Sales training skills, sales leads, closing techniques

SALES TRAINING SKILLS, SALES LEADS, CLOSING TECHNIQUES

Sales training skills, sales leads, closing techniques, selling skills are pointless if your salesmen have no one to sell to.

Selling is all about providing a solution to a problem, fulfilling a need or desire. It doesn't need to be made more complicated than that and you don't need to sit in a training room for days to discover this simple fact. No sales training course is going to help you, it will simple cloud the issues.

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Previous page about why you shouldn't waste your money on sales training

As a company, you should be focusing on generating more sales enquiries than paying your sales people to find potential clients. Sales people only make your company money when they are closing sales. The more time they have to spend looking, the less time they have to sell. Your sales team should be concentrating on closing deals and that is how we can help.

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If your sales team are having to cold call or canvas for business in anyway, they are using essential energy and time that could be more profitably utilised.

GIVING YOUR SALES TEAM THE RIGHT TRAINING

Every sales training course is designed to achieve one thing. Leave the trainees motivated, hyped up and buzzing with ideas they are keen to use. They may succeed in part but most sales training courses are either teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs and leave the experienced sales person feeling they have wasted their time; and the poorer performers' motivation will last about as long as the sales course.

Selling is a simple process and should not be dressed up into some complicated scientific process that clouds the issues. I have always maintained that I could teach the right person how to sell in 30 minutes. The emphasis should be placed on the right person because the wrong person will never become a salesman. Success is sales ends and starts with recruitment not sales training.

The sales process is simple:

Find the right prospective client
Brief introduction - who you are and what you do
Ask the right questions to establish the problems, needs and desires
Provide the solutions
Establish the budget
Close the sale

Finding the right prospective clients is critical to the success of the sales process. If your sales people are working from qualified sales leads, their job is going to be made a lot easier. If they are having to cold call, you are going to be paying for a lot of wasted time, closing ratios will be much lower and turnover of sales personnel will be higher.

If your sales team are working off sales enquiries, you can operate with a much smaller sales team, make more sales and have your sales people selling for a greater percentage of their time.

Selling is more about listening than talking. Asking the right questions using how, what, who, when, why and where will provide a salesman with all the information he will need to establish a sales opening. If the client is doing most of the talking, they will feel less pressurised and more relaxed.

If your sales team are working off sales leads and enquiries, there is only one question that is of real importance:

"How can I help you?"

The client has already contacted you because they believe you can be of assistance in some way. They are interested in buying your product or service. All the sales person has to do is provide the solution at an affordable price.

A good salesperson will make the client feel comfortable; confident they are dealing with a professional and trust them with their business. This is all about creating empathy with the client and a friendly, concerned approach expressing the client's interests are at heart will beat any hard sell, heavy scripted approach.

Sales people should be confident in their product or service, know all the technical aspects of their product or services and be able to explain them in a clear and understandable manner. They should know where they are better than their competition and be able to counter objections about any weaknesses in their product, know their USPS (unique selling points) and be able to digress from their script and allow the client to talk whilst retaining control of the conversation.

Handled correctly, the client should close the sale because the feel confident they are getting a good deal. If the sales person has to use any form of pressure to cement a sale, the client may feel they have been steamrollered into signing.

The client should end up feeling they have been helped, provided good service, will continue to receive good service and be left with a smile on their face.

The sale person should also feel that they have done a good job, acted in the clients interests, been well rewarded for making the sale and therefore motivated to move onto the next sale.

Technical training is therefore important, your sales team need to know their onions. If you have recruited the right calibre of sales person, they will come with their selling skills built in. All you have to do is help them discover them and give them a simple brief, you don't need to complicate the matter by sending them on any courses to learn sales training skills.