Sales Training - To Sell or not to Sell

Sales Training is extremely important as the number one focus of any company post coming up with a unique product or service is to sell it.

If you can't sell your product you will perish.  The market either has a need for your product or else you have to create it.

When Steve jobs was about to introduce the touch pad phone in the market, he said something very interesting to his friend who said that this was not going to work in a market that was used to key pad phones.

Steve Jobs explaining...

Steve Jobs' answer was that the buyer does not know what he wants and he was going to put in every effort to make the buyer learn to adapt to it. We all know now what happened post that in the cell phone industry with Apple being a pioneer in the touch pad technology and being followed by so many others!

The same funda applies to sales.

You either fulfil an existing need or you create something so radical that your buyers have no option but to get hooked to it and get so used to using it that that it actually turns from being a want to a need!

So what are some of the rules of successful selling? The number one rule of successful sales is that the point of focus is the customer. The number two rule is, well, that you focus on the number one rule!

Most of the companies inadvertently focus on their product and services and then try to match it with the customer needs. However this is where they fail or they struggle.

Successful companies always focus on the customer and their needs and then check out if the product or the service matches this need. An interesting question that arises then, is if their product is not fulfilling the need of the customer, can they come back without selling it to them? After all, leaving the sale for the good of the customer itself is an indirect sale. The same prospect will go and tell ten different people around him about how genuine your intentions were and it will automatically lead other customers towards you. This word of mouth will really give your sales a shot in the arm.

An effective sales training will always teach you this. Selling skills training is not about hooking the customer and getting him to buy your product. It is about how to be genuine, how to focus on customer needs, how to create an impact by fulfilling the promises given, how to establish a rapport and how to learn to let go and how to stay in touch with the customer even post your role being over.

If your sales team learns this and imbibes this in their daily behaviour, then success is bound to happen. However it must be remembered that this attitude cannot be imbibed into the sales team until the top management is also aligned to this philosophy as it is only possible as a top down approach. The management has to eat, drink, sleep and talk this at all points of time and any one not aligned to it has to be questioned.

Are you willing to take this stand !!!!

If you would like to know more about the Sales Training we conduct, please visit our website at http://www.theyellowspot.com/

Happy Selling:)

Selling Skills Training Companies That Give It All

What do you think is really important when it comes to selling skills? I’m sure a lot of you would say product knowledge. Very true indeed, but do you think that that’s the only thing needed to sell well? What about communicating the product knowledge that we have? Do you think that we will be successful at selling a product if we know our product very well but are unable to talk about it? So what happens if we have our product knowledge and our basic communication skills in place but have no idea about the psychology of our buyers and what they want? Wont we waste a lot of time in trying to sell something that either they don’t want or land up selling in a way that does not exactly match their mental make-up!

So now let me ask you the question again. What is that soft skills training companies should equip their participants with in a selling skills training? Let’s look at the points one by one to get a deeper understanding:

1. Product Knowledge : This is undoubtedly the first point and without it a sales persons will really reach nowhere! He needs to be well trained in the product and have an in depth knowledge into its various segments. For this, the training needs to give him the knowledge and test him to find out how much he has retained. The trainee also needs to do his own research, which includes going on the internet and finding out more about the product as well as reading pamphlets, brochures, manuals and other paraphernalia that might be available. This will also help him feel more confident.

2. Attitude : Another essential. Whether it is having a helpful attitude and wanting to sell a product to a customer who would be useful to him / her or having a never-say-die attitude and motivating you to keep going, a good attitude tops the list of most haves. Resilience is a rare commodity, but who said it cannot be cultivated!

3. Communication Skills : Now this entails a large number of skills. It could have basic skills like questioning and listening to converse with the client and find out more about his / her needs or even more complex skills like negotiation skills. Whichever way, these skills are essential and will go far in transferring product knowledge to the client and in turn gaining an understanding of what the client wants.

4. Etiquette : This doubles up as a hygiene factor as well as a wow factor depending upon the expectation of the client. So while being well dressed and polite may be impressive for one client it may just be the bare essential for another. Either way, maintaining etiquette is of utmost importance. After all, you don’t want to lose out on selling a great product just because you didn’t shave in the morning or you had a sad tone while conversing with the client on the phone!

5. Customer Profiling : This is again important to understand the customer. Only once we understand a customer well can we actually figure out what he/she may want. Personality profiling is a great way to understand the different types of people ad what each of them would want. Understanding the customer’s needs also comes through by having good communication skills.

