Finding the right training for your staff is the first step, as improving a person’s self-esteem, especially during economic downturn, can act as a catalyst for a whole range of beneficial actions simply because your staff will project a positive image.

Sales people need primarily to be ethical and have integrity. This cannot be trained into a person but must be sought during the interview process when hiring staff. Sales training can provide the sales skills, knowledge and expertise that staff will need to do their job properly. Comprehensive knowledge is required about both the product that is being sold and in the techniques that will be used to sell that product.

Those who excel in sales tend to be non-threatening and professional and have a good understanding of human nature and how to encourage clients to invest in their product. Many sales training courses just don’t work because the trainers themselves have no emotional intelligence and cannot identify what will make a person decide to purchase or not purchase a product.

Market research shows that clients will make their decision as to whether they will buy a product or not within the first 10-17 seconds after they encounter your sales person. The product itself is mostly irrelevant to these subconscious decisions.

Traditionally sales training has relied on a set formula, tricks, tactics or techniques for handling specific scenarios. People are not fools and can generally spot a dishonest person or sales pitch in the first few seconds of an interaction. While they may not process the information intellectually they will make their decisions based on intuitive feelings.

Consumers are increasingly more educated and are constantly making decisions as to the truthfulness of the information they are bombarded with from advertisements on all sides. Traditional sales techniques required the sales person to pressurize the client by leaning on them until they close the deal. This method now creates an unhappy atmosphere that will scare the modern client away.

Choose a sales training course that enables your staff to build pleasure into their interactions with clients so that the purchase occurs in a win-win situation allowing the client to walk away feeling understood. Clients must be cultivated so that they come back to you in the future.

Companies need to focus their sales force on responding to the clients’ needs. Selling IT systems, for example, requires a good understanding of the clients’ business needs, not just the technological specifications. Whereas previously it was sufficient to let the IT techies attend sales fairs, it is now preferable that senior management attend, as they will have a better understanding of how the technology can be married to the needs of a business.

Sales training must focus on isolating differentiators that exist between their product and all the competing products on the market and working these up into marketing pluses for their product. The sales skills needed here is an ability to show the purchaser why buying your particular product will serve them better than buying that of the competitor.

By looking at the buying behavior of the client base before leaving the office, the team will increase their skills and ability to win the deal. The selling strategy has to reflect what the client needs, not what the sales force might think is applicable.

Negotiating strategies taught in sales training courses must look at optimizing outcomes for all parties in a deal. Honesty regarding one’s own products and a willingness to meet the client halfway by providing for unusual or customized solutions will help develop a long-term business relationship. Repeat business, even at a relatively small level, will help many companies sit out the downturn. When companies are having difficulties they would rather use a friendly and helpful source company that has put in the effort previously, than switch to a new and unknown quantity.

Cultivating new prospects is a sales skill that needs to be encouraged throughout the business world. Everyone who walks in through the door or interacts with the company can be turned into a word-of-mouth advertising opportunity simply by treating them with respect and by being helpful and friendly at all times.

Finally, do not forget that sales management is a crucial factor for a sales team and that sales training must focus on developing skills in management that will grow the team and nourish them. Healthy sales come from optimistic sales teams and it is the responsibility of management to ensure that the team remains positive and use their training and skills to the best possible advantage.

Recently it has come to the attention of those who run sales training seminars that there is much to learn by getting right out of the box of whatever industry they train for and having a look at how other industries train their staff to sell. For example techniques used to sell tangible and intangible products can differ quite dramatically.

Each industry whether it be life insurance, real estate, vacuum cleaners, cars or cleaning products develops a sales strategy that works for them. Each style of selling is consistent through that piece of the market. By taking all these strategies and applying them across the board to other types of products, it is possible to maximize your income.

The car business makes effective use of every closing technique ever invented and they work like a dream. Those involved in selling photocopiers have come up with so many varied ways of getting past the gate-keepers of a business that they can literally get in anywhere. Sales people selling life insurance have developed referrals to a degree unheard of in other sales areas.

By adding all these techniques together and using them, it is possible to boost your income. Adding to your sales techniques by attending as many varied sales training seminars as you can, will enhance your ability to perform in your own market. The latest and most up-to-date information on sales tactics, lead generation and closing techniques can take you to the next level as a sales person.

This is not a period in history when a sales person can rest on their laurels and put their feet up. A market that looks dead and done to many is full of fresh opportunities for those who keep moving and keep open to new ideas and disciplines.

Sales people need to bring pleasure back into selling and part of this is based in new ideas and techniques which can only be learned in sales training seminars. A technique that a photocopier salesperson uses might be just the ticket to get you in the door of your most stubborn refusal.

Being a good sales person requires excellent people skills. Being a sales manager requires even more self knowledge and the ability to develop and guide others. One of the first steps required in sales manager training is that the manager involved focus on their own self-awareness and support this by creating personal plans of action.

