Smarter Selling
Customer-intimate companies don’t just provide a product or service, they enable their customers success. The key shift is from a supplier to a partner based approach. The customer-intimate company has detailed knowledge of customer buying habits.
So how does a company achieve this shift from product/service approach to partnering?
We offer a unique approach to sales training. We have distilled and combined the best of the accumulated sales learning offered globally recognized sales experts (including but not limited to Neil Rackam’s SPIN SELLING, Miller Heiman’s CONCEPTUAL SELLING and STRATEGIC SELLING, Tracy’s The Psychology of Selling) plus the combined expertise of DSG's Sales Training Partners, the SMARTER SELLING team.
SMARTER SELLING is a sales training methodology specifically designed for professionals by professionals.
In many organizations, high quality products and services are being commoditized, resulting in a higher focus on price. In a difficult economy, even with very good or even exceptional product and service offerings, this makes planning for sales and profits very hard. Price sensitivity is a real and ongoing challenge that can quickly erode profit margins and frustrate the sales force.
Smarter Selling clearly demonstrates strategies that differentiate your sales approach:
- Understand individual buyer types and roles and adjust the approach for each buyer
- Recognize buyer perceptions, understand and know how to change the relationships
- Initiate buyer interactions in a way that signals a clear focus on the buyer’s needs
- Engage in an open needs identification process, free from manipulation
- Present your ideas credibly and persuasively
- Collaborate with buyers to identify and evaluate potential solutions
- Rapidly identify price-busters and deal-hunters, then allocate your precious time and energy more effectively
The impact is cumulative. Taken alone, each step represents a part of the process. Added together they enable an effective sales and buyer experience.
We speak to business and sales leaders to understand the sales force, the buyers and the service being provided. We then review the sales history and plans, review the current sales processes, skills and firm-wide engagement. Then we really get to work to transform your Sales Team!
Right now, amongst other engagements, SMARTER SELLING is currently training over 2000 PwC consultants across Europe and Asia.
Many sales methodologies, including some that claim to be consultative in nature, focus on helping the salesperson persuade the buyer to purchase something that they do not really need with the result that the salesperson succeeds in the short term, but risks souring the long-term relationship.
Smarter Selling outlines a different approach where buyer and seller collaborate, with the seller facilitating the buyer’s thought process and helping them achieve their goals. This results in a sales experience that the buyer recognizes as different, one that the buyer wants to Repeat.
Smarter Selling recognizes that people make buying decisions based as much or more on instinct more often than intellect. As one Sales Director commented: “Your approach provides the missing piece – the explanation for why we sometimes win jobs when our offering is similar to our competitors.”
Smarter Selling changes people. Buyers become more open and trusting – they share information freely and provide valuable citations and referrals. Colleagues and business associates share leads with your sales people.
Smarter Selling contains important messages for many audiences:
- Anyone with a direct need to sell
- Anyone responsible for a team or organization that needs to sell
- Anyone wanting to improve their own ability to develop deep business relationships
- Anyone wanting to improve relationships within a team or organization
The Smarter Selling approaches have been applied across many industries and in more than 50 countries. Developing the mindsets and skill sets required to implement the approaches takes education and practice.
Workshops are the most popular option for introducing the Smarter Selling approaches to new audiences. Workshops vary in duration from a half-day introduction to key concepts, to a 3-day option that includes concepts, live-practice, video review and the application of Smarter Selling concepts to key target buyers.
In addition to externally accredited trainers and coaches, internal trainers may also become accredited to deliver Better Buyer Relationships within their organization. Coaches and facilitators are supported with a series of tools and materials stored in a password-protected website area.
Untangle the Sails and Catch the Wind:
- Workshop & Individual Coaching for Sales Professionals
- A one-day seminar with ongoing follow up via individual coaching sessions.
- Enables Sales Professionals to focus more effectively on the business of generating new business by minimizing the non-sales ‘noise’ that distracts focused sales effort.
