Learning Track:Account Manager

Overview:

This module utilizes a structured questioning model to reveal the customer's pain, the impact of that pain and to help guide them towards your solution. It will help you to quickly identify what is needed to win the business and lead your customer towards the value you can deliver with your solution.

Learning Outcomes:

• Confidently utilize structured questioning
• Be able to constructively build anxiety around the customer’s issues to motivate action
• Be able to lead your customers towards your offering
• Help you to quickly identify the business impact of your customer’s pain
• Establish credibility and gain access to a broader range of stakeholders
• Better qualify opportunities

Who this course is for:

Those in sales who need to understand the customer’s requirements, their needs and wants more fully by asking better questions, and in doing so, align their product/service and articulate the associated value.

Benefits to you:

Gain the ability to ask the right questions and to fully understand the customer’s requirements. Determine how your product or service aligns to their needs will allow you to realize the opportunity by focusing and prioritizing your resources on the deals worth engaging in and qualify out lesser opportunities.

Benefits to your organization:

Customers expect sales people to implicitly understand their business. Asking impactful questions allows sales professionals to gain an even better understanding and by doing so, enhance the reputation of the company and at the same time, differentiating themselves and the organization from the competition.

Overview:

Information is the lifeblood of a sale. Whether developing insight in to our customer’s business, their organization, or their competitive position, data is needed. The process of gathering data never stops, if it does our sales outlook will darken. Without good data our opportunities will be under-qualified. We may miss opportunities. Our sales cycles can extend. We may chase dead-end deals. But what data do we need? How do we gather it? How do we use it? These are questions we will address in this course.

Learning Outcomes:

• Develop an understanding of the formal data gathering process
• Understand data gathering methods throughout the various stages of a sale
• Be able to use direct and indirect data gathering methods
• Gather and use both Primary and Secondary data
• Be able to build credibility for the data we gather and utilize
• Be able to deduce data when none apparently exists

Who this course is for:

Sales people, sales managers, business development, sales engineers, sales support, marketing. Any customer-facing representative engaged with customers, who need to work in context of their business, on their issues, their opportunities.

Benefits to you:

Equip yourself with the various tools that can be used for data gathering, some obvious, others less so. Be able to show accuracy in the data we use in our sale and enhance the credibility of you and the business case you propose.

Benefits to your organization:

Having a sound data foundation in sales situations better prepares sales people for their customer engagements. Meetings with leaders can be more productive since we are able to directly relate the impact of our solutions on their business drivers and their motivation. Comprehensive data assists in the development of more valuable and credible business cases. Good data helps us win more, lose less, avoid the no decisions and grow bigger deals.

Overview:

A good sales engagement starts with understanding your customer or prospect. The Insight-Business module provides the tools to quickly and efficiently research your customer. This allows you to have business led conversations on subjects that are important to them. Insight comes in many forms including understanding your customers competitive strength, their market strategy, the forces acting on their business, the key decisions they are taking, their strategy, their organization, their culture, their policies, and more.

Learning Outcomes:

• Use tried and tested business tools to understand your customer
• Be able to interpret analysis and make meaning of the research
• Be able to relate research and analysis with a customer engagement plan
• Build unparalleled credibility in your customers eyes through your understanding of their business

Who this course is for:

Sales people, sales managers, business development, sales engineers, sales support. Any customer-facing representative engaged with customers, needing to talk about the customers agenda rather than our agenda. Benefits to you: Build credibility quickly with key contacts within your customer or prospect, and at the same time differentiate yourself from your competition. You will be seen as a consultative business partner who brings value and an external perspective. You will be able to identify new opportunities to align with your customer and propose more creative and larger deals.

Benefits to your organization:

By empowering your sales organization to have business led conversations and meetings with your customer, your sales team will be better positioned to qualify opportunities and focus on opportunities they can win. By having insight in to their customer's business, sales people will be able to identify new opportunities and to focus on real, relevant, current business value.

Overview:

No matter what we sell, no matter how large or small the transaction, there is a person or an organisation involved. Each of the people we interact with will have their own personality, needs and motivations. In a business, they will also be working as part of an organization with structure, policies, procedures and the influence of culture. In the same way that no two people are alike, the same holds true for customer organizations. There are many company specific considerations we need to be aware off if we are to be efficient, effective and avoid making mistakes that could cost us the sale. Beyond that, just who are the people we need to engage with? How do we create a relationship development plan? How do we benchmark the strength and relevance of our relationships? The answers to these questions will have a major bearing on the success of our sales efforts.

