SalesAbility III Consultative Selling
A practical, customer-focused, needs-based approach to selling
Overview
This highly interactive and practical workshop is designed to improve sales productivity
and results by helping sales people sell in a professional, consultative, and confident style.
The workshop, available in two versions (selling to end-users and selling to re-sellers) is
based on years of research with top sales executives and producers, and provides a unique
model to help salespeople facilitate their customers and prospects through a predictable
“purchase process” for making decisions.
SalesAbility III covers these consultative selling essentials:
• Building relationships
• Planning effective sales calls
• Focused questioning skills to build credibility and identify customer needs and
priorities
• Relating product and solution benefits to customer needs
• Handling customer resistance and objections
• Gaining commitment/closing
SalesAbility Purchase/Sales Processes
The exclusive Porter Henry Purchase/Sales model recognizes that selling is not a linear
step-by-step sales process. The process is consultative, based on how customers make
purchase decisions, a proven, defined process that has been validated. The five decision
stages are illustrated in the top row of boxes. Once the customer is open to an offering,
he/she moves to the Focus stage, to consider priorities and needs, then collects product/
service knowledge, moves to the evaluation stage and finally makes a Decision. During the
process, the customer may shift gears and return to a previous stage as illustrated by the
arrows. Like any decision, this process can be accomplished in minutes, or months.
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salesabilityIII_1013.pdf
The salesperson uses the “mirror image” stages (directly below each customer stage) to
LEAD the customer through each buying stage, hopefully to a positive decision. During
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the SalesAbility III workshop the salesperson acquires, practices the five core skills in the bottom boxes (stages), learns
how to read what stage the customer is in, and applies the added skills such as: building relationships (trust/listening),
differentiating the offering, FOCUS questioning, handling resistance, negotiating to close, and more.
Module Descriptions
Building Relationships
• A model for professional selling: The SalesAbility Purchase and Sales Processes
• The underlying premise of SalesAbility: every customer goes through a predictable though non-linear five-step
process in making a buying decision; it is the professional salesperson’s role to guide and facilitate the customer
through that process
• Optional: Selling skills benchmarking role plays; learners set personal sales development objectives
• Self-Study Showdown – A competition based on skills covered in the SalesAbility II pre-workshop assignment
• Listening as a prerequisite of customer-centered selling
• The Listening Challenge: A Self-Assessment
• Active listening skills
• Five essential components of building trust
• What if…? Group and team discussions on handling typical challenges salespeople face
Planning and Opening the Sales Call
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Understanding why people buy: customer needs and priorities
Categorizing typical end-user needs: performance, financial, systems, image, and relationship needs
Categorizing typical re-seller needs: financial, pull-through, service, relationship
Planning: account analysis and sales call mapping
Setting customer-centered sales call objectives
Opening the sales call to gain customer interest and involvement
Adding impact to your sales call openers
Case study application: practicing planning and opening skills
Identifying Customer Priorities
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Questioning: the heart of customer-centered selling
Types of questions: open and closed
Intent of questions: Fact and Priority
FOCUS questioning process
Best practices exercise: Creating a custom-built “questioning library”
Case study application: practicing SalesAbility questioning skills; small team role plays
What if…? discussions
Relating and Reinforcing Benefits
• Organizing the benefit story
• Customizing your sales presentation: Matching benefits to customer needs and priorities
• Reinforcing and proving benefits through success stories, third party references, sales visuals, statistics, studies,
etc.
• Presenting value-added benefits to complete your “total offering” and gain a competitive edge
Obtaining and Handling Customer Feedback
• Why, when, and how to proactively obtain customer feedback and reactions
• Responding to customer feedback and resistance
- Customer doubt
- Customer satisfaction with the status quo
- Unfulfilled customer priorities
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• Team exercises on handling typical and difficult customer resistance/objections
• Golden opportunities: capitalizing on positive feedback
Gaining Commitment
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Recognizing commitment signals – when to ask for commitment
Tying your “close” back to your sales call objective
Optional discussion: overcoming reluctance to close
Three types of closing questions
Three essential negotiating tactics
Role play: “putting it all together” – small teams role play the case study selling scenario for discussion, critique
and feedback
• Conducting a post-call analysis
• What if…? discussions
Learning Methods
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Customized case study
Customized role plays
Facilitator-led group discussions
Application of skills and tools to participants’ own customers
Video models
Team and individual exercises
Length
Two days, depending on participants’ needs and experience
Purchase Options
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Available in two versions: selling to end-user and selling to re-sellers
License/certification of client trainers
Rights purchase (certification/unlimited future rights)
Workshops conducted by professional Porter Henry facilitators
Program Options
• Additional customization
Program Components
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Pre-Workshop Assignment
Detailed Leader’s Guide
Powerpoint visuals
Participant’s Workbook
Sales call planning tools
Video-based skill models
Post-workshop follow-up and in-field reinforcement with SalesDrive Performance Improvement Program
© 2013 Advantage Performance Group
www.advantageperformance.com