L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Consultative Sales Skills Facilitator’s Guide
Table of Contents
Facilitator’s Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 3
General notes ....................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Icon key ................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 7
Icebreaker ............................................................................................................................................................................ 7
Logistics ............................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Course Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 9
Course objectives ................................................................................................................................................................. 9
The sales model ................................................................................................................................................................. 11
The meaning of consultative selling ................................................................................................................................... 13
Before the Call ..................................................................................................................................................... 15
Research the customer ......................................................................................................................................................
Anticipate the call ...............................................................................................................................................................
Create call objectives .........................................................................................................................................................
Create a high-impact opening ............................................................................................................................................
15
17
21
25
During the Call ..................................................................................................................................................... 29
Transition to During the Call ............................................................................................................................................... 29
Opening the Call .............................................................................................................................................. 31
Breaking the ice with the customer .................................................................................................................................... 31
Exploring Needs .............................................................................................................................................. 33
The needs continuum .........................................................................................................................................................
Four types of customer needs ............................................................................................................................................
The hourglass metaphor ....................................................................................................................................................
Needs analysis protocol .....................................................................................................................................................
Consultative sales skills .....................................................................................................................................................
Listening between the lines ................................................................................................................................................
Asking the right questions ..................................................................................................................................................
Using question chains ........................................................................................................................................................
Maintaining control .............................................................................................................................................................
Needs analysis role play ....................................................................................................................................................
33
37
43
45
51
53
61
75
85
87
Presenting Solutions ....................................................................................................................................... 91
Recognize the right moment to present ............................................................................................................................. 91
Features and benefits ......................................................................................................................................................... 97
Managing objections ........................................................................................................................................................ 103
Closing the Call ............................................................................................................................................. 117
A closing attitude ..............................................................................................................................................................
When to close ...................................................................................................................................................................
Always Be Closing ............................................................................................................................................................
Closing techniques ...........................................................................................................................................................
117
123
125
127
After the Call ...................................................................................................................................................... 131
Record and analyze ......................................................................................................................................................... 131
Following up with customers ............................................................................................................................................ 133
Review and Final ............................................................................................................................................... 135
Review .............................................................................................................................................................................. 135
Final role plays ................................................................................................................................................................. 137
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
1
L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Facilitator’s Introduction
General notes
Stories and Examples
This program was designed to be customized by you for your region. Various stories
and examples may or may not fit your region, either culturally or technically. You are
welcome to revise or replace any story or example in this workbook, so long as your
replacement conveys the same message as the original.
Suggested Language Bullets
Each section of content is introduced by a numbered heading. Following the heading
you will often see one or more bullets. Those bullets contain suggested language you
could use to explain the content. You are free to use your own language, using the
bullet content to guide you.
•
For example, like this.
Facilitator Notes
Throughout the facilitator’s guide, you will find notes directed at you, the facilitator.
These are instructions, reminders, and recommendations for customization. These
facilitator notes appear in gray boxes.
For example, like this.
PowerPoint Slides
PowerPoint Slides have been included. As with stories and examples, you may need
to change the slides to better reflect your region. You may also want to remove some
slides if you feel there are too many for your teaching style.
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Facilitator’s Introduction, Continued
General notes,
continued
Recommendations for Teaching
To prepare for teaching, read the facilitator’s guide thoroughly, then create an outline
for yourself on a separate page and practice teaching from the outline. When you first
teach the program live, feel free to read directly from the facilitator’s guide rather than
trying to remember everything. In time, you’ll have taught the content often enough
that you will need only to look at your outline as a reminder.
Blank Notes Pages
In the facilitator’s guide, every even page is blank (lines only). This page is for you to
use for notes, personal stories and examples, illustrations, etc.
Icon key
Icons appear in the left margin to remind you of activities and slides.
PowerPoint Slide
Workbook Activity
Flip Chart Activity
Participant Interaction
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Introduction
Overview
Section Objectives
Length:
10 minutes
Objectives: Break the ice, make introductions, go over logistics. Participants
should feel welcome and settled in.
Materials:
PowerPoint presentation slides
Participant workbook
Icebreaker
1. Begin with an ice breaker. Below are two possibilities, but you can use any
icebreaker you want.
Alliterative Introductions. Think of one adjective that describes you and
begins with the same letter as your first name. For example, my first name is
Linda, and I’m lively. Next introduce yourself to different people in the room
by your adjective and first name. For instance, “Hi, I’m Lively Linda.” This is a
quick activity that contains natural comedy.
