Advanced selling skills are normally developed in customized sales training programs that build upon sales fundamentals to transform ordinary salespeople into top performing sales professionals.
Experienced trainers will teach sophisticated selling concepts to reinforce existing knowledge and provide insights into innovative approaches that solve real problems.
Participants discover powerful techniques to improve their capabilities throughout the sales process. And to thrive in today’s world of consultative selling, sales teams will also learn to refine the art of managing customer relationships, especially with demanding executives and fussy decision-makers.
How to Find a Good Advanced Sales Training Program?
Although it is possible to attend sales workshops and classes that focus on specific elements, the best solutions are usually customized to suit client needs. Ideally, training content and activities should be tailored to a client’s organizational requirements and concentrate on areas where the sales team should improve on.
To get a detailed understanding of what’s needed, training providers usually conduct pre-event assessments by interviewing participants, getting feedback via questionnaires and discussing about goals and objectives with the management team.
Choosing the right training program is an important decision. Apart from the monetary investment, it is the time spent, opportunity costs and the success of your sales performance that’s on the line.
With so many sales trainers offering similar sounding solutions, it can be difficult to pick the right one that’s an ideal fit for your team and industry. To find a suitable class for your sales team, you need to be able to assess the quality of the course content, the skills of the trainer and have reasonable knowledge about the elements of advanced sales techniques.
In essence, you have to do your research and know what you’re buying.
How can the right Sales Course Improve my Sales Team?
Competent trainers will provide actionable insights to level up most areas of your organization’s sales process. They will also add or refine specific methodologies that help your team sell better.
Here are some key areas where effective sales training can produce valuable results:
- Improve customer relationships by building trust and loyalty
- Establish a unique organizational sales methodology that’s tailor-made for specific circumstances
- Make your product or service more appealing to prospective customers
- Manage objections skillfully and transform them into opportunities
- Learn to spot subtle behavioral patterns for positive and negative cues
- Discover how to use presentations as a powerful closing tool
- Refine skills to make powerful presentations for groups and committees
- Enhance the quality of proposals and presentations by giving them exceptionally impressive and professional
- Learn new individual and team sales methods in order to have multiple selling styles
- Use smart questioning skills to shorten the sales cycle and avoid unnecessary objections
- Learn to identify and focus on strongest prospects
- Develop ability to profile prospects effectively, identify the strongest ones and focus on them to boost sales
- Enhance returns by making sales techniques more effective and improving operational efficiencies
- Learn to communicate skillfully and write high impact emails that deliver results
- Recognize customer stalling tactics and respond to them cleverly to improve closing rates
- Discover innovative ways to find new prospects and grow your territory rapidly
- Learn to write winning proposals that minimize objections, address potential areas of friction and boost sales
- Acquire new negotiating skills to better manage client expectations and enhance profitability
- Capture the benefits of combining strategic marketing activities with complementary sales efforts
- Discover innovative ways to turn objections into commitments
What Professional Sales Skills are Taught?
Depending on what’s needed, a custom designed sales training program can teach improved approaches to basic sales practices, or explore innovative tactics to deal with challenging situations and difficult customers.
To choose a suitable course, you should know what areas are covered and how the skills are taught. These are some of the core selling skills that should be included:
- Essential techniques to manage every step of the sales process competently
- Make smart choices when deciding between sales quantity and quality
- Learn effective time and territory management skills
- Find out how to get firm commitments and steady orders
- Discover innovative ways to use social networking platforms to improve sales
- Improve approaches to secure appointments successfully and evaluate needs effectively
- Learn to read body language more accurately to enhance in-person sales
- Use advanced questioning methods to assess needs, preempt objections and understand prospects better
- Develop skilled consultative sales abilities to align with customers more closely
- Discover effective ways to prevent and handle objections competently
- Improve sales correspondence abilities to communicate well and create impact
- Learn to create compelling financial justifications for prospects to make wise decisions
- Enhance presentation sales skills with unique approaches that captivate and impress
- Explore innovative group selling strategies and how to customize them for your organization
What’s included in an Advanced Sales Training Program?
To complement the high quality content and training, an effective professional selling skills class should have critical pre and post event activities and materials to provide a complete solution to help clients succeed.
When choosing a course, you should be clear about what is included and ask the provider for details about some of these areas:
- Pre-event interviews, sales process evaluation, individual skills assessment, customized sales training program design
- Pre-event meeting with client management to clarify goals, activities and expectations
- Sales training instruction and event facilitation by experienced trainers
- Training manual, workbook and all relevant course materials
- Group role-playing simulations and mini role-plays with feedback and coaching
- Sales training games and activities with contests and group challenges
- Illustrative sales stories, case studies, anecdotes and jokes
- Post-event analysis, reinforcement and implementation plan
Custom Sales Tools Developed for your Team
A comprehensive sales course that covers sophisticated concepts and creative methods to sell better will help participants to develop a number of resources that can be used immediately.
At a minimum, these are some of the sales tools that your organization can benefit from after attending an advanced professional selling skills program:
- Clearly defined step by step sales process
- Detailed sales territory management plan
- Needs assessment questioning list
- Sales presentation template and model
- Financial justification framework for proposals
- Sales negotiation tactics and strategies checklist
Still want to know more? Take a look at this outline of an advanced selling skills course.