Selling today is a sophisticated business – well at least it should be. Long gone are the days of the shiny shoes, the forced smile, and the slick handshake. Your customers expect much better than that. They’re faced with so much choice – how do your salespeople stand out from your competition?
Salespeople today need to behave like trusted advisors, consultants who specialise in the knowledge associated with your products and services. But that is just the start. They need to be equipped with a whole set of other behaviours – behaviours more common to leaders, managers, consultants - even counsellors. Behaviours like:
- building trusting relationships with prospects and customers
- asking challenging questions to uncover the root causes of prospects’ and customers’ frustrations
- listening with the intent to understand, rather than to reply
- inspiring prospects and customers towards a common vision
- being authentic and walking away from non-core opportunities (or situations that are just too difficult)
TLC specialise in B2B selling environments and we offer you two distinct areas of development:
- selling skills
- sales process
Selling Skills
Remember the behaviours we listed above? That’s what we mean by selling skills. Can they be learned within a few-days workshop? Probably not. Behaviours like being “authentic” and “inspirational” are what you should be recruiting for in the first place. It’s difficult for someone to be authentic when they’re not.
But behaviours like questioning and listening are very learnable and that’s what TLC specialises in. How do we develop salespeople? We offer:
- development workshops followed by telephone coaching
- action learning (face-to-face or webinar)
- online Academies for continuing professional development
Sales Process
By “sales process” we mean the steps your salespeople take – the system(s) they employ – to:
- turn a sales lead into a face-to-face sales meeting
- advance the sale as a result of each sales meeting
Therafter, a number of sales processes kick in. We work with your salespeople to develop and implement a strategy for:
- a complex sale (many key stakeholders)
Read all about it…TLC Stakeholder Selling
- improving your bid:win ratio on tender opportunities
- managing an existing major account
Read all about it…TLC Major Account Planning Process (MAPP)
While the skills involved in achieving a sale are fundamental to your success (and are posessed to a greater or lesser extent), most salespeople in our experience are ‘loose’ around sales process. The consequences for your organisation are:
- longer than necessary sales cycles
- costly tenders with a poor conversion ratio
- missed opportunities to retain, upsell and cross-sell existing major accounts
So at TLC we recognise the value of developing sales process as well as selling skills and diagnose on what, if any, system(s) is (are) being deployed across your organisation to maximise your selling success. We are also able to advise on performance management and reward strategies to ensure they are in alignment with your overall marketing and sales strategy.
Are our programmes accredited? Not as a rule, but if that’s important to you we have experience of arranging accreditation with ILM or CMI.
Are our programmes bespoke? Absolutely. Every implementation starts with TLC seeking to understand your business context and the TOWS you face (Threats & Opportunities – External, Weaknesses and Strengths – Internal). We look at whether you can leverage from strength to minimise threats and maximise opportunities. We balance your weaknesses by keeping them in perspective with your threats and opportunites.
A key part of our diagnostic approach is understanding your sales and marketing strategy. If its not properly developed, TLC will help you to refine it and identiofy which behaviours and sales processes are missing in order for you to successfully implement your strategy.