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Basic Sales Training
Basic Selling Skills Courses
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Foundation Knowledge

Prospecting (internal / external)

Contacting Prospective Customers

Central Sales Process - Engage the Customer

Manage the Process - Sales Planning

Communications

Master Reference Modules (non-interactive lists and resources)

  • 85 Most Common Sales Stopping Objections with Prevention and Response Strategies provided
  • 39 Closing Strategies

e-Books and Tools

  • Priority Prospect Project (P3) Strategy Session Manual (PDF)
  • P3 two page instruction guide (PDF)
  • Conditioning the Mind for Success - 8 page guide (PDF)
  • Prospect Management Spreadsheet (sort capable)
  • Sample Word doc file ABC Co for Spreadsheet. (for ease of use, save in same folder as the Prospect Management Spreadsheet)

Go to: www.LearnSellingOnline.com curriculum comparisons

Foundation Knowledge
Functional Prod Logo

Functional Product / Service / Company Knowledge

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to using your product, service and company knowledge as a part of the selling process. The process itself is one in which the prospect is an active participant.

Learn how to:

  • Define and differentiate the concepts of features, advantages and benefits
  • List the features of products and services and the problems they solve for the customer
  • Explain the features of products and services with their respective advantages and benefits
  • Identify the clues, signs or symptoms that indicate a problem exists that can be solved by the product's and service's features
  • List the company's features and the problems they solve for the customer
  • Explain the company's features with their respective advantages and benefits
  • Identify the clues, signs or symptoms that indicate a problem exists that can be solved by the company's features

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Competitor Analysis Logo

Competitor Analysis

We all have competition. Most of the people we call on in our prospective customer organizations already have someone providing products and services that can fill the same or similar needs we can fill. Others have a choice to use or not to use a product or service. "Do nothing" is also a competitor.

It is difficult to sell against the competition until you know specific information about them. Armed with this information you will know what objections to expect and how to neutralize them. You will know exactly where to focus your conversations with the prospect that will always uncover problems only you can solve. This course will teach you how to find your "unique and distinctive selling points."

Learn how to:

  • Define and differentiate the concepts of unique selling points and distinctive selling points
  • Identify competing products/services/companies
  • Collect competitor intelligence and update competitor analysis on a continual basis
  • Differentiate products/services/company from each competitor
  • Identify competitor's advantages that will show up as objections
  • Identify ways to neutralize the competitor's advantages and develop strategies to prevent these predetermined objections
  • Develop standardized, effective responses to these predetermined objections
  • Determine competitor's weaknesses where I have corresponding strengths
  • Translate strengths into features, advantages and benefits
  • Identify the clues, signs or symptoms that indicate a problem exists that can be solved by the company's unique or distinctive selling points

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Prospecting
Profile Logo

Profile & Qualify Prospective Customers

Calling on the right companies is a matter of knowing the common characteristics your best customers share, then developing a template or profile to compare and match prospects. Sounds simple? Yet, salespeople have been shown to spend as much as 64% of their valuable selling time talking with prospects who are not qualified. With the profiling process you'll learn here, you will be able to develop gentle direct and indirect questions to quickly qualify the prospect.

Learn how to:

  • Describe the identifying characteristics such as market, market segment, size, volumes purchased, competitors and corporate value systems of the most desirable customers in order to construct comparison profiles
  • Estimate potential volume of purchase by correlating readily available data such as number of employees, square footage, etc.
  • Project current and future customer needs based on the profile
  • Determine sales resource allocation based on account profile
  • Develop series of qualifying questions starting with knock out questions
  • Identify non-intrusive resources such as directories, lists, annual reports and other printed material to pre-qualify prospects
  • Identify the key decision-makers by the types of decisions they make
  • Know the types of benefits each decision maker is most interested in based on the role they play

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Research Logo

Research the Prospect

In competitive selling, the mission is to determine how, through the use of your products, service and the manner in which your company conducts business, you can competitively advantage your customers by increasing their ability to generate profitable revenues, lower their overall cost of operation, enhance or strengthen their image and/or decrease their vulnerability in their market place.

This means you must understand how they are currently getting their needs met, business plan, competitive pressures, and market fundamentals that significantly impact their ability to buy from you.

Learn how to:

  • Identify how the customer makes money and how what I sell impacts their ability to do so
  • Determine the critical processes necessary for the customer to have a product/service to sell and how my offer impacts this ability
  • Understand the customer's business plan as it relates to the products/services I sell
  • Understand the customer's selling environment and how what I sell can competitively advantage them in their market place
  • Identify current suppliers and the products/services they sell to this prospect

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Contacting Prospective Customers
TCC Logo

Telephone Cold Calling

The telephone cold call strategies in this module will help you prevent initial contact objections such as, "not interested," "just send me your literature," "already have someone." It will also, show you how to transition "screeners" into "coaches" and efficiently set "priority appointments" for future phone or in-person meetings.

Learn how to:

  • Recognize the techniques that build a coaching role for the initial contact person.
  • Use strategies that block initial contact objections.
  • Develop opening remarks for telephone cold calls.
  • Set priority appointments.

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Voice Mail Logo

Voice Mail Strategies

Voice mail gives you the opportunity to deliver your 30 second high impact commercial when you have the prospects undivided attention and to get the prospect to return your calls by leaving a compelling business reason to do so. You'll learn how to create and deliver voice mail messages that get results.

