Sales Training Events

Slow Down, Sell Faster!™ Sales Training

Program Description

The Slow Down, Sell Faster! sales training program provides salespeople with a model and skills that help them better understand a customer’s buying process and the complicated relationships between the many players involved in purchasing decisions.

Skills developed include pre-call preparation, diagnostic questioning, positioning your solution on the high-ground, competitive selling skills, overcoming silence at the 11th hour and win/win negotiation skills.

Pre-work assignments: complete a series of pre-work assignments 30-days prior to the program

Program Agenda

Day 1

8 am – 10 am

Intro/Overview

The Buying Process – understanding the customer and advancing the sales opportunity.

    • Plan every sales call by looking at the buy/sell process from the customer’s perspective.
    • Recognize the single biggest mistake most salespeople make (they sell too fast).
    • Recognize that there are certain distinct characters (“Roles”) that a sales professional can adopt to do a better job of guiding the buying decision than your competitors do.
    • Advance the sale faster by setting call objectives that specify customer action commitments. Focus on your best sales opportunities.
    • Improve forecast accuracy with the buy-cycle funnel
    • Ask participants: What are your goals for this session?

10 am – 10:15 am

Break

10:15 am – 12 pm

Selling to the Complex Buying Team – Mastering the Politics of Selling to Multiple Decision Makers.

    • Common mistakes in working with buying teams.
    • Positions on the buying team. Understand the different types of decision influencers, what each person’s needs and criteria are.
    • Sponsors and anti-Sponsors.
    • Building an effective approach.
      • How to deal with C-level and gatekeepers.
    • A sample 6-step approach.

12 pm – 12:45 pm

Lunch

12:45 pm – 2:30 pm

STUDENT – study the customer’s business, their competition, and the change affecting their business, and approach high-probability prospects.

    • Prepare for each sales call more effectively by studying the three levels of a business (CEO/Core/Support) and understand where needs are created.
    • Pre-call preparation.
    • CPA Telephone prospecting skills.

2:30 pm – 2:45 pm

Break

2:45 pm – 5:15 pm

DOCTOR – define a strategy for defeating our #1 competitor — the customer’s decision to do nothing — by diagnosing the entire need and quantifying our value.

    • Identify and focus on developing customer problems to create greater demand.
    • Understand five types of questions a Doctor asks (History, Symptom, Cause, Complication, Cure) and why they ask them.
    • Diagnose the real/underlying concern and learn the cost of these ailments.

Homework: Read the handouts on post-sale customer support.


Day 2

8 am – 8:15 am

Review of day 1 and discussion of the homework assignment

8:15 am – 10 am

Architect – help shape the customer’s vision of a solution in a way that locks out the competition

    • Identifying your company’s strengths compared to the market in general (the “Market Assessment” exercise)
    • Diagnostic Probing – the “Architect’s Tool Kit”
    • Identifying the customer’s solution criteria
    • Planting seeds to change customer’s criteria to better match your solution
    • Turning intangible buying criteria into tangibles that favor you

10 am – 10:15 am

Break

10:15 am – 12 pm

Coach — defeat the competition without slashing price (Part 1)

    • The “How would you beat you?” exercise. If you were selling against your company what would your strategy be? Then, how should the defeat that strategy?
    • Where are you entering in your customer’s buying process?
    • Watch for these seven signs of a “rush to judgment – the signs that you are considered just column fodder by the customer
    • Dealing with customer objections planted by your competitors
    • How to develop a winning game plan—scouting the competition
    • The Demo Planner tool

12 pm – 12:45 pm

Lunch

12:45 pm – 1:45 pm

Therapist understands and resolves the buyer’s fears.

    • What Therapists do?
    • Anticipating fear — identifying common risks, concerns, questions to ask the customer, avoiding traditional objection-handling techniques
    • Resolving fear with EAR (Explore, Acknowledge, Resolve)
    • Getting a green light

1:45 pm – 2 pm

Break

2 pm – 3 pm

Negotiator discusses to reach agreement with the customer

    • Rules of negotiation
    • Evaluating your negotiation power
    • Preparing to negotiate
      • Determining flexibility on negotiables
      • Identify competitive strengths
      • Identify your bargaining chips

3 pm – 3:15 pm

Break

3:15 pm – 4 pm

Negotiator, cont.

    • The negotiation conversation—common tactics, responding to a first demand, questions to clarify customer’s intent
    • Asking for Commitment

4 pm – 4:45 pm

Jeopardy game – content review game. A fun team-based competition that test’s participants’ learning

4:45 pm – 5 pm

Summarize and adjourn

Sales training materials: what each participant receives

Each participant receives a participant workbook, application tools and sales training audiobook, copy of the book, “Slow Down, Sell Faster!,” 4-color wheel card and Quick Reference Guide. A six-month license to TopLine’s 9-module “Slow Down, Sell Faster!” eLearning reinforcement program is also included.

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