Sales staff has been forced to radically re-think their sales skills since the last quarter of 2009. The greatest period of economic growth that the world had seen, crashed spectacularly and sales techniques that were based primarily on growth, expansion and hiring more staff were suddenly obsolete. By the end of 2009 most companies had taken direct hits and the old sales paradigms were relegated to the distant past as pessimism grew.
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.
