Which Sales Skills could You Use the Most Sales Training Help with?
I would like to get a feel for what people want out of sales training and would appreciate what sales skills you would be most likely to draw you to a sales seminar. Give me your list of skills you need to work on.
I also have a poll up on my blog at http://salestraining4u.blogspot.com/ if you would like to post it to the poll and see what others say.
Answers (14)
I believe the process of selling leads to one event and that is to close. So, I think we think too much on the process of selling rather than focusing on the goal – which is to close. To close in a time frame that makes sense for you the sales person, motivating the buyer to do so. So the #1 skill for me in selling is "strategy"
Strategy to go after the right accounts in priority that aligns with the goals of the your organization
Strategy to go sell to the proper contacts within those accounts
Strategy to best serves the customer with the appropriate product mix
Strategy to win over the competition
Finally, Timing strategically the close. The deal may be won or lost prior to even a phone call.
The people wants to find how to align the product portfolio with the customer needs
Mike W
Consultant Extraordinaire
Best Answers in: Ethics (2), Graphic Design (1), Public Relations (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Professional Organizations (1), Starting Up (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Lead Generation. I can sell Ice to a polar bear. But only when I know where the bear is.
I'd like to look at alternative ways of gathering leads. I really don't want to cold call - its not me - I can do it but I hate it and why would I want to spend time doing something I hate? I want to know how to generate more sales from websites, networking, seminars, speaking and referrals
Martijn R
Channel Marketing Manager - SAP
Best Answers in: Internationalization and Localization (1), Computers and Software (1)
Most of the people I train forget to work on the research. They don't ask questions to the customer and just start talking. A little bit later they forget to ask for the deal. (they wait and see what happens) So training in asking questions to know what the customer wants / needs and learning to close the deal by asking for it again really helps!
Patrick H
Semiconductor Sales Professional
Best Answers in: Sales Techniques (4), Government Policy (2), Business Development (2), Mentoring (1), Business Analytics (1), Inventory Management (1)
Hi Lisa.Some really great responses already posted here.
I think it really depends on what your selling, but here is my fundamental list of things reps can and should work on on a regular basis.
A.) Emphasis on listening skills.
B.) Emphasis on pre call preperation.
C.) Emphasis on your specific value proposition as it relates to a specific vertical that you are selling to. If you show your team where other reps have been succesful then it helps them better understand who and how they sell. Generic sales pitches dont really work.
D.) Emphasis on "roll play" as hokey as it sounds
Ramon R
Sales Organizations Consultant
Best Answers in: Sales Techniques (8), Business Development (1), Organizational Development (1), Computers and Software (1)
Lisa,
My possible suggestions depend on the seniority of the participants or the intended market.
If sales is something new for them and them are new to selling, certain themes would have more emphasis than others.
If they have between two or three years of experience, the emphasis must go to other themes.
And if it's going to be for a more experienced and seasoned salesperson, again, a shift must occur in the emphasis, the length and/or the type of presentation that you are going to use.
Ramon
When I am conducting sales training, I unfortunately see the same two problems. It does not matter what industry. It does not matter how experienced the sales professional.
An old mentor of mine called the first one "The Q & L Gap."
Sales reps need to consistently and consciously ask the right question (the Q part) in the right format at the right time. The SPIN Selling style seems to help with this. But too often, the sales rep jumps into and all over the customer's response. Or is mentally preparing to jump back into the conversation without really listening (the L part) to the customer's response to the last question.
The second problem involves not connecting the last sales call with the current sales call. The rep does not refer to salient points made by both parties in the last call and how those points drove the need for today's presentation.
The other responses, by the way, are terrific. You have elicted some good input.
Roger H
Lead Generation Strategies, Cold Call Best Practices, Cold Calling Automation Software Integrating with CRM
Best Answers in: Lead Generation (6), Sales Techniques (5), Customer Relationship Management (1)
Lisa ,
There are some good answers here.
Because I deal with it every day, it is my belief that independent sales professionals experience the difficulty of telephone prospecting every day. Most are talented (and highly motivated) sales professionals that excel at selling once they are in front of a prospect, but either resist, under perform, or just fail at the first step in the sales cycle: "working the telephone" to find new prospects.
Even calling into "warm leads" can be painful. Whether you know it as Business Development, Territory Building, Telephone Prospecting, or Cold calling, creating new customers with the telephone is a difficult task for most sales people. It is usually the most difficult process in the sales cycle.
