Category: Soft Skills

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Learning the art of Successful Selling

clinching those important sales deals

Struggling to meet your monthly sales targets? Learning from the experts may be just what you need! STL offers a  Successful Selling course to a wide range of organisations, from IT and Banking to Sporting Facilities and TV Stations. To increase any company’s profitability, a key ingredient is learning the art of successful selling.

Human Resources and Learning and Development departments select this course because many of their employees need to improve their ability to close more deals. Hence, the course is designed for people who are either starting out in sales or those who want to recharge their existing skills and experience.

After this one-day workshop, delegates will have gained the fundamental skills necessary to understand clients’ needs and deal with clients’ objections.

Learning the art of Successful Selling

Benefits of the course

Companies want their staff to employ techniques and strategies to help them gain:

  • Increased confidence in the art of selling.
  • Improved standards of procedure for building customer relationships
  • Increase in a positive mindset, self-confidence and professionalism.
  • Improved questioning and listening skills.
  • Developing the confidence to up-sell, cross-sell and substitute sell .
  • Demonstrate the ability to understand Customers’ requirements and present perfectly aligned solutions.
  • Improved techniques in handling concerns and objections, and increased confidence in closing the sale.
Valuable Learning Outcomes

The Successful Selling course blends theory and practice to great effect so that the learning is embedded. People learn in different ways. Therefore, once a topic has been introduced, there will be time for group discussion, where ideas, experiences, and real-life situations can be shared.

Following this, delegates get to work together on a practical exercise. This involves applying the skills, techniques, and top tips they have learned, in a safe environment.

One of the biggest benefits of the course is that there are delegates from a wide range of industries.  They openly share their hopes, experiences and challenges in terms of successful selling. Delegates always learn a huge amount from each other.

Delegates have the chance to reflect on their own most important attributes which would make them successful salespeople. In addition, they can identify their current  limitations in terms of mindset. They are also able to list the particular skills they need to improve their listening ability. Attendees gain the ability to make a strong first impression with potential customers.

Throughout the course, delegates work on these areas through discussion, practice, and learning by doing.

 

Those attending get the opportunity to practice role-play . In this way, they can gain valuable feedback about what they are doing well and what they still need to improve.

One of the most important aspects of this course is learning how to deal with objections when selling.

 

Usually, potential clients or customers will have some objections. The ability for a salesperson to uncover a customer’s hidden needs and professionally and assertively deal with objections is a key factor in their ability to close deals and be successful. 

Feedback on the course

 “ The Trainer was very experienced in sales and managing sales teams and his expertise and stories really added value to the workshop. “

“ The tips and techniques and especially role-play practice and feedback was really valuable for me. “

“ Really useful day of training. Thanks STL”

The key to successful business growth and profitability is in learning the art of successful selling.

 

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Motivate your Team for better Results

Motivating a team is often an acquired skill, especially when working remotely. A recent article by Forbes makes interesting reading on how you can motivate your team for better results.

One model of motivation comes from the work of Torrington and Hall. Here they combine many of the more recent motivational theories to create a succinct checklist of factors:

  • Variety in the work individuals carry out
  • Autonomy in determining methods and tools of work
  • Responsibility in making decisions, problem solving
  • Challenge – stretching the individual to meet objectives
  • Interaction – Necessary contact with others for performance
  • Significance – Identity and contribution, recognition for work
  • Goals and Feedback – Knowing what we are aiming for and how we are doing

However good the checklist above is, remember that we are all different! What may motivate one member of your team may have zero effect on another.

Motivate your Team for better Results

If you don’t know where to even start with motivating someone in your team, here are three things you could do:

Ask questions

Sometimes we lack courage to ask what motivates another person for fear that they will take it as a negative. This may be true, but not in every case. The more we can find out about what satisfies someone, the more we can shape their work to bring it in line with the checklist above.

Example: One person may do much better in a role if it requires them to interact with others. Being able to discuss and create from conversation may work much better for them than asking them to deliver a task on their own.

Observe where their energy is

Observing each other is something we all do all the time. However, when we take time to carefully observe what others do, we may gain some surprising ideas. In fact, we can use observation to generate a strategy together, and in this way improve their role for them so that they are more motivated.

Example: We may notice that one of our team always increases the scope or challenge of their work. Here, we could discuss with them how they would like to make their work even more challenging and responsible, to maintain their engagement.

Create some experiments

Certain team members are harder to gauge. They may not yet know what really motivates them. In this case, it may be worth having a conversation with them to create some small experiments. In doing this, we can start on a path of finding out what motivates them best.

Example: We could increase the variety in their activities and give them more choice in how they do their work (autonomy). We could also experiment with more precise, clear, and chunk-sized goals and feedback. 

In Summary

As managers and team leaders, we probably work with all three of these: asking questions, observing, and experimenting. This is time well spent, as increased motivation leads to increased productivity.

Recent research shows motivation to be more intrinsic in nature. This clip by Daniel Pink, on his research about the surprising things that motivate us, may be useful:

RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

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PS Are you recently promoted to a role managing people? You might like to read this next:

https://www.stl-training.co.uk/b/3-tips-for-success-in-your-new-leadership-role/

These are just a few thoughts on how to motivate your team for better results. A motivated team will be more productive, and therefore, profitability will increase.