Partnership Selling – Mastering the Sales Process
All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.
– Bob Burg
You have probably heard the comment: “This product sells itself!” While there are definitely fantastic products of every kind out there, we believe that in reality Products Don’t Sell, People Do! A quality product and product training are essential to your success but only in part. Strategic and tactical sales techniques are the vital tools that give you the edge in your market. This program is specifically geared to teach these techniques in a highly interactive and experiential environment – a methodology proven to work.
From an instructional standpoint, our programs include presentation, practice and application methods. We provide the structure; you provide the content. We provide proven methodologies for producing sales results. We work with you to tailor the practice and application sections to your products and markets so you can easily turn classroom learning into workplace results. You determine the level of customizing necessary for your needs and expectations.
Program Objective
Our primary objective is to equip you with real and practical skills to make your career more productive and more rewarding. Our programs become your programs. We provide sales expertise; you enrich the program with your specific product and market expertise.
Program graduates are able to:
- Understand characteristics of top sales people
- Know the difference between a peddler and a partner
- Learn to ask questions that lead you to YES
- Write proposals that lead to close sales
- Set specific, achievable, trackable, sales goals that impact both personal and professional success
- Relate long-term goals and objectives to short-term business planning
- Build strong partnerships with clients to create customers rather than just close sales
- Profile client needs and match benefits specifically to meet those needs
- Develop effective presentations that address client concerns rather than conduct “product dumps”
- Handle objections with ease and use them as opportunities to close the sale
- Service and maintain client relationships to generate repeat business and referrals
Components of the Program
1. Partnering
- Distinguish between peddler and partnership approaches
- Define benefits for partnering
- Apply skills and tools to facilitate long-term partnerships
- Provide value over and above product
- See the sales process from the customer’s point of view
- Identify four personality styles and how to work best with each
- Identify five buyer roles
- Create rapport with customers through “mirroring” techniques
2. Value Profiling
- Understand why customers buy and what customers value
- Develop questions for your value profile to address the needs and values of customers
- Apply the value profile to match your own products and services to customer-defined value
- Develop and “up-front close” to ensure that both your time and your customer’s time is well spent
- Focus your presentation to say, “Here’s what you said you wanted.”
3. Developing Benefits
- Know the difference between facts, features, benefits, and “partners benefits”
- Tailor benefits to specific customers
- Identify benefits for your own products or services
- Use a formula for developing and presenting benefits
- Present a product in terms of benefits that answer the buyer question, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Presenting Solutions
- Construct partnership presentations that involve your customers
- Identify and evaluate the elements of an effective presentation
- Plan for the logistics of a presentation
- Conduct a presentation with appropriate benefit statements to meet the prospect’s needs
- Understand obtaining and using proofs and other materials to back up your presentation
- Design and practice the presentation using literature, visual aids, and support material
- Make a confident and persuasive presentation that will close the sale
5. Handling Objections
- Recognizing objections by type
- Determine which objections are productive to answer and which are not
- Form appropriate responses to objections using a four-step procedure
- Handle objections positively
- Be confident in handling objections
- Use objections to move the sale along
6. Closing
- Understand what closing is and what it is not
- Gauge how well you have carried out the whole process by your customer’s readiness to close
- Recognize when the customer is ready to make a decision
- Use trial closes to define closing opportunities
- Develop closing objectives that meet both the needs of your customer and your need to make the sale
- Develop a variety of approaches that facilitate customer decisions
7. Putting It All Together
- Apply the core skills that you have been learning throughout the program
- Practice your own Action Plan for your CSO through role playing
- Act as a key decision-maker for one of your task force member’s role-play
- Work in a team to aid, observe, and critique
Contact Us for more details.