6. Objection Handling  : It is always good to learn from the mistakes of others rather than to have to invent the wheel every time and an objection list can really help do that. Have all the experienced executives pool in and come up with a list of objections they have faced in the past. Also ask them to come up with ways in which they handled the same successfully or they could have handled at that point of time. This can be a ready reckoner for new executives and can help them feel more confident by being more in tune with queries that customers are more likely to raise.

7. Competition Analysis  : Knowing what competitors are doing is good, not to put them down but to give you a good idea about your own Unique Selling Points and what different you can offer your client. However, trainees must be taught not to use this knowledge as a tool to pull other’s down as that can set a rather poor impression of the company!

8. Neuro Linguistic Programming  : This is a great way to get into the psyche of the customer without him/her even knowing it. Techniques like mirroring can be used successfully which directly influence the subconscious mind and may help you tilt the weighing scale in your favour. Now wouldn’t you want to learn that!

What Selling Skills You Must Learn From Selling Skills Training?

After creating a successful line up, what any entrepreneur requires is a set of selling skills which works well in the real world. The foremost thing one must learn to grab a hands on sales experience is to learn the psychics of the bunch of individuals who are going to buy the product that you are selling. Learning about the different spheres of selling is a major yet manageable challenge for all the entrepreneurs out there. If you are also an entrepreneur worries for the sales part of your product, we bring here some of the important lessons which are imparted during the selling skills training session:

 

Q                     Comfort Factor

In every business lesson, the entrepreneur is always asked to move out of the comfort zone. But when it comes to selling, the first step is to find a level of comfort with selling. For gaining the confidence and the penetrated knowledge on the subject of selling, the guidance of the mentors and bosses mixed with a certain level of comfort can work wonders.

Q                     Never Make Assumptions

'I know them better', this is a mistake often made by small business entrepreneur. They presume that they are well aware with the needs of their targeted set of customers and are making the right kind of sales strategy to satisfy them. This is surely not the correct path. Instead, one must ask certain questions from the customers in order to learn the sales driving force. This way, the business can learn about the criteria the customers use in making the buying decision.

Q                     Know The TargetAudience

In order to refine your business and sales strategy, it becomes imperative to know and understand the bunch of audience you are targeting. By knowing the target audience, the selling skills can be applied in an effective manner. Always remember you cannot satisfy one and all at the same time, hence knowing whom to satisfy and delight becomes of great importance.

Q                     Give Time ForCustomer Relationship Building

A customer relationship can never be built in nano seconds. Customers do take a lot of time in trusting the brand and its products. The deadliest mistake committed by entrepreneurs is failing to establish relationship with their customers. Always remember the first thing you are going to sell is nothing but you. If the customer does not like you, then it is assured that he is never going to purchase your product. Thus, instead of sending standardized messages to your customers, try sending personalized messages and Emails. The more face time you invest on your customers, more the profit you are going to achieve.

Q                     Sales Is A DailyProcess

Sales is not that aspect of the business which can be left in abeyance even for a single day. It is something which you must do on a daily basis. Even if you are the one who is wearing all the hats in the company, make it a point to spare at least two hours on a daily basis for sales activities. Set a weakly goal for the sales activities and meet a minimum of 10 prospective clients in a week's time for getting a better sales value.

Selling Skills Training, The Long And Short Of It!

Selling Skills Training covers a wide spectrum or should I say very wide spectrum! It’s a huge field and encompasses many different aspects of Selling. It could be based on the type of selling like Retail or Rural Selling or it could be on the channel that is used like Channel Sales or Feet on Street Selling.

The new type that is currently making waves is based on the internet. It could be social marketing (SMO), where we sell our products and services through various social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, etc. As these may seem to be more individual based platforms, organizations are resorting to use the more commonly used SEO, for marketing their products.

 

So what is SEO? It’s search engine optimization. A simple method to come amongst the top results in the google list when an individual searches for a product or service. This method thus revolves around our most favorite friend Google. In fact it is he who decides who is going to appear at which position your website is going to land in the list! So how does it work? By using keywords. Let me give you an example.

Suppose you were trying to find a good soft skills training company inMumbai who could deliver all sorts of trainings for your employees. So when you type ‘soft skills training company in mumbai’ google throws up a list of results. It is but natural that you will start reading the list from the first entry at the top and after checking each website will keep coming down the list. If you find a good company at the start of the list itself, you won’t bother to look further or at least not go beyond the first page. Knowing this typical tendency, it becomes all the more important to ensure that your organization website occurs as a result on google on the first page itself.