Learn how to:

  • Use voice mail as an advertising medium
  • Utilize the voice mail exit function to locate your prospect
  • Write the 30 second high impact commercial
  • Leave a compelling reason to return your call

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Central Sales Process - Engage the Customer

FAB-TEA Logo

Value Selling FAB-TEA Model

The FAB/TEA is designed for call center deployment where time is of the essence and for retail sales applications where customer engagement is critical to advancing the sale. This model is a straightforward, easy to learn, and highly flexible way to sell value.

Feature: Tell the Feature
Advantage: Explain it
Benefit: Ask how the Benefit will fill the previously identified need.

Learn how to:

  • Use the primary research questions to orient the customer in areas where you are strong, the competitor is weak and the customer has needs
  • Structure those interview questions so they lead directly into the value selling model
  • Use your strengths to offset areas competitors advantages that you are unable to neutralize

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Closing Logo

Closing Strategies of the Masters

Obtaining closure on each milestone in the strategic sales plan is a natural part of systematically advancing the sale to closure. But for half the population (both buyers and sellers), with a particular personality preference, getting closure is anxiety producing.

On the other hand, sales people very often don't ask for the order simply because they don't know what buying signs look like or they don't know how to close or both. This course will teach you to recognize buying signs and 39 low pressure high power closing strategies that you can use throughout the sales process.

The purpose of this course is to present effective closing strategies and guidelines for using them.

Learn how to:

  1. Describe a closing and how it is a natural part of the sales process.
  2. Identify what can cause anxiety for both the prospect and the seller.
  3. Define the proper closing mind set that helps make the sale happen.
  4. Recognize the prospect's "buying signs."
  5. Be familiar with closing strategies and the step in your sales process where they are most appropriate.

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Objection Responding Logo

 

Objection Responding

Throughout the sales process you are taking specific actions to prevent most of the common sales stopping objections you get. And even with those efforts there will be an objection that gets past the "Prevention" strategy, doesn't get "Preempted" at the appropriate time and now you're faced with having to "Respond" to it. This course is designed to equip you with some of the most effective ways of handling these objections.

Linked to this course are the 85 most common sales stopping objections along with Prevention strategies and Responses that other salespeople have used successfully.

Learn how to:

  • Define and differentiate objections from conditions or resistance
  • Learn how missing "Buyer Beliefs" cause objections
  • Understand the connection between your competitor's strengths and the specific objections you get
  • Differentiate Prevention, Preemption and Response strategies
  • Provide a 3 Step formula for constructing Preemption and Response strategies
  • Use "Active Listening" skills to earn the right to be heard when you respond to an objection
  • Use "Transition Sentences" to support the prospect without agreeing, help them save face and prepare them to get new information that they can use to make a new decision
  • Use powerful "Phrases of Persuasion" sentence structures when delivering your response when you have no direct way of countering the objection

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Manage the Process - Sales Planning
Ratio Management Logo

Ratio Management

Managing your sales activity goals and ratios helps you to: know the frequency and success rates required to generate sales, know what you have to do each week to meet your production goals, and enable you to make accurate sales forecasts. This knowledge brings to those who know there ratios, a real sense of security that only comes from knowing what you must do to produce your targeted results.

Learn how to:

  • Define the sales activities to track
  • Recognize the ratios to beat
  • Set up tracking methods
  • Leverage key ratios and monitor others
  • Write a prospecting plan

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Time and Territory Management Logo

Time and Territory Management

Develop customer and prospect contact plans that will minimize travel time and maximize selling time with accounts with the greatest potential.

Learn how to:

  • Categorize and classify customers and prospects
  • Determine the potential sales volume available in the territory
  • Develop criteria to determine frequency of contact by type of contact
  • Determine number of prospects available in the territory
  • Understand the time averages for different types of client / prospect contact methods
  • Develop a contact plan by type and frequency of contact
  • Design a territory traveling plan
  • Redistribute resources to meet goals

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Communications
Trust Logo

Trust and Rapport Building

The purpose of this course is to present a clear means of establishing trust and rapport with customers. The content is directed to sales personnel, customer service personnel, and people in customer service roles who are also responsible for sales.

Learn how to:

  • Define trust as it relates to customers
  • Define rapport and how it impacts customer attitudes and behaviors
  • Differentiate between motive and technique
  • Recognize the importance of the customer's four business needs
  • Recognize methods that create and strengthen trust and rapport in a business setting
  • Describe the concept of Psychological Truth

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Additional Resources

Master Reference Modules (non-interactive lists and resources)

  1. 85 Most Common Sales Stopping Objections with Prevention and Response Strategies provided
  2. 39 Closing Strategies

e-Books and Tools

  1. Priority Prospect Project (P3) Strategy Session Manual (PDF)
  2. P3 two page instruction guide (PDF)
  3. Conditioning the Mind for Success - 8 page guide (PDF)
  4. Prospect Management Spreadsheet (sort capable)
    • Sample Word doc file ABC Co for Spreadsheet. (for ease of use, save in same folder as the Prospect Management Spreadsheet)

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Career Advancement Through Skill Development

[Online Sales Management Training] [Online Sales Training] [Online Customer Service Training] [Marina Customer Service Training]

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