The external and internal decision-making styles need to be identified not just for the manager but for each individual on the team. The manager needs to be able to identify his/her own strongest talents and that of the team members, so as to focus each person on the work that will make them and the company most successful. Collecting this information makes it easier for a sales manager to maintain his/her authority over the team and create opportunities for personal and commercial growth in the team.

Many people waste inordinate amounts of time on their weaknesses, trying to fix themselves. By focusing staff and managers on their strengths and growing the positive person a great deal of energy and optimism is unleashed to create a more balanced workforce.

A good sales manager nurtures his/her team and mentors the people he/she is responsible for. Having insight into their thinking processes and goals is invaluable here.

For sales management training to be successful requires that the organization’s strategy, rewards, people and processes, all work together. A good manager cannot function in an organization where there are problems in these areas. A sales strategy that is developed in one branch of an organization that is geographically spread out will not work in other branches. Processes that are applicable in the accounting or production department can work against sales. The organization needs to look good for individuals to perform well.

Effective leadership skills will help sales managers enjoy their work while increasing sales and reducing staff turnover. To achieve this the sales manager needs to invest in his/her own training as the end results will assist all involved in the team in achieving the company’s sales targets.

In a recession the entire model that companies are running on needs to change. Companies are no longer responding to a demand that exists but must start to create a demand where there is none.

Companies have made dramatic cuts to staff, budgets, and in-house costs, and are prepared to live with existing products and services. Survival is the name of the game, growth a distant memory. There just isn’t the money around to invest in new services or products to get ahead of the competition.

When companies have made the decision not to buy from anyone, it no longer makes sense to prove to them that you are the best. To be able to sell you must create the demand by showing the buyer that the solution you offer is not just the best choice but the essential choice.

The questions you need to ask must uncover problems that the buyer did not know they had by challenging their perceptions of their situation. By illustrating that the problems are greater and more urgent than the buyer recognizes, you increase the value of what you have to offer. You have just the product or service to help them with the problem they did not know they had.

Discussions need to be based around the buyer’s most immediate problems and preferably these discussions must be carried out at the executive level where decisions are made.
Networking is as important as ever, as are referrals but strategically focused. A bird in the hand is worth far more than all the birds in the bush. Handing out leaflets indiscriminately is a thing of the past. Leaflets need to be mailed to only semi-definite prospects and no others.

All the marketing materials produced must reflect this approach by focusing clients on thinking differently about their problems and about your proposed solution. You need to get inside your clients’ skins and think the way they are doing to be able to make them see that you are the one they need.

Isolate the target; use the best weapons, aim and fire.

Sales people with experience were the first to acknowledge that during a poor market the skills used by a company have to change. Skills that work in a strong market will no longer work in a weaker market and can in fact work against you. However, there are always opportunities for those who can change with the times.

The kind of skills that 2009 made necessary involved cutting back on spending, getting by with what the organization already had, and making internal and external changes to the organization that would cut costs or boost revenues as quickly as possible.

Huthwaite is an organization, which has created its business out of diagnosing what is wrong with sales teams and prescribing a specific tailor-made cure. Their medicine falls under the name, the SPIN(r) Solution Suite, and is aimed at providing a complete program to encourage excellence from all types of sellers.

A five-point modular program, the SPIN(r) Solution deals with sales skills, and demonstrates the capabilities of a sales team in a creative way so that the business stands out from its competitors by accurately meeting its clients’ needs. The other four modules focus on strategies, negotiations, sourcing of new business and managing the team.

Neil Rackman, Huthwaite’s founder, and his team of researchers spent 12 years studying what made the world’s leading sales organizations not just successful but excellent, by analyzing 35,000 sales calls made in 23 countries. Huthwaite is therefore able to offer insight into practical sales skills that high achievers need to use to get the best results.

Based in actual behavioral science that has been thoroughly researched, tested and proven in the field, these skills have been honed so that they can be transmitted to trainees and will allow staff to achieve the best results time and again. These sales skills are not based on one individual’s theory or the accumulated wisdom from a lifetime of selling and have been heralded by those who use them as being ground-breaking training models.

Many courses are built around a technique or tactic that has proven successful for one individual and are not customized to suit the person or company being trained. Gates has developed a system of online sales courses that are very effective as they allow an employee to learn at their own speed and take as much time as they want when they can fit it into a work schedule, to internalize new ideas and strategies.

Although online sales courses cut down on travel expenses, booking conference venues, and providing meals and hotel rooms for participants there is also no interface with the usual clients or business and so no opportunity to test out what is being learnt in real time. Valuable selling time is lost to the business while the course participants are out to lunch in more ways than one.

Employees frequently resent being taken out of their day-to-day environment for training as it impacts negatively on their family and private lives. Employees already give a third or more of their time to earning a living and a weekend or week-long training courses is seen as simply more time lost from the things people really want to be doing.

