PSS001

Professional Selling Skills

Introduction

Perhaps the most dramatic change in the selling environment over the past five to ten years has been the transformation of clients. Because segments in all industries around the globe have become more competitive, clients are under pressure to perform at greater levels. To meet more rigorous standards, clients have to make better buying decisions. In most selling situations, therefore, salespeople are finding that clients are more knowledgeable, analytical, systematic, making decisions that require agreement at higher levels in the organization, more demanding about what they want and more willing to share information with sales people.

Selling in this environment has, for many salespeople, required changes in the way they sell. Most cited the need to sell strategically and to a wider and higher level group of decision-makers. They also need to become, in the client's eyes, a trusted business consultant and advisor by being vigilant in identifying, understanding, and satisfying client's needs, demonstrating knowledge and responsiveness.

Hence, factors that differentiate top salespeople are in the knowledge, skills, attitude and personal qualities. According to clients, the difference between top-performing salespeople and other salespeople is not simply the presence or absence of competencies, but rather the way they are demonstrated to the client.

This one-day highly intensive and interactive course is designed to help salespeople distinguish themselves from others to not only help their organizations to succeed, but by helping their clients' organize achieve their business objectives, and to use their skills more consistently and effectively.

Outline

1. Need Satisfaction Selling
   1. Success : Yours and Your Customers
   2. Recognising Needs
   3. Successful Sales Calls
      1. Opening
      2. Probing
      3. Supporting
      4. Closing
2. Opening
   1. When to open a call
   2. How to open a call
   3. 1. Propose an agenda
      2. State the value to the customer
      3. Check for acceptance
   4. Positioning your opening statement
3. Probing
   1. When to probe
   2. How to probe
      1. Use open and closed probes to explore the customers
         1. Circumstances
         2. Needs
   3. Positioning your probes
   4. Preparing to probe
4. Supporting
   1. Information about your product and organization - Product Profiles
      1. Feature
      2. Benefit
   2. When to support a need
   3. How to support a need
   4. Ways to acknowledge needs
   5. Linking benefits to the need behind the need
   6. Preparing to support customer needs
5. Closing
   1. When to close
   2. How to close
   3. Proposing next steps for you and the customer
   4. Checking for acceptance
   5. When the customer stalls
   6. When you get a 'No'
   7. Preparing to close a call
6. Overcoming Customer Indifference
   1. When to overcome customer indifference
   2. How to overcome customer indifference
   3. Acknowledge the customer's point of view
   4. Request permission to probe
   5. Probe to create customer awareness of needs
      1. Opportunities vs Needs
      2. Determining if an opportunity exists
      3. Using your product profile to prepare probes
      4. Explore the customer's circumstances for opportunities and effects
      5. Confirm the existence of a need
7. Customer Concerns
   1. Types of concerns
   2. Probing to understand a concern
8. Resolving Customer Concerns
   1. Needs you can address
   2. Resolving skepticism
   3. Resolving a misunderstanding
   4. Needs you can't address
   5. Resolving a drawback
   6. Preparing to resolve a customer concerns

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