Selling Business Solutions

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The art and science of selling high value business solutions isn't even a distant relative of the world of low value sales transactions. Some people are naturals at this, but they are isolated examples in the typical sales team. Such people have been identified and carefully studied by business psychologists, in order to isolate the structure of their particular magic. We now know what tactics and behaviours increase the chances of closing a high value sale (and what behaviours diminish them!).

Most research raises further questions, and this is no exception:

• Can others learn these effective behaviours (and can they be taught)?
• In the hands of people who don't demonstrate them naturally, do they lead to better sales outcomes? Can these behaviours be embedded in
• mainstream practices in the organisation? In other words, can these behaviours be made sustainable?

Can others learn to use these behaviours correctly?
The answer is yes they can. Most of us already have them in our repertoire; in other words, we have the potential to display them, they don't need to be manufactured (we own the musical notes, we just haven't learnt to play them tunefully). The real challenge is to turn some turgid science into compelling reasons why these behaviours are desirable, and then to help people use them fluently in the emerging, complex, sales conversation.

Do they improve sales outcomes?
Again the answer from the research is a resounding yes, providing the systems are in place to ensure they are used, which leads us to the third question.

Is it possible to mainstream these behaviours until they are embedded in the culture?
Well, that depends. If you simply throw a bit of training at people and then hope that what they have learned will somehow embed itself, almost certainly not. For many, the behaviours involve unlearning old habits, for some they are even strongly counter-intuitive. Without support, if people are not using these behaviours the day after a training programme ends, their chances of ever using them are slim indeed.

What we offer
This programme is carefully tailored to ensure best fit with your organisation:

• The programme demonstrates how to research and plan the sales call in order to shorten sales cycle time, and improve sales success by a substantial margin.
• We use real and current situations so that your people are rehearsing scenarios that are relevant to them in order to bring the techniques alive; best practice meets their real life issues.
• Whilst skills rehearsal is important, we don't just drill people on some sales parade ground, we share the rationale so that it makes sense.
• One of the attractive outcomes (other than increased sales success) is that because the model is ethical it builds high trust relationships enabling the business solution seller become the client's trusted advisor.

Because these evidence-based behaviours require a degree of unlearning, we place as much emphasis on consolidation, integration and embedding after the programme, as we do on the programme itself. Like our Strategic Account Management Programme we will help you:

• Build a disciplined coaching system for business solutions sellers that supports their efforts to sit down, research and properly plan their sales strategies, before going face to face with the client.
• Create a set of standards, and the audit procedures that tell you if you are meeting your standards.
• Create an ‘apprenticeship' model so that you can quickly bring new hires up to speed with your account management system, without needing to send them on a training course.
• Create the pro-formas and procedures for the entire business solutions sales process; we will give you the basic templates provided in soft copy, royalty free.
• Address the crucial implementation issues with the Sales function and the senior executives who support the sales effort.
• This programme can be integrated with our programme on Strategic Account Management.

A brief example

One of our clients has a strong reputation for providing excellent IT solutions to complex problems. Some years ago, they realised they would have to take the strategic decision to move towards providing wider business solutions, selling not just to IT Directors, but also to the Board. As part of this, we helped them identify and develop the new competences involved, and worked with their sales teams to develop these. Initially, we enabled their sales consultants to generate a strategic plan for their major accounts, and then enabled them to apply existing and new skills to executing those plans in order to achieve high deal value, growing mutually profitable trusted advisor relationships with their clients.