To Tell the Truth. Jot down two things—one that’s true and one that’s
made up—about yourself (either events that happened to you or some
attribute you embody). For example, I’m a world-class sky diver and I teach
gardening classes in my spare time. Next ask each person to introduce
themselves by name and then their two things. Ask the room to guess
which thing is true and which is not.
2. When finished with the ice breaker, introduce yourself and your credentials.
Logistics
1. After breaking the ice and making introductions, review course logistics,
materials and pre-work.
•
Time of breaks, lunch and finish
•
Location of bathrooms
•
Turn off cell phones
•
Review materials to be used in the course
•
Materials: workbook, Before worksheet, pre-work.
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Course Overview
Overview
Section Objectives
Length:
20 minutes
Teaching
Review course objectives and the model to be used. Explain that 75%
Objectives: of the program focuses on consultative selling skills in the During
section.
Overview the concept of Consultative Selling. Highlight how that might
be different from traditional selling.
Materials:
PowerPoint presentation slides
Participant workbook
Course objectives
1. Before reviewing today’s objectives, quickly review the ResMed sales suite
by referring to the 4-wheel drive metaphor created for the Analysis and
Planning module.
2. Briefly review today’s course objectives.
•
At the end of today, participants will be able to:
-
Thoroughly plan a call for best results.
-
Understand the distinctions between consultative selling and needs
analysis.
-
Use advanced listening and questioning techniques to uncover specific,
surface, hidden and systemic needs.
-
Provide features & benefits linked to specific customer needs.
-
Resolve client objections using a problem-solving approach.
-
Close the sale in a direct and professional manner.
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Course Overview, continued
The sales model
1. Show today’s model on PowerPoint and refer to the workbook:
Before
• Research the customer
• Anticipate the call
• Create call objectives
• Create a call opening
During
• Opening the call
• Exploring needs
• Presenting solutions
After
• Closing the call
• Post-call analysis
• Customer follow-up
2. Prepare yourself to make a brief introduction for each section using the following content:
•
Before the Call: Before we make a sales call of any kind, we will want to
know as much as possible about our customer in advance, anticipate how
the call could go, then create an appropriate objective and opening for the
call. We’ll spend about 10% of today’s program on the Before section.
•
During the Call: On the surface, there are only four steps to a sales call:
open, explore needs, present solutions and close. Within those steps, exploring needs and presenting solutions might occur several times, as represented by the circular arrow. To be effective During a Call, a salesperson must
use consultative skills, represented by the gray box surrounding the During
section. We’ll spend about 85% of the day on the During section.
•
After the Call: After a sales call, we should reflect on and record the information we learned during our call and plan for our next call. We should view
our follow-up activities as an opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our
competition. We’ll spend about 5% of the day on the After section.
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Course Overview, continued
The meaning of
consultative
selling
1. Define consultative selling:
Field a discussion. Ask: What is consultative selling and how is it different from
other selling skills?
2. Play the YouTube recording of the interview with Eric Baron. STOP AFTER
HE ANSWERS THE THIRD QUESTION. (Stop at 3:32.)
3. Summarize what was said about consultative selling. Add the following
content as you see fit:
The role of the consultative salesperson
Rather than merely learning what the customer perceives as a need, today’s top
salespeople explore and analyze the customer’s situation, using their perspective
and product expertise to help the customer explore areas of growth, improvement
and change.
Being a catalyst for growth
By knowing the customers as a business (their risk and success factors, their
products and systems, their decision and implementation processes and
constraints), salespeople can position their offering more definitively both in the
present and in the future.
Being a strategic expert
Consultative salespeople are also strategic experts, understanding the customer’s
integration challenges and decision making processes so they can help the
customer address the issues that might prevent them from implementing a
recommended solution.
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call
Overview
Section Objectives
Length:
45 minutes
Objectives: Participants become more prepared for sales calls. Contents include:
Materials:
•
Research the customer
•
Anticipate the call
•
Create call objectives
•
Create a call opening
PowerPoint presentation slides
Participant workbook
Research the
customer
1. Teach each step in the Before section, then go on to elaborate about each
step.
2. Research the Customer. Review Sales Analysis and Planning briefly, with
the outline on PowerPoint.
If participants have not gone through Analysis and Planning (A&P) yet, provide a
short overview, focusing on the benefits of each section to the participants.
If participants have already gone through A&P, perhaps you can ask for some of
their experiences using that content.
If the group is mixed—some having gone through A&P and others not—you can
ask the experienced group to explain each section briefly to the inexperienced.
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call, continued
Anticipate the call
1. Anticipate. Be brief with this section. It is intended to do two things:
1) Remind participants of the value of Beginning with the End in Mind.
