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performance potential without a well-defined sales-call
procedure that they can follow and learn from. "Winging it" on
sales calls has grim consequences - lost sales, extended sell
cycles, margin erosion and no clear path to improvement. Bottom
line: Your entire sales career can be mediocre if you "wing it."
Performance improves by as much as 50% when salespeople have a
consistent game plan for their sales calls.
Most salespeople make the same mistakes over and over without
realizing it. Without a logical sales process to follow, they
can't even identify specific problems, let alone correct them. A
good sales process mirrors the pattern by which customers make
buying decisions. The nine acts of Action Selling break a sales
call into its most important components, sequenced in the order
of the five key buying decisions every customer makes. By
analyzing each segment of a call and testing against the
customer's buying decisions, salespeople can quickly recognize
problems and adjust their behavior accordingly.
Without a system like Action Selling, the only thing salespeople
can look at is whether they won or lost the sale. If you don't
know what went wrong or why, you can't improve your performance.
The Sales Training Series: Gaining Commitment
Employers value salespeople based on their ability to Gain a Sales Commitment. Improving this sales skill has never been more important than it is today. So, what are you doing to get better?
Here are several ideas on how you can improve your sales effectiveness at gaining customer commitments.
Always Have a Commitment Objective!
Our recent research shows that nearly 80% of salespeople do not understand what their primary purpose is. Your principle mission in sales is to Gain Commitment. The confusion stems from the variety of tasks we as salespeople are asked to perfor ..
In The Field:
A leading architectural service faced a common problem. They
were having trouble trying to sell an intangible service that
was seen more as a luxury than a necessity. The firm's growth
had stopped and they were losing business to far less capable
competitors.
The Sales Board delivered a 2-day onsite Action Selling
href="http://www.thesalesboard.com/index.asp" title="sales
training, sales management training, corporate sales training,
sales training school">Sales Training workshop for their
sales staff, teaching the Action Selling process and documenting
the company's Best Sales Practices. Twelve weeks of Skill Drill
Modules followed, further honing the new selling and sales
relationship skills the group had acquired.
Within only three months the CEO reported business grew by 20%.
In addition, he said, "My [sales] team's professionalism and
sense of confidence increased as a direct result of the Action
The Sales Training Series: How To Sell Solutions The Sales Training Series: How To Sell Solutions
1-800-232-3485 - http://www.thesalesboard.com/b>
Salespeople are commonly told to sell solutions and value
rather than just product features. But when the time comes to
present their products, they fall back on generic scripts with
no direct connection to any specific needs the customer has
revealed. The customer winds up in a one-sided conversation,
listening to the salesperson present too many low-priority
capabilities.
What salespeople lack is a structure for presenting products in
a way that ties features and benefits directly to the customer s
exp ..
Selling
href="http://www.thesalesboard.com/sales-training-program.php"
title="sales training programs, sales skill training, salesforce
training">sales training program. Having a clear
understanding of the selling strengths and weaknesses of each
sales team member has made sales management both focused and
effective for the first time."
About the author:
Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a
Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and
certified more than 200,000 salespeople in the Action Selling
process. He has personally facilitated more than 300 Action
Selling training sessions.
For more information about this author/company, go to
href="http://www.thesalesboard.com/index.asp" title="sales
training">The Sales Board.
Duane SparksThe Sales Training Series: "Never Wing It"
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