Roger
Roger Hamilton
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What sales skills to focus on in a training setting will of course depend on the industry involved and especially on the level of the attendants. I have worked with sales people on various continents/industries and have generally found the biggest need in terms of training as being:
1. Questions.
I love the term “Q & L Gap” William, never heard it before but it certainly covers very well. I would add the need to focus on OPEN questions, forcing the customer to think and open up for his reasoning. I once learned the rule only to use closed questions when I know the answer. It is not always possible to follow it, but as a rule of thumb it is not bad.
2. Explore.
This is linked to questions. Continue asking until all is clear. Too often have I seen sales people not exploring because they think they know why the customer answered as he did.
3. Adapt.
Many sales people I have seen “do their thing” without adapting to the customer they have in front. This point also includes the need to focus on what the customer wants to hear about and not on what the sales person wants to say.
4. Turning features into benefits.
Too often the focus is on what the thing can do rather than on how this will help the customer.
5. Closing.
And the obvious final part of any sales. ASK that crucial question at the end.
Hope it helps you.
Gergana P
Business Development Coordinator at AES Wind Bulgaria
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Hi Lisa,
Great answers posted so far. I especially liked Kim’s classification.
I would only like to emphasize that different sales skills would be required for telesales people, as compared to the sales people working on the field, i.e. face-to-face contacts. Perhaps there are ‘sales gurus’ who are able to handle both, but I believe that the majority of sales people fall into either group.
Still what binds both groups together in terms of sales skills is, in my opinion, the ability to ask the right questions at the right time and definitely to listen effectively, i.e. filling in the “Q & L Gap” (great term indeed!).
Furthermore, I would refer to the “right questions” in two aspects:
- those questions that would provide you with the information you need in order to make the right proposal to your prospect (the one that best fits his/her needs);
- those questions that would make your prospect “see” your product/service/solution as the best-fit for him/her, i.e. those questions that help you accelerate even further and faster in the sales process.
The latter are the hard part.
Hope this helps as well.
Gergana
I like what I have read so far, mind you nobody has addressed the most important aspect of sales. This is called creating raport with the client. You must make the client feel like you and him are on the same level. In order to do this you must find his hot button by asking the right questions. I suggest reading into NLP. There are many books about the subject, and if you have your sales staff apply just a little of what they read, it would make a huge difference in your bottom line. At the end of the day if they are in harmony with themselves they will perform better!
Cheers!
David C
Sales Consultant | Sales Trainer | Sales Coach | Sales Expert | Social Media | Public Speaker | dcooke@srgroup-llc.com
Best Answers in: Business Development (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Sales Techniques (1)
There are a lot of great answers and ideas here. I would like to see more training emphasis on relationship building (with props to the "Q&L" and "Rapport" responses). Too many sales people are transactionally focused vs relationship focused. Transactions may get the "deal" but they do not assure a long term repeat client relationship. I believe that more training needs to emphasize how to build rapport. The art of using intelligent questions in the learning and exploration phase of the relationship building process is how you demonstrate your knowledge and expertise.
A training program that emphasizes "relationship building" vs. "transactional selling" and teaches "selling" vs. "telling" will create better sales people.
Not sure anyone will get all the way down to this answer, because there are already some pretty good ones. William Gunn, Martijn Ras and Patrick Hollister pretty well hit the nail on the head regarding asking questions and listening being the most important skills.
But to take it to another level, the questioning skills need to be honed to the point where you can lead the prospect into conversations that get them to open their minds to think about your product/service in the manner you want them to and perhaps as they've not done in the past. This needs to be done in an indirect way because because prospects today are pretty savvy and don't want to be (and shouldn't) be 'lead' to a foregone conclusion (yours). I believe in most situations the prospect thinks they don't need you when you first meet them. Some of the topics you want to design questions for to get discussions going on are what challenges you solve, what your advantages are (so you can determine which apply to them - they then become benefits to this particular prospect), and what objections occur late in the buying cycle, for instance. If they don't think they need you, you've got to also get them to realize you can help them do what they're doing better than they're doing it today or you've got no prospect and you're wasting your time (and theirs). One of the best ways to do that is to use the old 6 Wise Men Brian Tracy talks about - What do they do, Where do they do it, With Whom do the do it, When do they do it, How do they do it, and Why do they do it that way.