Where normal sales courses require a certain number of participants to make them efficient financially for a business, online sales training can cater for one new employee, an entire sales force or just one person who is struggling with certain concepts or practices. Online courses can be customized to be specific to your business and your selling environment without wasting time on additional information that will never be used.

Bill Gates’s method makes sales training pain-free and has clearly been highly effective for Microsoft as it is the world leader in the computing sector. The emphasis is on individual choices not forced participation.

Knowledge sharing has to occur for a company to be successful and training is one of the simplest ways to achieve this. Employees do want to improve their knowledge of their company and products but resent sales courses that do not fit in with their work needs and private lives.

Time to re-group and re-think your strategy, and especially, to re-train your sales force to engage in consultative selling. Sending out sales people to talk to executives about adding value when previously they have sold on the basis of selling product features will not work. The sales people simply don’t have the requisite information to perform like this.

Consultative selling is a new training method that recognizes that buyers purchase from companies and individuals whom they trust. Developing relationships with clients is a key focus of consultative selling and is done by focusing on a client and their needs. Advice will be welcomed in a relationship that is based on trust.

The three core principles of consultative selling are focusing on the client, earning the right to sell to them and persuading them through being involved in their everyday issues.
These principles will inform the kind of techniques that are used to get through the different stages of a sales process and close a deal that will earn commission for the sales person and make the client happy.

Understanding the core beliefs that successful sales people have, which enable them to approach clients in this way is essential. Key selling skills need to be aimed at building effective relationships with clients. Questions need to be asked of the client in an intelligent way so as to elicit the kinds of responses that will make the most of meetings with clients and make potential clients into customers.

A mental database of illustrative stories derived from other clients’ experiences will allow the sales person to capture a potential client’s interest. These stories are also a subtle way of illustrating that a sales person is concerned not just with the bottom line but with providing the best possible service and products for a prospective client. The sales person needs to be able to help clients isolate and understand their own needs and encourage them to participate in finding the right solutions for their needs.

Relying on training alone has been proven to be a bad idea. Achieving real change in a significant and tangible manner requires effective change management that acknowledges and incorporates the basic principles behind adult learning.

One of the facts behind changing behavior permanently is that there has to be a component whereby changes are measured and rewarded. Organizations do not change voluntarily. Staff members will not willingly embrace a change that is demanded of them. If their performance is measured and rewarded they will change more easily.

Adults will only learn something new if they can see it is important and that it applies to their situation. If the sales coaching appears to be relevant to their job and they can see that it will make a difference they will be more willing to learn and apply the new practices to their jobs.

Spending a great deal of time away from the office, in a classroom style setting, is not productive unless the training requires feedback and practice one-on-one. Courses of this nature can also be expensive as they require hiring venues, providing catering and paying for hotel room and transport to and from the office. It is much better to get a program going in-house that will allow individuals to study at their own speed and to integrate their learning immediately into their everyday work habits. This sort of learning seems to take better and to make a measurable change to the work habits of the employees.

In particular, organizations and the people in them do not change overnight. To change successfully will require constant reinforcement and reminders from management. The sales manager in particular needs to encourage change by having a do-what-I-do approach so that staff members can mimic his or her performance. Everybody learns better by example and the sales manager’s attitude and approach is paramount here.

Individuals will need coaching and objective assessment to achieve true change. A buddy system or a mentoring system is valuable in this context as sales coaching needs a personalized touch in-house as much as is required in the new client relationship. Sales team members must feel that it matters how they perform as individuals.

The Houston Sales training is a sales training program that is based on action and develops a motivated sales team which will be able to continually achieve good sales. Participants get involved and practice what they are learning so their techniques are changed for good.

The recession has caused a very different market to come into existence and Houston Sales Training Programs have had to develop ways of selling that are specially adapted to this new environment. Robert Taylor believes that training is best offered by someone with experience who has themselves been remarkably successful. He has personally made 100’s of presentations and has cold-called 1000’s of clients.

Many trainers have learnt their trade from studying textbooks and watching how others do it. Very few of them can give your personal examples of what works and what doesn’t. Even fewer can tell you why. The bigger training companies tend to offer ivory tower solutions that sound good and seem like they should work but somehow out there in the real world, these solutions fall down taking the morale of the newly trained sales person with them.

The Houston Sales Training method covers all the techniques and processes needed to sell your products and services. Strict discipline in needed by sales trainees in setting goals and doing daily cold calls. The unusual and powerful prospecting methods that are taught will ensure new contacts are always coming in. Powerful presentations with training in the impact of your voice and how to use it best are combined with methods for approaching the four main personality types. Getting past gatekeepers to the decision-makers is another technique that will enhance the trainees’ game.

Good sales people need help to grow into better sales people and who better to mentor them that an expert. Robert Taylor has the reputation of lighting a metaphorically fire under the sales people that he trains. He was earning in the top 1% personal income tax bracket from his personal sales before he went into sales training. He has more than 30 years of experience in personal sales, sales management and stock brokering.