Sales Training Workshops
Advanced Sales Workshops
Prospecting and Assessing for Key Accounts
An interactive workshop for salespeople and sales managers to help them focus time resources where they can best be used to achieve revenue objectives.
The typical telephone sales representative has 600 to 800 customer accounts. Most of these accounts are handled in a standard manner using a relatively defined process from prospecting to close. Many telephone sales positions also have the opportunity for key accounts. Key accounts are major customers whose revenue potential can dramatically boost the territory of the telephone sales representative.
To successfully pursue a key account, a telephone sales representative must use an adaptive selling approach to identify the key account’s needs, buying committee requirements, risk tolerance and timeline. This requires more in-depth information gathering and selling time than the standard sales approach. Consequently, the selection of key accounts and the methods used to pursue key accounts is critical, or overall sales effectiveness may be reduced.
The key account sale is typically more complex than the standard sale – the sales cycle contains more steps and the steps are more intricate. Additionally, key account sales are highly divergent – each key account sale is different. How does a salesperson determine whether an account is worth the investment of the time and effort required to develop it into a key account? This curriculum will help the sales representative define and compare the key account process and the standard account process.
The highly-interactive workshop, Prospecting and Assessing for Key Accounts, will teach participants:
- The differences between key accounts and standard accounts
- A method to determine the key account sales cycle
- The importance of building relationships
- How to use sales collateral and reference stories to support product attributes
- Ways to lead the buying committee
- Techniques for managing the sales cycle
- How to ask for and close the key account sale
Participants will learn:
- Methods for balancing the needs of both standard and key accounts
- The three dimensions of a relationship
- Ways to provide the customer the ability to evaluate your product or service
- Characteristics that influence the buying committee
- Tools for assessing risk
Program length:
1-day session
Who should attend:
Salespeople of all levels, including telephone sales, field sales and customer service representatives who are responsible for selling, cross-selling and/or up-selling services. This course is also valuable for managers and supervisors of these functions.
Selling Services in a Product World
An interactive workshop for salespeople and sales managers to help them understand, manage and influence the complexities of selling intangible services.
When we spend money, whether for business or personal reasons, it’s human nature to want to see, feel or at least taste what it is we’re getting in return. Yet, 73% of the U.S.’s gross national product is what we call “services” – intangibles like medical care, financial planning or a maintenance contract for the office photocopy machine. From a sales perspective, the differences between selling a product versus selling a service begin with the sales approach and encompass the entire sales cycle, even pricing.
Services provide powerful tools in broadening an organization’s offerings – the opportunity to differentiate from competitors and garner larger, more profitable sales. The challenge is in managing the buying process of services in what is still a product-buying world. Salespeople who sell services are tested with lengthier sales cycles and larger buying committees. These tests require salesperson patience and persistence.
Selling Services in a Product World is an interactive, facilitator-led training workshop designed to educate sales professionals of all levels, including managers and supervisors, about the nuances of the service sale, while developing key skills to master the challenge of selling the intangible. After completing this workshop, participants will be better equipped to manage and influence the complexities of selling services into a world that revolves around tangibles.
The highly interactive workshop, Selling Services in a Product World, will teach participants:
- To understand the critical differences between services and products
- A method to determine the service sales cycle
- Ways to prepare for the sales call
- How to probe for active needs when those needs are intangible
- Methods of educating customers
- How to position your service as the solution
- Techniques for dealing with service objections
- How to ask for and close the service sale
- Techniques for conducting a post-purchase evaluation
- How to sell when “trust” is the major factor
Participants will learn:
- The three key elements of service selling
- How to establish an annuity stream of on-going services
- How and when to use reference stories and testimonials in the service sale
- Methods for avoiding “bad customers” – those who demand more of your organization than it is good at performing
- The four reasons to probe for active needs in a service sale
- How to prepare for a service sales presentation
- How a service blue print can provide a selling strategy
- What “physical evidence” is needed to drive the sales process
- Strategies for dealing with risk
Program length:
1-day session
Who should attend:
Salespeople of all levels, including telephone sales, field sales and customer service representatives who are responsible for selling, cross-selling and/or up-selling services. This course is also valuable for managers and supervisors of these functions.