Far too many sales training investments return mediocre results and some inject a lot of confusion into the sales team’s thinking that can reduce results.
Over the last 15 years, there has been a real shift in sales training toward content that is very analytical and case study oriented. Lengthy discussions and planning processes are used to get a clearer understanding of the buying process, psychological factors involved, buyer personality types, etc. All of this stuff is interesting and stimulating, but is it truly addressing the most basic problem that causes most sales people to fail? We have met and interviewed thousands and thousands of sales people, which resulted in the publication of two best-selling books based on all that data gathering. What we find today is that the three most common causes of poor selling performance are:
- Not spending enough minutes during the day speaking with high capacity buyers/customers.
- Not being able to verbalize the most important sales communication in a convincing and credible way.
- Poor skill at executing the fundamental consultative sales process.
Let’s look at the most important sales communication which we call Bedrock Sales Communication Tools:
- Communicating the three most important competitive advantages of the company.
- Knowing who has the capacity to buy a lot of your product/service and knowing what to say to schedule a meeting or phone appointment with that person.
- Able to communicate a concise and compelling success story of a customer/client of using a popular product/service.
- Able to answer the question: “What do you and your company do?”
- Can respond very effectively to the most common objections.
- Explain what makes your company a better choice than your two strongest competitors.
- Can get any sales conversation off to a good start with an effective agenda.
- Knows how to respond when a sales process gets stalled.
- Can explain a new product or service the company is offering in a convincing and interesting way.
Many sales managers assume or think their sales people know how to do this stuff so they move on to more “advanced” topics which usually means the latest greatest analytic account development system. When we test their sales people, we find that in nearly every case, well over half the team is unable to verbalize this basic sales communication in a way that is effective, credible and convincing.
Consilio fixes this problem. We also have great account planning programs too, but until the team has great sales communication skills that they can clear the bar with, it is best to stick to sales communication training topics because once sales people get good at these skills, their numbers really start to improve.
We do this with a drills-based delivery style that has much more repetition, practice and coaching than any of our competitors. It is so remarkable and different, we are willing to guarantee our results 100%.