Sometimes it’s hard for a salesperson to pick up the telephone and call a prospect. It comes from the “hot-stove” syndrome: A child who has touched a hot stove is doubly reluctant to touch another stove— hot or cold. After enough prospects have been rude, crude and asinine over the telephone, the average salesperson can become phone-shy. A prolonged bad streak, when nobody has a kind word, happens to every salesperson. The trick is to keep those inevitable “bum” times from causing a permanent problem. Continue reading
Category: Articles – Marketing/Strategy
How to Train Your Sales Force – Selling Skills Training
There’s something undeniably “big time” and impressive about the scene: The steely-eyed sales exec jets to the coast, hunkers down with a hard-boiled buyer and the two hammer out a hot deal. But put a simple pocket calculator to work on that scenario and you’ll soon discover the cost/benefit figures of cold call, face-to-face selling don’t always add up. Not in today’s economy. Not compared to the cost/benefit figures for a sophisticated “tele-selling” program. Continue reading
Brand Mindset, Brand Value and Brand Focus
However, unless they also understand the right things to do, i.e., understand and execute a BrandMindset, they may not achieve genuine brand status over the long term. There are five fundamental brand paradigm shifts that can be utilized by organizations to develop a more distinctive perception and enhance their brand equity. They include brand leverage, brand discipline, brand playing field, brand focus, and brand value. Continue reading
Developing Training Program for Sales Trainee
Training in the geographies of the territory. One of the first problems a new salesperson has upon taking over a territory, large or small, is that of traveling in an unfamiliar area. This can be frustrating and time-consuming and may cause an inexperienced person to waste considerable time and become discouraged.
While a person is in the initial stage of training to take over a sales territory, he or she should have an opportunity to study the best ways to travel that territory. There are numerous ways a sales trainee can develop an itinerary that will cover a territory efficiently. The trainer need not deal extensively with the techniques used to develop computer-generated itineraries. However, if the company does use a computer for this purpose, the trainee should be shown the principles underlying this procedure. Continue reading
Training for Sales Process
Training in the nature of the sales process. An attempt to make a sales neophyte into an effective salesperson by teaching him or her only one of the many sophisticated sales techniques probably would not work and might even be detrimental.
Seldom will one approach to sales work with more than a handful of customers. The many situations a salesperson confronts on a daily basis are too varied to be accommodated by one approach to the sales process.
It makes much more sense to help the trainee understand the essence of the sales process so that the person can tailor his or her own approach to a given sales situation. Continue reading
5 Core Materials in Sales Training Program
Most training programs for newly hired salespeople either are cluttered with a great deal of unnecessary information or emphasize product knowledge while neglecting other selling information and skills. Actually, training in only five basic areas should prepare an inexperienced person to become effective quickly in field sales. The five essential topics are:
1. The nature of the sales process.
2. The account distribution (geographies) of the territory.
3. Prospects in the territory.
4. Sales knowledge.
5. The competition. Continue reading