 

As per research which is being done on SEO on how to increase its effectiveness, the latest findings say that it is better to have long tailed keywords. So if I am a soft skills training company which operates out of Mumbai, it is always better to put the keyword as ‘soft skills training company in mumbai’ rather than just putting ‘training company’. The advantage that you get is that a person who types soft skills will also reach your website, one who types training company will also reach your website, one who types training company in mumbai will also reach your website and those who type soft skills training companies in mumbai will also reach your website. So don’t you think that’s great and will definitely add up to the number of hits you get on your website?

Another great way to get on top of the google listings is by creating blogs on a frequent basis. Having articles written by you on a regular basis brings in greater traffic on to your website and frankly serves as a great way to plug in those keywords that you require to pull yourself up on the ratings. The best part about it is it serves as a great creative outlook too, allowing you to write on any topic under the sun, as long as you can relate it to your organization and its services!

Other methods that are being taught as a part of Selling Skills Training nowadays are the use of paper click campaigns (PPC) where your advertisement is displayed on certain pages by google or as a part of google directory listings or simply how to use e-mail or SMS marketing more effectively.

Tao of Selling Skills

Selling Skills are required for all and every one in their lives. Every individual though not being into sales profession has to sell himself or his thought processes to others for other to believe in him and his capabilities. This applies to husband and wife, partners, child to parent, parent to child, friends to each other, subordinate to boss and vice versa. Hence anyone who wants to be successful in life should know to sell himself very well.

The Yellow Spot designed selling skills training program focuses on this core human need of selling himself to others and hence have designed a in-depth selling skills training program for those who want to enhance their effectiveness in life as well in the profession of sales.

The program focuses on the core questions like:

• What does sales mean?

• Why do we need to sell ourselves? How can we become effective sellers? How do we overcome the fears we have of selling?

• How do we understand the buyer’s needs?

• How do we understand his psyche?

• What are the various techniques we can sell?

• What is the math behind the sales numbers?

• How do we overcome the objections mentally and emotionally?

• How do we respond to these objections?

• How do we handle failure?

• How do we close the sale effectively?

 

Our selling skills program will be delivered considering the above questions and will be a mix of role plays, simulations, assessments, games, small group activities and presentation. Audio visuals will also play a role in helping our visual learners learn these skills effectively. The way we differentiate ourselves is by conducting a thorough needs assessment before the program so that we get an opportunity to customise and cater to the individual needs of our participants.

This initiative makes our sellingskills program unique.

Even at the end of our program we wind up with through action plans which can be reviewed at a later stage.

Our interactions with our participants are highly personalised and this how our programs become more meaningful.

Selling skills training is generally a 2 day program to be able to maintain effectiveness and is conducted in a spacious environment to be able to create and maintain the right environment for the workshop.

Enrol in our 2 day program and become an ace sales professional.

Selling Skills Training For Your Sales Team

Selling Skills Training has become a must for all sales employees. Competition is growing faster than ever and being one up on your competitor is becoming more and more important. Companies are constantly engaged in improving the quality of their products; however they tend to miss out on who is selling their product and how he’s doing it!

Yes, the sales executive is just as important as the product, if not more! No brownie points for guessing why! That’s why Selling Skills Training is becoming a necessity nowadays.

 

So let’s have a look at what’s covered in such a session:

1. We first have a look at the internal factors, the internal state of the executive. We can’t afford to have an executive who is scared to speak to the customer or gets dejected when a large number of customers refuse to buy his products. So we help the employee get confident. We also help him to have a positive attitude so that he can accept failure and yet go for the next call with the same enthusiasm and motivation as he had gone for the first one!

2. Now let’s move to the outer characteristics of the executive. We now look at his communication and his etiquette. He needs to have basic listening and questioning skills in place so that he can understand the needs of the customer and give them what they want. Apart from that he should be able to build a rapport with the customer, a connect without which any sale can be difficult! Being assertive is also something he needs to learn as getting bulldozed by customers is really not great! We also focus on grooming to create a good first impression, apart from business etiquette.

3. Now that we have helped the executive feel good and look good, we move over to actual selling tactics which in my opinion is a trivial aspect! Once you have the internal aspect in place, the other two just help in sharpening your saw! So how do we sharpen the saw, by focusing on things like negotiation and successful ways of doing it, understanding various customer types to understand how to effortlessly get through to them and how best to deal with their objections, ways of finding new customers and what to do to build long term relationships with the ones you have found and of course how to open and close the sales call, an area which confuses many a salesman!