2) Set you up to show the Before Call Preparation Worksheet.
2. Begin with the End in Mind:
•
Imagine showing up at a black tie event dressed in blue jeans because you
didn’t think to ask the hostess for the dress code. Or showing up at a job interview prepared for a friendly one-on-one conversation and finding yourself
face-to-face with a panel of experts ready to grill you.
•
These rather obvious examples of failing to anticipate the situation illustrate
how easily we can be lulled into making assumptions. It is important to our
effectiveness and confidence to begin our call with the end in mind. We can
do this by anticipating various elements of a call based on the typical needs
of our call point as well as our knowledge of a specific account.
-
Customer needs
-
Potential solutions
-
Objections or challenges
-
Salesperson questions we can ask
ResMed Sales
Representative
DME
Primary Care
Physician
Sleep Labs
Sleep Doctors;
Other Specialists
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Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call, continued
Anticipate the call,
continued
3. Review the Before Call Preparation Worksheet:
Ask participants to take out the Sales Call Preparation Worksheet.
Walk them through the different parts as a review of the Before section. Indicate
that they will be able to fill it out completely by the end of the session today.
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call, continued
Create call
objectives
1. SMART Objectives. Introduce the SMART chart.
•
We want to create a call objective to keep our call focused. Call objectives
should describe what we want to accomplish during the sales call and incorporate long-range account objectives.
•
Call objectives are not intended for the customer’s eyes or ears. They help
keep us focused.
If participants are already very familiar with SMART objectives, you might skip the
explanation and go directly to the exercise.
2. Review the definitions in the SMART chart.
Guidelines
SMART Objectives
Specific
A specific objective should indicate what and exactly how
much we want to accomplish.
Measurable
Objectives should be measurable. This will help us gauge
our performance and keep us on track for success.
Ambitious
An ambitious goal gets us thinking about improving our
performance.
Realistic
We should be ambitious, but also practical. We can start
with what’s realistic, and then re-prioritize our focus/goals
frequently.
Time-bound
We should give ourselves a timeline for finalizing the objective. Again, we need to think realistically—consider any
factors that might challenge us in this process (tender offer
deadline, account takeover, internal personnel changes, etc).
Continued on next page
Consultative Sales Skills/Facilitator’s Guide (Company Confidential—For Internal Use Only)
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call, continued
Create call
objectives,
continued
3. Conduct the Create Call Objectives exercise.
Time:
10 minutes
Create Call Objectives
Note: This exercise can be conducted as a workmat group
activity or an individual activity.
1 minute
Instructions: Think of a sample account you would like to grow. (Or
use the sample given on PowerPoint.) Create SMART objectives for
the account.
5 minutes
Complete the exercise.
4 minutes
Debrief: Invite people to share their examples.
Guidelines
SMART Objectives
Specific
Measurable
Ambitious
Realistic
Time-bound
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L E A R N I N G
I G N I T I N G
P O T E N T I A L ,
C E N T E R
A C H I E V I N G
S U C C E S S
Before the Call, continued
Create a highimpact opening
1. High-Impact Openings. Introduce the topic:
•
A high-impact opening should be prepared in advance.
•
If you think a customer is going to want to address problems, but you want to
talk about product, call ahead and address the problem before the sales call.
2. A high-impact opening has six parts:
1) Thank them for their time. This is common courtesy.
2) State your purpose. What do you plan to present/discuss/accomplish?
3) State the value for them (their WIIFM). A hook to hold their interest.
4) Gain agreement. This simple step gets their commitment to listen.
5) Check for time constraints.
6) Engage. Use a strong question to direct the business conversation.
3. Show the example on PowerPoint, then highlight each guideline as it appears in the example.
•
Paul, thanks for taking time to meet with me today. I am hoping we can
discuss the new S9, our newest platform of high-quality flow generators. The
S9’s high quality and technology make it the ideal flow generator for labs
like yours that must operate at peak efficiency. Is this something that sounds
of interest to you? Good. You mentioned you had about 20 minutes. Is that
still the case? OK. What sort of reliability issues are you having with the flow
generators you’re currently using?
4. Ask participants what value they see in preparing an opening with this level
of attention? Flipchart their answers. Possible answers to raise:
•
Build rapport—by being open and direct, you convey trustworthiness.
•
Provide a direction to the conversation that aims towards closing—by opening with a clear direction, you begin moving in the direction of the closing.
•
Convey professionalism—by being clear and direct, you are more professional than if you went in with a confused or aimless approach.
•
Maintain control—by setting the context and engaging with a question, you
establish control of the conversation from the outset.
Continued on next page
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