability
• Understanding your competition, their strengths and weaknesses
• Identifying your target clients
• Identifying their challenges and needs
• What is your USP/ value proposition/ Differentiation
Needs based selling
• The purpose is to uncover client needs and wants and sell to them
• Advanced questioning
• Heighten prospect interest in your product or service
• Shorten sales cycles with effective questioning techniques
• Sell on features and benefits
• Need satisfaction – probing, supporting closing
• Open probes uncover needs
• Closed probes confirm needs
• Open and closed probes to uncover background information
• Supporting when you are clear on a need
• Acknowledge the need
• Introduce the benefit to meet the need
• Financial justification/ developing a business case for the sale
Emotions
• Selling is a process and depends very much on your emotional state of mind. You need to be in the “zone” when selling.
• Understanding positive self-talk and preparing yourself
Handling Objections and resistance
• Turn objections into benefits and commitments
• Learn how to turn objections into commitments
• Counter customer stalling tactics to boost closing rates
• Objection prevention
• Handling skepticism, objections and indifference
Understanding Non-verbal behaviour in Selling Interactions
• Learn to recognize conflicting, non-verbal behaviors
• Body language and sales cues
Negotiation is required to alter terms and conditions, adjust price and expectations
• Ethical Negotiation
• Negotiating commitments and orders
• Use negotiating tactics to avoid concessions and boost profit margins
THE SALES CYCLE
Proactive Selling Techniques
• Discover the power of integrating marketing and sales
• Social networking and network branding
Develop your own call methodology
• Sales process steps
• Prospecting and lead generation
• Qualification and understanding probability of success
• Learn how to zero in on your best prospects to increase sales
• Raise the profitability of each sales hour
• Balancing sales quantity with quality
• Time and territory management
• Recognising opportunities
• Appointments and needs assessments
• Quickly build your sales territory by discovering additional sources of prospects
Presentations and proposals
• Presentation skills
• Use presentations as an effective closing tool
• Learn techniques to close in group and committee presentations
• Professionalize your proposals
• Sales correspondence
• Develop strategies for team selling
• Group selling strategies
• Learn how to put “punch” into your correspondence
Closing the sale
• Typical buying signals
• What typically happens during the close
• How to close by summarizing benefits and formulating an action plan
• What happens if your close fails
Consultative selling
Understanding what this means and how it differs from product selling.
What can kill a sale
• Understanding the interrelated nature of any business relationship
• The effect of the team in the sale
• Not understanding or uncovering the client’s needs
• Not researching the client background adequately.
• Top reasons for rejection
• Winning sales pitches – top reasons for acceptance