Sales skills for selling products
Bad news – people don’t buy your product.
Better news – they don’t buy anyone else’s product either.
Best news – they do buy what a product gives them, whether it be removing ‘pain’ or giving ‘pleasure’.
So what a challenge it is that every single person buys your product for a slightly different reason! What’s the secret to selling in that sort of sales environment? This programme provides a great roadmap, giving your entire team the skills to:
- Really understand the prospect’s world, their goals and concerns
- Position the product offering as the perfect solution to what’s wrong with that prospect’s world
- Steer a meeting to a successful conclusion – with authority and finesse
Learning objectives
- Build rapport with authenticity
- Use open questions, listening and summary to properly understand the prospect
- Use ‘impact’ questions to ‘stack the pain’ of remaining with the status quo
- Convert features into personalised benefits that reflect stated needs
- Handle objections with calm confidence
- Identify buying signals
- Close effectively
- Convey credible urgency centred on the prospect’s – not the salesperson’s – interests
Who should attend?
This practical and highly interactive course is suitable for sales professionals at all levels. It allows the more experienced and successful participants a chance to further develop and refine their skills and knowledge, whilst helping the less experienced carve out winning habits to propel them to success.
Format
A very practical, interactive one-day session for a maximum group size of 12. There are lots of different activities throughout the day, including a Forum Theatre exercise for participants to practise their questioning and listening skills, in which they pair up and practise ‘pain stacking’ questions.
In another exercise they experience the negative impact of a salesperson diving into solution mode too quickly, and in a third exercise there is some individual ‘bespoke’ roleplay where the trainer will morph into a prospect for any product required, conduct a short conversation with that delegate and feed back on how he was made to feel and why.
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
The majority of the training we deliver is either tailored or completely bespoke. This workshop can therefore be delivered entirely as advertised, or it can be tailored to your particular requirements, or we can simply take it 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.
Expert trainer
He has trained salespeople in numerous industry sectors and in markets as diverse as Brazil, China, Czech Republic, France, India, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand and the USA. He has even written and performed at the Edinburgh festival a one-man show, ‘Salesbears!’, lampooning the ‘boiler room’ tactics occasionally found in the telesales industry.
‘Stacking the pain has been one of the most effective ways to close a sale for me, whether in person or on the phone, but to experience it within a role play scenario was the trigger to starting using it.’
Mark Collingwood, Director, Digitally Engaged
‘Alun demonstrates that you never know it all and equipped with easy “how to’s” you can improve the outcome of any sales meeting… I have used his methods over the past 9 months with great success and I have easily won over 10% more business. There are not many things that deliver that return.’ David Millward, MD, Pebble Web Design Ltd
‘He has a calm, unflappable and relaxed yet professional approach and delivers feedback in a clear, concise and sensitive manner… an in-depth knowledge of the sales process which enables him to demonstrate sales excellence (and the opposite if required!) in forum theatre sessions.’
Kate Rees, Owner, KJR Consulting
‘Alun has been very helpful providing sales advice for myself and some of my clients. The difference that he brings to any training is that he ticks all the important boxes. He is extremely personable, he knows his subject and he can explain and deliver concepts and techniques in an easy to understand manner. His ability to get everyone up to speed without seeming to leave anyone behind in a training session is to be applauded. I continue to use his services and often seek his advice on how to position and explain services that we offer. I have no hesitation in recommending him.’
Angus Grady, Owner of Customeyes Media Ltd
1 What makes a customer buy any product?
- Moving towards ‘pleasure’
- Moving away from ‘pain’
- Robert Cialdini’s Psychology of Influence – buying motives
- Understanding what your product does for customers
- Why there is never a ‘one size fits all’ approach
- What are the real ‘unique selling points’ and why the salesperson is the real ‘USP’
- At what point does the customer emotionally buy your product?
2 Getting past gatekeepers
- What gatekeepers’ motivations are
- How to make them your friend rather than your enemy
- How to make your call harder to block than to put through
- How to control the gatekeeper with questions, not answers
- Using Cialdini’s ‘reciprocity’ law to get put through more often
- Practical exercise in which the trainer poses as gatekeeper
3 Questioning and listening skills
- How to use open questions to get the customer talking
- What questions to avoid and why
- How to ‘stack the pain’ of the status quo with ‘impact questions’
- Practical ‘pain stacking’ exercise in pairs
- What listening is and what it isn’t
- Question funnelling – how to earn deeper disclosure through probing
- Practical funnelling exercise in pairs
- The power of summary
4 How to create tailored benefits and not ‘dive into solution’
- What is ‘diving into solution’? Examples and analogies
- Why it is to be avoided
- Practical exercise in pairs – how it feels to have solutions offered up too early
- How to avoid ‘feature-dumping’
- What is ‘value selling’?
- How to create tailored benefits
- How to convert product features into benefits
- How to deal with the prospect’s competitor allegiance
5 Handling objections and testing the water
- How to overcome the price objection by selling value
- Common objections the participants encounter and answers that work
- The objections salespeople carry in their own heads
- The ‘A-C-E’ objection-handling model
- How to uncover objections
- When – and when not – to trial close
6 Closing skills
- Why salespeople often close too early
- How to identify buying signals
- How to use urgency with skill and effectiveness
- Four killer closing techniques that work
- How to avoid buying the product back by careless post-sale talk
- How to ask for referrals for your product
- How to ‘farm’ the account for future opportunities
7 Wrap-up
- Key learnings from each participant
- Individual action planning – steps that can and will be implemented in the workplace
Any questions? Please just give us a call on 01582 463463 – we’re here to help!