Learning Outcomes:

• Be able to situationally analyze the various customer individuals who can impact sales
• Build understanding of the organizational differences in customer’s business that can impact how we sell to them
• Be able to look beyond an organization chart to see situational power
• Build insight in to cultural differences and sensitivities that can help us to understand how to sell to our customers
• Be able to use tools to realistically benchmark your overall relationship strength at each customer
• Understand how to use a process to actively increase your customer relationship strength
• Understand how to express your value propositions in context of the customer audience
• Build insight in to your customer’s budget development and management process

Who this course is for:

Sales people, sales managers, executives, business development, sales engineers, sales support, marketing. Any customer-facing representative engaged with customers who needs to understand our customer’s decision making process, their policies and procedures, cultural sensitivities, the power and influence relevant to us.

Benefits to you:

Being able to build insight in to the way our customer runs their business will help us navigate our sales more smoothly and effectively. Understanding their processes helps us set expectations for our own company and work closely with our customer as a partner. Being able to accurately and comprehensively develop a people development plan for each sales opportunity will help us focus our efforts on the most relevant people and not be too focused on people who can’t help bring our business to fruition.

Benefits to your organization:

When sales people have a detailed understanding of their customer’s organization, policies, procedure and culture they can be more efficient in their use of resources. When they have a realistic understanding of the level of support and opposition for a specific sale, they can develop winning strategies to influence the people that really matter. The net of this is sales become more predictable, forecasts more accurate.

Overview:

Like us, our customers compete with other companies for profit and growth. They make decisions based on many factors, including the intensity of the competition they face, the market direction they want to follow and how to make their own company more competitive. Our customer’s competitive strategy and tactics are at the very heart of our customers planning and execution. In sales we spend a lot of time trying to understand what our customers are doing. Having insight in to their competitive position and subsequent decision making, helps us understand why they do what they do.

Learning Outcomes:

• Build unparalleled credibility in your customer’s eyes through your understanding of their business and their business planning process
• Identify new opportunities to make unsolicited proposals
• Understand how to use multiple business school models to analyze your customer’s competitive motivations and tactics
• Gain insight in to how customers gain advantage by optimizing their own business
• Be able to engage in dialog in new ways with ‘C-Suite’ executives
• By understanding your customer's market specific strategies, be able to vary the focus and messaging for your solutions

Who this course is for:

Sales people, sales managers, business development, business consultants, marketing. Any customer-facing representative engaged with customers, needing insight in to the competitive dynamic of a company or a market segment.

Benefits to you:

When we understand the reasons for what our customers do, we can be laser focused on initiatives that are going to be of the highest priority. We are able to engage in a game changing dialog with our customers and position ourselves as a competitive advantage. When our customer carries out their periodic operating budget process, initiatives for competitive advantage will always have a high priority. Attaching to those initiatives will help us to focus on high priority opportunities.

Benefits to your organization:

When we understand the competitive positioning of one company, it will serve as a template for others in the same market. As we build insight in to multiple competitors in the same market space we will be able to identify market specific opportunities for our own business. We will be seen as leaders for that domain. Focusing our solutions on the competitive needs of a market leads to more strategic engagements with key customers. Solving customer problems is important for our sales, focusing our solution to enhance their competitiveness opens the door to the ‘C-Suite’ and allows us to propose much larger engagements.

Overview:

Selling can be defined as influencing people to make decisions in our favor. Sounds simple enough. But the reality is we are all different. No two people respond in exactly the same way to external stimuli. However we each display characteristics, which, if carefully observed, can give others insight in to what we might be most responsive to. This course is designed to help you make those observations and then give guidance towards the actions that will help you positively influence the outcome you are aiming for.

Learning Outcomes:

• Be able to apply the six forms of influence to maximum effect
• Build rapport and trust with people
• Recognize and appreciate the motivation of others
• Use learning styles and social styles of others to influence
• Develop a structured approach to influencing and persuasion
• Handle conflict, disagreement and misunderstanding effectively
• Find shared solutions
• Gain and retain commitment

Who this course is for:

All sales people who need to persuade and influence in order to achieve their targets and goals. In addition, sales managers who are responsible for people management will benefit.

Benefits to you:

You will gain greater cooperation, both internally and externally, in order to meet goals, establishing principles and initiating action. You will become increasingly effective when communicating with colleagues and customers.

Benefits to your organization:

You will see an improvement in internal and external working relationships, as well as a greater acceptance of proposals for change in activities and corporate processes. Pull people together, move ideas forward, galvanize change and create constructive solutions.

Overview:

This module focuses on determining the Business Issues of your customer. Business issues affect the customer’s profitability and this course will help you determine which executive owns the resolution to the various issues. Knowing how to link your product or service to resolving their business issues will get you the ear of the relevant executives.

