Bottom-Line Boosting
Sales Skills Workshop
Sales Skills Workshop
Overview
How you interact with your customer, the questions you ask, the tactics you employ,
and how you present and sell your solutions are as important as knowing the
capabilities of your products. Sales Engineers (also called many other titles including
Applications Engineers, Systems Engineers, etc.) are often adept at the technical
details of your products due to years of engineering focused training yet most get little
training to improve their sales skills to motivate your prospects to buy quickly or at all.
This lack of skills training results in a sales approach where the Sales Engineers (SEs)
fall into their comfort zone of telling your customers about your products, reacting to
their demands, and hoping for a sale. Inevitably that approach will lead to a lengthy
and costly sales cycle where your resources are tied up supporting a customer
evaluation.
Seasoned sales people know there is a much better way.
This complete workshop is a comprehensive program that will improve the
productivity and effectiveness of your Sales Engineers and will produce results that
directly improve your company's bottom-line. Sales Engineers will learn easy to
remember and apply techniques that will make them more adept at all the sales
related activities they perform on a daily basis: discovery, qualification, demos,
presentations, benchmarks, evaluation support, and more.
SEs will learn how to expedite sales and win more by getting away from the less
effective "selling=telling" reactive approach and focusing more on the customer's
needs and their buying and decision making process.
High level topics include:
What You'll Learn
Course Outline
I. Bottom-Line Boosting Sales Skills Lecture/Discussion
A) Preparing to engage
II. Labs/exercises
How you interact with your customer, the questions you ask, the tactics you employ,
and how you present and sell your solutions are as important as knowing the
capabilities of your products. Sales Engineers (also called many other titles including
Applications Engineers, Systems Engineers, etc.) are often adept at the technical
details of your products due to years of engineering focused training yet most get little
training to improve their sales skills to motivate your prospects to buy quickly or at all.
This lack of skills training results in a sales approach where the Sales Engineers (SEs)
fall into their comfort zone of telling your customers about your products, reacting to
their demands, and hoping for a sale. Inevitably that approach will lead to a lengthy
and costly sales cycle where your resources are tied up supporting a customer
evaluation.
Seasoned sales people know there is a much better way.
This complete workshop is a comprehensive program that will improve the
productivity and effectiveness of your Sales Engineers and will produce results that
directly improve your company's bottom-line. Sales Engineers will learn easy to
remember and apply techniques that will make them more adept at all the sales
related activities they perform on a daily basis: discovery, qualification, demos,
presentations, benchmarks, evaluation support, and more.
SEs will learn how to expedite sales and win more by getting away from the less
effective "selling=telling" reactive approach and focusing more on the customer's
needs and their buying and decision making process.
High level topics include:
 | Why and how to uncover and develop customer needs | |
| Persuasive demo skills | |
| Winning with (and without) benchmarks and evaluations |
What You'll Learn
| Repeatable techniques to organize your thought process throughout the sales | |
| cycle to help ensure each customer interaction advances you towards a business relationship |
| The importance of focusing on your customer's needs before talking about your | |
| products to get buy in and commitment on a new and better way of selling |
| Questioning methods to fully identify the customer's needs, uncover previously | |
| unknown needs, and develop those needs into a motivation to take action |
| To articulate how your solution solves the customer’s challenges in ways that | |
| help your customer understand the compelling value of buying your solution now |
| How to differentiate your solution and beat your competition |
| How to win over your prospect with a targeted, skillful demo or presentation |
| Proficient demo/presentation techniques – compelling presentation skills, | |
| effective handling of questions and objections, how to deal with a crash, and more |
| How you might convince your customer to purchase your solution without the | |
| need for a costly and lengthy evaluation (or proof on concept) of your products |
| When to engage in an evaluation and procedures to plan, manage, and execute | |
| evaluations to improve your rate of success and shorten time to win new business |
| How to navigate your customer's organization - understand your customer | |
| roles, identify and involve decision makers, and cultivate relationships to develop customer allies |
| Five sales strategies and how and when to apply each of them to defeat your | |
| competition |
| Customer engagement and prioritization skills to win more business in less time |
Course Outline
I. Bottom-Line Boosting Sales Skills Lecture/Discussion
A) Preparing to engage
- 1. What not to do and why - Spray & Pray
2. Three key selling concepts
3. How to identify, uncover, and develop customer needs
4. The Central NeRV System of selling
5. How to understand your customer and their challenges
6. Five sales strategies & how to differentiate from your competition
7. Ensuring the right people are involved
8. Maximizing your chance of success
- 1. The secret to getting started on the right foot
2. Maximizing customer understanding and retention
3. How to effectively structure your message for success
4. Improving your technique and style
5. When and how to do a webcast demo
6. How to deal with a crash
7. How to handle objections
8. How to control a heckler
- 1. What to do after the demo/presentation is completed
- 1. How to win business without a costly evaluation or benchmark
2. Deciding to engage and prioritizing your valuable time
3. Become an MVP - Craft an unbeatable strategy
4. How to develop a winning plan
5. How to execute and win
II. Labs/exercises
- A) Compose effective questions to identify/uncover/develop customer needs
B) Discovery meeting role play using Central NeRV System
C) Demo preparation exercises - Refine your customer scenario and message
D) Demonstration (or presentation) workshop - Deliver a short customer demo
or presentation to your peers and receive constructive and honest feedback
E) Practice your response to customer request for evaluation software
Key Skills Emphasis
The ability to deliver a targeted software demonstration that hits the heart of your
customer’s challenges, establishes the value of your solution, and shows why your
solution is better than the competition’s embodies one of the most important skills
Sales Engineers can develop. It is usually the first look your customer has at your
solution and first impressions are vital. An exceptional demo can significantly reduce
the length of your costly sales cycle. It can mean the difference between quickly
generating profitable business for your company and handing the business to your
competition.
usually hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of lost business opportunity. And
you often don’t get a second chance.
very interactive presentations and exercises.
and internalize the skills they learned in the class by presenting a demo or
presentation to their peers who pose as their customer. This course has a pre-work
assignment where each attendee is required to prepare a short demo or presentation.
They will present that demo during the workshop and receive honest, constructive
feedback on how they might improve. Teaching is one of the best forms of learning
and students will also fortify their skills by providing feedback to others. Learning is
further reinforced by providing each student a videotape of their demo and feedback
for their personal review.
are involved in the sales process. Technical content is not a focus so engineers
involved in any technical discipline will learn valuable skills. Since everyone has room
to improve on and polish their sales and presentation skills, the course has been very
highly regarded by both new SEs and experienced SEs.
Course Logistics
needs. The recommended class size is 8 to 16 people. Small class sizes provide a
more personal and valuable learning experience by increasing the participation and
interactivity of the class.
| The course can be customized as needed to meet your specific requirements |
| Facilitated discussions are more valuable as they can contain proprietary | |
| information such as high level details about how to differentiate your products and company, or job responsibilities in your organization and how to get things done |
| Save travel expenses since local students don't have to travel |
| Students use your facilities during the demo/presentation exercise giving them | |
| a more realistic and valuable learning experience |
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