Advanced sales skills

A two-day workshop

Do you hear yourself saying the same thing over and over again? Do you want to bring some new skills to your role? If you have been in a sales role for some time it is easy to fall into a comfortable pattern. This workshop will help you incorporate advanced techniques drawn from NLP, behavioural science and social psychology into your existing skills.

This programme will help you:

  • Understand your customers and their needs
  • Identify potential new customers
  • Build rapport
  • Assess customer needs
  • Introduce products and services
  • Gain commitment
  • Maximise sales with existing customers

Objectives

Learning objectives

This course will help you:

 

  • Use the consultative sales process to achieve more cross-sales
  • Employ advanced rapport-building skills
  • Assess the buying preferences of a customer
  • Articulate the link between customer goals and needs
  • Identify your customer’s needs and wants
  • Use advanced questioning techniques to gather information
  • Resist the temptation to tell when it would be better to ask
  • Identify communication preferences
  • Given various scenarios, present a product to the explicit need of a customer
  • Appreciate the impact of the language used during this stage of the sale and decide what language is appropriate with a variety of customers
  • Handle objections positively
  • Close the sale or gain commitment to further action

Audience

Who should attend?

This innovative and practical course is most suited to staff who wish to develop their sales skills to an advanced level. The course introduces many powerful concepts from NLP as well as research in social psychology and behavioural science, which make it both lively and engaging. The techniques are quick and easy to learn and have a rapid impact on performance.

Format

Format

A practical, interactive two-day session for a maximum of 12 delegates. There are many activities throughout – group exercises, short skills practice sessions and assessments of real calls or video clips – as well as formal inputs from the trainer. The style is very facilitative and learner-centred, taking into account the needs and preferences of the group on the day whilst at the same time delivering the programme as agreed with the client in order to meet the specified learning objectives.

Special features

Special features

The majority of the training we deliver is either tailored or completely bespoke. This workshop can therefore be delivered entirely as advertised, tailored to your particular requirements, or used as a starting point for a conversation with you before we draft a completely bespoke programme for you – the choice is yours. As a rule, there is no additional charge for this service.

This course can be adapted to cover complex sales that require prospecting for new customers and active portfolio management or it can be tailored to cover more straightforward sales of products and services in the retail environment. It can be customised to cover face-to-face, telephone or web-based sales staff.

To get the absolute best from this training we also offer workplace coaching after the training to support staff as they develop their skills and ensure that the training has an immediate impact on sales performance.

Meet the trainer

Expert trainer

Sylva is a training and development consultant specialising in sales and customer service. She spent thirteen years with Barclays Bank, initially in customer-facing roles before moving into training and becoming National Training Manager. In 2001 she launched her independent training and development consultancy and since then has worked for a range of clients such as Nutricia, Vodafone, Lloyds Bank, Jaguar Landrover, Hiscox, Barclays, Photobox, Crown Pet Foods, 888 Holdings, Surrey County Council, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Aviva, Santander, Hibernian, etc, etc.

Over recent years Sylva has specialised in designing and facilitating training programs that deliver exceptional customer service and sales results. Her experience in behavioural science and social psychology gives her a unique set of skills for helping staff develop simple yet powerful techniques to influence others and deliver exceptional sales results. She is passionate about transferring skills into the workplace and is very comfortable floor walking and coaching staff in the workplace.

Sylva’s clients have won several awards in the Call Centre Top 50 and the Contact Centre Training Awards for customer service in both the telephony and e-mail categories.

1 Introduction

  • Aims and objectives of the training
  • Personal introductions and objectives
  • Self-assessment of existing sales skills
  • Overview of content

2 Understanding yourself and your customers

  • Personal communication style and what this means in a sales situation
  • Wants versus needs
  • What motivates people to buy
  • Using social media tools such as LinkedIn
  • Managing your portfolio to maximise sales
  • Preparing to sell

3 The sales process

  • Overview of the consultative sales process
  • Review personal strengths and weaknesses as a salesperson
  • Habits of top-performing sales people
  • Common pitfalls
  • Articulate sales goals

4 Building rapport

  • 11 decisions that customers make in the first 9 seconds
  • Spotting buyer communication preferences
  • Building rapport with a wide variety of customers
  • Dealing with emotions
  • Keeping control

5 Questioning and listening

  • Assumptions and how they trip us up
  • Structured questioning
  • Looking for cross-sales
  • Honing your listening skills
  • Identifying buyers’ motivation
  • Using summaries to move the customer forward

6 Presenting products and services to customers

  • Choosing the right time to present
  • Using features, advantages and benefits
  • Tailoring your presentation of products and services to match buyer preferences and motivations

7 Gaining commitment

  • When to close
  • Dealing with difficult customers
  • 5 things to avoid when handling a customer objection

8 Managing your business

  • The link between service and sales
  • Using customer surveys
  • Winning back lost business

9 Putting it all together

  • Skills practice
  • Personal learning summary and action plans

Any questions? Please just give us a call on 01582 463463 – we’re here to help!