Learning Outcomes:

• Be able to determine your customer's Business Issues
• Understand how to discover the executive owner of the resolution of the Business Issue
• Know how to position your product or service with an executive
• Understand how to build credibility with senior executives
• Understand the motivation of executives

Who this course is for:

This course is for sales people and sales managers who want to engage in campaigns and dialog that relate their offerings to their customer’s key business metrics. This course is designed to help sales professional engage with customer executives in a business focused dialog.

Benefits to you:

Gain credibility by engaging with your customer’s executives, and sell solutions an order of magnitude larger by helping to solve the customer’s business issue.

Benefits to your organization:

Having your sales people resolve your customer’s business issues produces larger deals quicker, as your sales people are dealing directly with the ultimate decision makers.

Overview:

This course will develop powerful presenters; people who feel confident with their own performance. They will be able to build and maintain rapport with their audience and communicate in an impressive and influential manner. Delegates will practice skills to help them make their points understood and ensure the customer takes action at the end.

Presentations are a key element of the sales process and making sure the customer takes action as a result is extremely important. This is about ensuring the customer acts on what you have presented and not just found it informative. You will be more confident and impressive by the end of the program. Presenting with Stories is a great way to deliver your message and information as it connects with the emotions of the audience as well as delivering the key facts. We remember stories far more than just facts. When done well, it allows us to connect with our customer in a way that works for them.

 Learning Outcomes:

• Explore and practice the power of storytelling
• Gain confidence in the storytelling framework
• Practice connecting emotionally with your audience
• Learn how to weave stories into workplace conversations
• Develop techniques to embed stories within your presentation
• Understand how to open and close presentations for maximum impact
• Learn how to plan your presentation to create action
• Use structure and content to build credibility
• Learn how to be in control, relaxed and confident
• Understand the role of body, posture and language, what it says to the audience
• How to use images to tell stories

 Who this course is for:

Sales professionals wanting to improve the impact of their presentations and sales pitches, seeking to connect with their customers and audiences emotionally to create change and direct action.

 Benefits to you:

Storytelling allows you to build stronger relationships and communicate to get ‘buy-in’ more efficiently and succinctly. You will learn how to connect to the audiences emotion to facilitate change, decisions and create direct action. It will allow you to arrange large amounts of information in a manner your audience will remember and elicit an emotional response from your customer.

 Benefits to your organization:

Decisions and ‘next steps’ often come as a result of a presentation. It’s an important part of the sales cycle. The organization needs to ensure its sales people are getting it right. The result is more business, decision makers influenced positively and more opportunities are moved forward. Become a memory in your customer's mind – messages ‘stick’ and get passed on. You will be able to communicate ideas holistically and convey a rich yet clear company vision and align with your customer's values. The skills you learn will also ensure organizational communication is more ‘human’.

Overview:

This course gives you the skills to sell solutions, which address the needs of your customers and solve their problems.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the business problems and needs of your customer
• Be able to directly tie your solutions to your customers business issues and corporate objectives
• Determine how to position your products and services to win against your competition
• Use questioning skills to reveal additional overriding or underlying opportunities

Who this course is for:

Sales people who sell products and services in highly competitive situations.

Benefits to you:

Sell more products or services against your competition, by understanding what your customer's needs are by using your solutions to address their business challenges.

Benefits to your organization:

Have your sales people win more opportunities against the competition, by being able to directly relate your solutions to your customer’s business objectives and business problems. This course will show how to potentially expand your sales opportunity in a given sales situation.

Overview:

Objections are a reality of sales. They are also a great opportunity to sell and close. People taking this course will be equipped with the professional skills to handle objections positively and successfully, and will be able to use a range of best-practice tools to help them do so.

Learning Outcomes:

• Gain an understanding of why prospects object
• Appreciate the psychology behind objections
• Recognize that objections help to close the sale
• Gain the ability to use a professional objection handling process
• Understand the use of communication techniques to support the objection handling process
• Learn how to use a repeatable objection handling process
• Recognize the different types of sales objection…and learn how to handle them all
• Put it all into practice

Who this course is for:

Any delegate in a sales, business development or account management role who wishes to manage the objection handling process more effectively.

Benefits to you:

You will be able to deal with objections more positively, turn apparent problems in the sales process to their advantage and close more business.

Benefits to your organization:

Your organization may see an increase in the close rates of their sales staff, and recognize that they can handle all stages of the sales process with equal professionalism.

Overview:

Customers will have a formal process to determine the value of any purchase. Utilizing the eROI methodology allows you to engage with the customer to ‘estimate’ the Return on Investment early, to qualify and accelerate the opportunity with the customer.

Learning Outcomes:

• Become familiar and confident with financial terminology
• Estimate value to facilitate ROI conversations with the customer
• Utilize the estimate to accelerate deals or to qualify opportunities out
• Use value to gain access to executives and decision makers
• Have financial dialogue with financial people
• Learn how to use value to create compelling events

Who this course is for:

Sales professionals requiring the skills to be able to estimate value early and present the eROI to their customers.

