Sales awareness for IT professionals

A one-day workshop

In the fast-changing world of business, and especially IT, everyone in the organisation should be involved in sales.

One of the best ways is to give the customer an outstanding experience. The customer experience is the competitive battlefield of today. Sales may be won or lost here. You can either close a sale for a quick buck, or open a long-term relationship to create a high lifetime value customer.

By developing excellent communication skills, rapport and, most of all, a desire to serve and listen to the needs of the customer to the best of their ability, both sales teams and other IT professionals will create trust, nurture relationships and develop awareness of other opportunities with the customer.

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Understand the power of a positive customer experience in developing sales opportunities
  • Recognise and develop a sales opportunity when it arises
  • Engage with customers and develop rapport and trust
  • Use verbal and non-verbal communication skills and pick up on signals
  • Ask powerful questions – and listen to the answers
  • Create ‘magic moments’ for the customer
  • Turn a complaint into an opportunity
  • Know when to ask for referrals and testimonials
  • Pass on leads to the relevant people

Who should attend?

This programme is relevant to:

  • Sales managers and their teams
  • Graduate and fast track employees
  • Customer service representatives
  • Project managers
  • Contract managers
  • Credit control
  • Department and division managers
  • Solution design teams
  • Help-desk teams

Format

A practical inter-active one-day session for a maximum of 12 participants.

Whilst following the published outline, for maximum benefit the programme will be adapted to the needs of the participants and the client on the day.

Special features

The programme can follow the description, or may be tailored to the customer’s specific requirements.

Session 8 (‘Presentations and pitches’) is optional. If included, it works best if the programme is run over two days rather than one, allowing plenty of time for practical exercises.

Follow-up bespoke training sessions, one-to-one coaching or mentoring are all available as required.

Expert trainer

Steve is a highly experienced and popular trainer, speaker and coach. He spent many years as a customer service engineer in the data and telecoms sector, before transitioning to the commercial side of the IBM UK business as an account manager, and eventually a trainer.

Steve saw for himself at IBM that the customer experience is the competitive battlefield for sales and business growth and that being an ambassador for the company, having good communication skills, developing strong relationships and having an ethos of providing excellent service are the building blocks for long-term business sustainability.

While at IBM Steve:

  • Delivered customer care training to more than 200 sales staff, engineers, managers, professionals and help-desk staff. As a result of this training customer complaints decreased significantly, the engineer morale survey results were the highest on record, and sales were the highest for the decade.
  • Delivered presentation skills and sales relationship skills training, amongst other topics, to over 100 professionals.
  • Facilitated leadership programmes.

Steve then set up his own consultancy practice in 2009 as an independent business trainer and mentor, since when he has provided business training, master-classes and mentoring on sales, business strategy, networking, customer service, presentation skills, communication and influencing, leadership and personal effectiveness to more than 600 clients across a wide range of private and public sectors including IT, sales, accountancy, education, HMRC, healthcare, and business consultancy.

He has reached the highest level of public speaking achievement with Toastmasters International as a Distinguished Toastmaster. Steve is a full member of the Professional Speaking Association and also coaches executives and professionals in speaking skills.

His qualifications include:

  • Certified NLP trainer and Master Practitioner
  • Clinical hypnotherapist
  • Certified coach
  • Profiles International assessment tool certified on Profile XT, PSA, 360 Degree, PPI (a DISC Plus style assessment)
  • Distinguished Toastmaster, Toastmasters International (a leading non-profit organisation for improving communication and leadership skills in individuals)
  • Full member of The Professional Speaking Association

1 Introduction

  • Aims and objectives
  • Beliefs about sales

2 Building rapport

  • First impressions
  • Short cuts to rapport
  • Finding common interests

3 Selling or serving?

  • Managing emotions and behaviour – Transactional Analysis
  • Moments of truth – creating ‘magic moments’
  • Speed sells – the follow-up

4 Meetings

  • Planning a successful meeting
  • Pre-meeting connection and assistance
  • Sales meeting failure reasons
  • Right v wrong mindset

5 Communication – verbal and non-verbal

  • The 3 Vs – Visual, Verbal, Vocal
  • Picking up on signals
  • 7 power questions
  • Questioning techniques
  • LISTEN – 3 types of listening skills

6 Influencing

  • 6 levels of influence
  • Framing to change perspectives
  • Turning complaints into opportunities

7 Referrals

  • The power of referrals
  • How and when to ask for a referral
  • 5 steps from rapport to referral

8 Presentation and pitching (optional session)

  • Basic presentation structure and delivery
  • Creating powerful impressions
  • Creating a 60-second pitch
  • The elevator 10-second pitch – answering ‘What do you do?’
  • Sales presentations
  • Emotion v Intellect – how to engage
  • Using visuals

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