Solution Selling Skills Programme Agenda
Solution selling demands a clear plan and a robust set of processes to create the best chances of winning.
Sales teams must also win the politics of the sale, as this is key to closing the business.
Duration
Aims
- To develop the skills required to plan high quality sales campaigns populated with effective meetings designed around proven best practice approaches
- To enable delegates to sell effectively in more complex business to business environments
- To ensure the use of a common language
The Phases of a Sale
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this event, delegates will be able to:
- Shape and structure a deal to maximise the chances of winning
- Hold effective sales meetings
- Qualify the sale to ensure it can be won
- Unravel the politics of the sale to gain influence with key people
- Gain access to all levels in the decision group/groups even if they are currently trapped
- Deal with show stoppers or potential deal killers
- Plan the sales campaign
- Beat the competition
- Build up needs – both business and personal
- Give evidence that their organisation can fulfil those needs
- Gain commitments from the prospect at all levels and at each stage of the sale
Assignments and Role Plays
We customise our programmes to ensure a perfect fit to your requirements.
Key to this fit is the use of assignments and role plays based on real scenarios and case studies from the delegates’ organisation.
Delegates benefit from practising their developing skills in a safe, but relevant environment. Their organisations often see the immediate benefit of moving real opportunities forward during the programme.
Content Highlights
Sales Campaign Planning
A bid or campaign plan is a list of all the sales meetings you intend to have with an account, in sequence, with each meeting clearly stating the commitment that you want to achieve at the end of the meeting.
There are many advantages to effective planning:
- The sales campaign is properly formulated
- Each team member has specific meeting objectives within an overall framework
- Every meeting with the account has a defined objective
- At the end of the meeting success or failure is measurable, so project management is easy
- The caller can be very single-minded about what appear to be straightforward commitments
- Team motivation is fantastic over the life of the project
- The timescales and dependencies can easily be visualised
More than one objective can be tackled in a single meeting. It does not matter if you do not achieve them all. Your “direction” is overpowering.
Qualification
- The biggest waste of time is the sale you lose
- Top salespeople have hit rates of 80% to 90% for the sales on which they bid because they refuse to get involved with sales that they cannot win
- SCOTSMAN® – the criteria needed to decide whether or not a project is worthwhile
Sales Meeting Objectives
- The objectives of a sales meeting should always be customer commitments
- Senior people expect you to give them some sort of decision to make
- What sort of decisions might they find interesting?
Political Map
- Understanding and mapping the politics of the prospect
- Who’s who in the zoo? What do they do?
Breaking Out
- How to escape from our current low level of contact to meet the more senior people in our accounts without upsetting our existing contacts
Competing at a Tactical Level
- What process is needed to beat a competitor in a sale?
- How to play to your strengths
- Recruiting and training internal sales people
Competing at a Strategic Level
- What process is needed to beat a competitor at a strategic level?
- Operating in areas where they are not strong – divisions, departments or product areas
- Operating at a more senior level than the competition, to win the policy decision while they are operating tactically
Selling Timetables
How to “sell a timetable” to the prospect to structure the sales opportunity:
- To find out if they are serious, to get them to “make a decision to make a decision”
- To gain access to key people
- To forecast the business to your own management
- To get resources at the right time
- To minimise the duration of the sale
- To squeeze out competition
- To gain access during Death Valley
(that difficult period after you have submitted your quote but before they decide)
Handling the Phases of a Sale
- Prospecting
- Creating the need
- Qualifying the sale
- Giving evidence
- Handing over the proposal
- Closing
- Implementation
- Getting paid
Selling Styles
- Relationship Management so that we are there when needs arise
- Application Replication to pro-actively take ideas to the market place, using reference stories and case histories to worry and excite the client
- Consultative Selling to deal with the more complex problem, where the solution is not immediately obvious
- Partnership Selling to fill a gap in your offering and by creating a consortium
- Benefit selling versus criteria selling
- Encouraging the prospect to open up and talk about their ambitions, concerns and issues
- Listening as a communication skill
- Relationship management at an individual level
The Hunting Licence
- A large deal normally has many stakeholders, we need to ensure all their needs are met before submitting a proposal
- The activities needed to organise your virtual sales team within the client
Qualifying the Sales Campaign
- The plan has been thought through from beginning to end
- If prospects are willing to go down the path then they may end up buying
- How to maximise your chances of success
Giving Evidence
- How to use reference stories in a variety of circumstances
Summary – The Four Point Meeting Model
Review of everything covered over the three days, including our Four Point Meeting Model which defines the key elements of sales meetings, the roles played by the salesperson and the skills required:
o Sales role: Counsellor, helping the prospect uncover his or her needs
o Sales role: Story Teller, providing auditable evidence that we have the right solution
o Sales role: Business Person, making sure that we are heading for a win:win sale
o Sales role: Project Manager, committing the prospect to take actions
_________________________________________________________________________________________
To discuss your Solutions Selling Skills Programme requirements:
Call us on 0845 125 9098
Or click here to complete the contact form