OFFICE DEPOT – ACHIEVEGLOBAL AND SOLUTION SELLING LINKAGES - GLOBAL
For several years, Office Depot has used AchieveGlobal to conduct new hire training. Virtually all BSD employees have take a three day
Professional Selling Skills (PSS) Workshop. This workshop teaches techniques for having a conversation with a customer. The course also focuses
on objection handling strategies. The PSS Need Satisfaction Selling Process consists of 4 steps:
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OPEN - An unstructured form of our Call Introduction.
PROBE – Sellers are taught to ask questions to uncover customer needs and the ‘need behind the need.’ This is similar to pain and
reasons for pain..
SUPPORT – Provide Feature and benefit statements to let the customer know Office Depot can satisfy the customer’s needs. This is
similar to providing customers with capabilities.
CLOSE – The is the close of the conversation and includes a going forward plan.
Earlier this year, all employees also went through AchieveGlobal’s Professional Prospecting Skill (PPS) workshop. This course provides
prospecting tools and techniques for tracking prospecting status (checklists, etc.).
Many managers have taken AchieveGlobal’s Professional Sales Coaching. It presents a methodology similar to our GRAF coaching model.
Our message in the workshop should be that Solution Selling builds upon the foundation laid by PSS and PPS. In the minds of the program
sponsors, PSS will be used for new hire training. Solution Selling will be taught later in the sellers career to enable them to ‘take things up a
notch.’
In the notes that follow, we have provided some talking points if PSS issues arise in the workshop.
Slide
Visual
Notes
SPI’s Solution Selling® continues to build on the Needs Satisfaction Selling™ philosophy
taught in Professional Selling Skills® (PSS) and Professional Prospecting Skills™ (PPS).
In PSS, you learned how to manage sales conversations in a consultative, mutual fashion.
This was accomplished via the methodology of Open/Probe/Support/Close.
p.4- AchieveGlobal within
the Sales Process
In PPS, you learned how to utilize the Prepare/Contact/Assess process to gain appointments
with prospects in a systematic fashion
Now, we are focused on what happens as you string all these conversations together over
the course of an end-to-end sales cycle from Engagement through to Proposals and
ultimately Fulfillment.
The Solution Selling™ program will outline what this sales process looks like on a phase by
phase basis and will provide you with specific skills, tools and techniques you will need to
move your opportunities successfully through the sales
p.11- Quid Pro Quo
p. 13- No Pain, No Change
p. 16- 4 levels of buyer
need
Quid pro quo links to the idea of mutual and mutuality discussed in PSS
Pain” links to the idea of customer business issues as taught in PPS and needs behind the
need in PSS
PSS Notes:
Level Four: Active Evaluation : this equates to the confirm existence of a need
Level Three: Vision of a Solution : this equates to Examine Effects
Level Two: Admitted Pain: Identify Opportunities
Level One: Latent Pain: AchieveGlobal calls this phase exploring customer’s circumstances
p. 40- Anchor slide- create
interest
Strong connection here between SPI and the work they do in PPS in the contact phase. NOTE:
some sellers (mainly TDM) may fill out a PSS ‘Call Planner’. This is a document that helps
them plan to a sales call. If they currently fill this out, they will continue to do so in the
future
P. 42 - business
development best
practices
Inserted funnel and 3rd best practice: Analyze funnel to plan activity and determine level of
activity needed. You should have some understanding of the amount of leads you must put
into the funnel to get the desired revenue out on the back end.
p. 47- reference story
p. 59- anchor slide get pain
admitted
In PSS reference stories are called “Proof Sources.”
In PSS this is called “confirming the existence of a need.”
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p. 63- call introduction
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p. 66- situational questions
This all happens during the Open step of PSS. The Call Introduction provides a little
more structure for the open phase
State call agenda (instead of objective- conflicting with PSS language)
Use “we help” theme (instead of positioning statement- conflicting with PSS language)
PSS Notes:
 Situation questions in PSS are Circumstances
 Menu of Pain in PSS are opportunities
p. 67- anxiety
p. 165 - Pipeline analysis
Anxiety Creation in PSS is Examining Effects and Confirming the existence of the need
PPS teaches how to track call/hit ration to determine how many prospects they need to
contact to meet gap