Selling for Success

Course 1. Foundation Sales Skills – 1 day course

This introductory course is designed to improve the core sales skills that the new sales person will need, through all the steps from getting started with a product or service, through finding prospects, making sales calls, asking questions and closing the sale.

What you will Learn

• Selling: What is selling? Why do buyers buy?
• Understanding your offer: Features, Benefits and Advantages
• Communication Skills: Getting the message across
• Questioning and Listening: The power of asking the right things, at the right time
• Qualification: From initial contact and beyond
• Booking a Meeting: Getting a foot in the door
• Objection Handling and Prevention: Overcoming hurdles
• Closing: How to close the sale confidently and professionally

Course 2. Professional Sales Skills – 2 day course

This advanced course covers the essential skills required in professional selling: Prospecting, Qualification, The Buying Cycle, Needs Development and Managing the Decision Criteria. Course material and concepts are rooted in the core principles of the latest sales theories including Solution Selling, Miller-Heiman (Strategic Selling), Holden (Power Base Selling) and The Challenger Sale.

What you will Learn

• Complex Sale vs the Simple Sale
• Developing a consultative approach to selling
• The Sales Cycle and the Buying Cycle – understanding why and how organisations buy
• Managing and influencing the Decision Criteria
• Making contact, Account entry (getting to the problem)
• Successful sales calls – Advance vs. Prevarication
• Qualification: Is there an opportunity? Can we compete? Can we win? Is it worth it?
• The SPECS Selling technique – turning problems into Compelling Needs
• Essential Communication Skills: Questioning and Listening
• Buyer Types: Objective and Subjective Motives
• Opportunity Assessment: using objective criteria
• Closing the sale, decision signals, getting commitment
• Pipeline management: The sales funnel
• The keys to Sales Effectiveness

Course 3. Negotiation Skills – 1 day course

This course teaches the key stages in the negotiation process. Its goal is to ensure that we achieve better negotiated outcomes for our organisations. The course teaches the essential characteristics of successful negotiators. It emphasises the need for preparation and explains how to recognise and counter negotiation techniques and tactics.

What you will Learn

• The process of Negotiation – a Five Stage Model
• The difference between Selling and Negotiation
• Characteristics of Successful Negotiators
• WIN/win or win/WIN
• The Structure of Negotiations
• Establishing your Position/Alternatives
• Analysing their Objectives/Situation
• Agreeing the Process
• Developing your Strategy
• Setting Alternatives
• Making Proposals
• Bargaining and Conceding Successfully
• Negotiating Tricks and Tactics – how to Use and Counter them
• Deadlocks – how to Break them
• Closing – reaching agreement
• Monitoring the Agreement

Course 4. Communication, Influence and Persuasion Skills – 1 day course

This course focuses on the essential communication skills required to be a professional businessperson. It covers questioning and listening skills, influencing techniques, presentation skills and understanding customer perceptions and subjective motives.

What you will learn

• Communication Skills
• The dynamics of effective communications
• Active listening and responding techniques
• Barriers to effective communications
• The danger of assumptions
• Asking open and closed questions
• Controlling the conversation
• Confidence and body language
• Creating rapport
• Understanding how people process information

Influencing and Persuasion

• Principles of influence
• Power and sources of power
• Principles of persuasion
• Understanding people’s needs: Subjective and Objective motives
• How to articulate your Value Proposition
• Developing value – the SPECS technique
• The Challenger mode: creating tension to add value

For more information on all of these courses contact Catherine Crilly: Catherine.Crilly@northernirelandchamber.com