Here at Salestrong our job is to come up with sales training ideas that make world class sales training courses. We love our job and to spread the love, we thought it might be useful to give five key ideas that could help you to improve your sales performance.
1) Arrive earlier in the buying process
Here you can solve the biggest problem that we see on our sales training courses, sales people arriving late in the sales process. Arriving late means that you cannot influence the buyer and are less likely to win the deal. How can you achieve this? Become more familiar with Social Selling, where you use a social media listening station to listen in to chatter about your prospects. The intelligence gleaned will let you know when the prospects are becoming aware of their need.
2) Get inside the mind of the buyer
The first buying process is one hundred years old, so this really is not new. More recently Neil Rackham developed his buying cycle. Once you realize that your job is to facilitate the customer through their buying process, rather than drive them through your sales process, life will become much easier for you and your customers.
3) Influence their decision criteria
When we perform deal reviews with sales people, it is amazing how many are not clear on the customer’s decision making criteria. I.e. how big, tall, wide etc. they want their purchase to be. Clarifying their decision criteria is a great opportunity to influence them.
4) Speed up the sales cycle
Many sales opportunities get stuck before the decision is made because of interested parties identifying potential risks as the deal goes under greater scrutiny. Use your experience of previous deals to head off these objections before they slow down or de-rail your deal.
5) Improve your negotiations
We all know that we should get something back when we make a concession, so why don’t we? Simple, we are not prepared. So when the customer asks for a concession, we react instinctively to save the deal and give the concession. When the customer gets the concession, it validates their behavior and they ask for more until you start to really squeal. Head this off by planning your ‘gives’ and ‘gets’. ‘Gives’ are your concessions made to the customer, and ‘gets’ are what you get back in return. Don’t give without getting is the rule, so take time to think, “What are the concessions the customer will ask for?” Then what do I want in return for making those concessions. Having a plan will help you to obey this most fundamental of business laws.
Conclusion – Sales Training Ideas
I’m sure you agree that none of these sales ideas are a secret, you’ve probably come across many of them before. The hard part is not knowing these skills, but doing these consistently. So let me give you a few words of encouragement. Your competitors have access to the same information as you. If they are using these sales training ideas, then you will be outsold. Don’t let that happen. Do you have any great sales training ideas? Share the love and let us know your best one!