Benefits to you:

By estimating the value early on in the sales process and discussing value with the customer allows you to accelerate opportunities with customers and quickly access stakeholders.

Benefits to your organization:

Sales people engage in opportunities and commit resources such as demos, without really understanding the value to the customer. Estimating the value early allows qualification of opportunities and then focusing on those opportunities most likely to result in a deal. Quantifying the value can create compelling events and enables the early engagement with power people.

Overview:

Engaging high and early with your customer’s executives can give you a competitive advantage. Accessing and maintaining access to Power is key to accelerating your deals and increasing the deal size with your customers.

Learning Outcomes:

• Build an understanding of formal and informal power in its various forms
• Build credibility with Power
• Understand the motivations of Power
• Gain access and maintain it with Power
• Work with your Power to re-assign or create new budget

Who this course is for:

Sales professionals looking to engage with their customer’s executives.

Benefits to you:

Develop the credibility and confidence to engage with your customer’s executives. Understand the personal motivations of power players and how to align your solutions. Understand how to build and sustain relationships at the most senior level.

Benefits to your organization:

Having your sales team engage credibly with Power allows your sales people to close larger sales opportunities, by selling both the business and personal value of your solutions to your customers.

Overview:

All major purchases have some form of business case. Within that business case is a Return on Investment analysis. ROI selling enables a metrics focused dialog to be developed with the customer to influence the business case and to ensure your solution value is recognized during the financial sign-off phase of the sales process. The course develops your formal ROI skills allowing you to drive the financial dialogue in a positive and pro-active manner.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand financial terminology
• Conduct financial based conversations with the finance people
• Influence the financial sign-off process
• Develop confidence to have financial conversations
• Learn how to build and present a business case

Who this course is for:

Sales people needing to have a business metrics dialogue with customers using financial terminology.

Benefits to you:

Customers build business cases for financial approval for all or most large projects. Being an active part of your customer’s process gives you the insight and helps to influence the decision. Having a clear understanding of the power of ‘your’ business case positions you with a competitive advantage when you negotiate with purchasing.

Benefits to your organization:

Having your sales people engaged in the financial dialogue, and fully understanding their financial decision making process gives them more control to influence the outcome in a positive manner.

Overview:

This course gives negotiators the opportunity to hone their skills and provides negotiating strategies and tactics in order to achieve better results from different negotiation situations. At this advanced level you will apply concepts to help deal with complex situations involving negotiating teams, multi-party negotiations and skilled negotiators.

Learning Outcomes:

• Recognize negotiating styles and preferences
• Use the wide range of personal skills and attributes required to negotiate effectively and learn how to develop and enhance these.
• Prepare, implement and adapt appropriate negotiation strategies.
• Use a structured approach to the negotiation process
• Deal with relationship issues, including considering each party’s perception; seeking to make negotiation proposals consistent with the other party’s interests; making emotions explicit and legitimate
• Manage and resolve conflict
• Recognize power – its effect and importance in the understanding of negotiation and relationships (or common ground)
• Achieve great results from challenging and complex negotiations

Who this course is for:

Those with basic negotiation skills who need to manage more complex negotiations. This course is for those looking to develop their capabilities and build on their existing strengths in more complex aspects of the negotiation process.

Benefits to you:

Walk through a highly focused refresh of negotiation methodology as the basis to develop and hone advanced negotiation techniques. Meticulous planning is critical for successful negotiation and you will consider the tools and techniques to ensure you are fully prepared to realize the negotiation strategy and tactics.

Benefits to your organization:

Delegates will enter the next negotiation confident, having fully prepared a clear strategy and having mastery of the relevant tools and techniques. They will recognize key negotiation situations and handle them to ensure minimal price erosion whilst at the same time, delivering value to the customer and maximizing the opportunity.

Overview:

Too often we stop selling when the customer gives us the order or we deliver the product or service. Value occurs for the customer when they experience and achieve the value of their purchase. The Delivery Plan module helps sales people create a plan from the current position in the sales cycle through ordering to value realization.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the elements of a delivery plan
• Utilize a jointly created delivery plan to gain customer commitment
• Be able to deliver and articulate the plan across multiple stakeholders

Who this course is for:

Sales people who want to accelerate the deal closure by focusing on the important aspects of what is important to the customer; solving their business issues, problems and creating value.

Benefits to you:

Build a timeline of relevance based on value to the customer and in doing so, lock down important milestones including when the customer needs to order to realize the value.

Benefits to your organization:

Having your sales people build plans with their customers ensures that they are in control of their opportunities, so they can forecast accurately on when opportunities will close.