Selling skills to Increase the Number of Prospects

Selling skills is one of the major qualities which are required in a sales person. The company depends on a sales person to gain more prospects which helps in the development of the company. So in order to learn the right ways to sell and practice the methods there are several institutions offering selling skills training to candidates who want to take up their career seriously. Selling includes a number of practices which are a vital step to increase the number of leads. 

Questioning

Most sales person fail to execute a project effectively because of their poor questioning skills. Few such worthless questions are, “Are you interested in saving money?” and “What is your budget?” Clients will definitely feel pained with such useless and non-valuable questions and finally end up wasting their precious time. A true salesman knows to ask questions of higher value like, “What are the goals that you are striving to attain this year?” and “What are the issues that is costing you low revenue and lessening the number of customers?” You can find a major difference between these questions and the one who asks similar questions like the latter is a professionally skilled sales person.

 

Presentation

A good presentation should be focused on the content and your verbal appearance. You should know the actual timing and delivery of the content and speak it at a standard pace. Your body language and gestures also matters a lot while you give the presentation. The training on selling abilities will also conduct a session on improving your presentation skills.

 

Communication and relationship building

To gain a lead for a long term business you need to attain rapport building and communication skills while you sell. You can establish this skill by delineating the goal of your sales term and verifying the allotted time.

Selling is a complex business in today’s world, so you need to execute it very smartly.

Selling skills training- Improve your selling skills

Selling is an art as well as a science. You either have the talent inborn to sell yourself well or have to learn it the hard way. To learn the art, you need to practice over and over again and learn the right tactics to trade a product. There are several organizations that provide selling skills training and help enhance your confidence to sell.

 

Why should you be proficient in selling?

Selling skills are required in order to run and grow the company. In fact a human being has to start selling himself right from the time he/she is born. So selling becomes an integral part of our life. When you approach a customer, he should be impressed with your presentation, your homework about the product or services and your communication skills. The way you speak always creates a positive or a negative impact on the customer, and can make or break a situation for you resulting in loss or gain of sale. Hence the fun is in being well trained.

 

How to improve your selling abilities?

Improve your voice

Your voice, tone and speed matters a lot while you speak to the customer. If you speak in a negative tone then the customer might get irritated. Hence keeping your tone humble and polite is necessary. Also keep your rate of speech normal i.e. not too fast or too slow.

 

Speak clearly with complete mouth open so that the customer can understand your words clearly. Avoid using fillers, try to have a neutral accent and modulate the voice to have the right impact.

Make him understand

Customers won’t be interested in your product if you cannot educate him properly. You need to explain the key benefits of using the product or service to him with a detailed step by step explanation. Teach him how your product is beneficial for him and why should he use it. Explain how your product is better than the others. Overcome any objection he has for the product with detailed explanation. This will clarify the customers’ doubts and he’ll have better idea about his decision to buy the product.

 

Be an expert

To be a good salesman you need to eat, live, breathe and drink the product or the service as if it is your life. Its only when you involve yourself into it completely you will become an expert. It is great to make mistakes and fail so that you get the experience and you can learn from them. The more you handle objections the more you learn to handle them. The more you handle them the better you become in sales.

Selling Skills – Improve your sales return multiple folds

Selling skills are all about learning how to identify the process consumers go through when deciding on a purchase. The application of appropriate selling techniques and skills at every stage of a sales process helps in closing more business than usual. Key skill areas included in selling skills training include new business prospecting, call planning, identifying the needs of customers, value presenting, managing feed backs, and gaining motivation and commitment.

 

Any purchase decision by a customer generally goes through a five-step process.

1.      Openness

2.      Focus

3.      Knowledge

4.      Evaluation

5.      Decision

It is important for sales people to coordinate their sales process with the decision making process of the customers. Selling skills training helps sales team in the coordination and hopes to achieve the following.

 

1.      Building of effective relationship with the customers

2.      Research strategies to generate greater interest among customers

3.      Techniques to identify the business priorities of customers

4.      Tips to overcome challenges and objections

5.      Motivation and commitment

The training provided is based on the concept that every organization is unique with its own processes, culture and challenges. Personalized training programs for every organization are offered with case studies, examples to better address the sales and challenges. The training is devised based on relevance to the participants. It is important to be an effective sales person without having to resort to pushy sales tricks.

 

All professionals be it sales professionals or non-sales professionals, require selling skills at some point of time. Learning how to generate and pitch your idea or service effectively is a useful skill to possess. Putting in plenty of preparation time is a good rule in successful selling skills. Customers tend to be more receptive with people who are thorough selling professionals.