On-Demand Mini-Courses

Each course is focused on improving your skill in one specific topic key to your success selling technology-based solutions in a complex environment.

• Developing Multiple Coaches at Multiple Levels – Competitive deals are won based on inside information. Coaches are those advocates who want you to win & help you with strategy. In this course you’ll learn how to develop new coaches at all levels of the decision process, how to best utilize them & what to say. This is the second most important determinant of winning complex sales opportunities.
   
• Uncovering Needs & Wants That Matter – Every organization has problems but most learn to live with them. Uncovering the ones that matter, and that you can solve, and that you solve better than anyone else, and doing all that in a short appointment takes real skill and a powerful tool. You’ll learn both in this class. This is the first major qualifier in any new sales opportunity and must be mastered.
  
  
• Success with Stakeholders – Companies don’t make decisions. People do. And they make them for their own unique reasons. Your goal is get all stakeholders on your side or at least neutralized. In this class, you’ll learn how to find out everything you need to know about each stakeholder from before contacting them, through the sales cycle and beyond if you stay on as their account manager. Then, how to influence them using that information.
  
  
• Obliterating Objections – You should never be caught off guard by 90% of the objections or resistance or tough questions raised on a sales calls, presentations, demos, or negotiations. Even those internal. They are predictable and repeatable. In this class not only will you learn how to address your most-frequently-heard objections, you’ll have multiple ways to handle each one. As a bonus, you’ll also get other objection responses for the other 10%, those we’ve gathered over the last 35 years of selling and coaching thousands of salespeople.
  
  
• Determining & Utilizing Your Differentiated Value – At the heart of selling in a competitive market is your understanding of what makes you better and different and then putting yourself into situations where that matters. Working deals where the client doesn’t see what makes you different or doesn’t see value in it leads to a low winning percentage. You’ll learn first what is your differentiated value (often not what you think) and then how to use it in your questioning (needs analysis), presenting, answering questions, negotiating and more. When you nail this, nothing leads to a higher win percentage.
  
  
• Predictive Sales Indicators – The sales events tracked and used for forecasting business are usually not good predictors of winning the business. If you’re in the final 3 competitors, you do not have a 33% chance of winning. So, the sales rep or manager relies on their “gut”. But, there is a much more accurate, behavioral way to track sales progress, based on key buyer behaviors. Learn and implement this and your forecasting accuracy will rise dramatically. Even better, you’ll know where to focus your attention when you’re stuck or not sure what to do next. Your whole idea of selling may change (for the better) once you learn this.
  
  
• Influencing Client Committees – On significant projects, client organizations want employee involvement and buy-in so they form committees. There are evaluation committees, executive steering committees, boards of directors and many others. By definition, when there are committees you’re working a complex sale. Committees have their own dynamics. In this class you’ll learn how to uncover what committees will be involved, understand their purpose for this deal, how to present to them, how to interact with members, how to use members to influence others and more.
  
  
• Sales Systems That Produce – The only way you can stay productive with the ever-expanding explosion of changing information and savvy clients and competitors is to implement specific personal sales systems. For example, you need specific step-by-step processes to connect with people on LinkedIn, to put together a team presentation, to lead a contract negotiation. Great sales systems are repeatable and lead to positive, predictable results, but they also fit your personality. If you don’t have systems, you’ll burn out from having to think thru everything for each task you do or you’ll make mistakes. You’ll get access to 7 you absolutely need and how to create others unique to your job. It usually takes years to figure this out but you’ll learn how to do so in hours.
  
  
• Working with partners and with (or against) consultants – Partners are those we team up with on specific deals. Some are long standing and others are ad-hoc. You need different strategies for both. Consultants are hired by clients & prospects to help them in an evaluation and/or implementation of a solution you’re competing for. Most salespeople do NOT like working with consultants. They feel they lose immense power. But, they’re just another stakeholder. You’ll learn how to build relationships with them and strategies for when they’re for you, neutral or against you in the deal. If consultants are the bane of your market, you’ll love this course.
  
  
• Collecting & Utilizing Competitive Intelligence – To create an effective strategy, you need competitive intelligence. Sure, there’s all sorts of information available online on the company, products and services, even pricing. But, just as important are their sales behaviors and tendencies. You’ll learn a system for how to gather all of that information and then how to use it without bad-mouthing your opponent. Even better, you’ll learn how to “set them up” so the client begins to eliminate them (at least mentally) during the sales process. This stuff, like many of the other courses listed, just isn’t taught in traditional sales classes. 
   
• Client Conference Presentations – This class is great for those who periodically present, those who don’t do it every day, yet are asked to speak at a client or industry event. They want to hear your expertise but don’t want it to be dry and boring. And they don’t want to see your nervousness. There are a whole bunch of things they expect. In this class, you’ll learn how to deal with all of those and more. You’ll learn how to put together a fun, interesting, and valuable presentation so you’ll not only survive it but you’ll thrive in it.
  
  
• Advanced Active Listening – Most salespeople today know how important it is to listen actively, meaning letting the other person know you’re listening because it causes them to trust you and open up more. In this class, after a quick review of active listening components in case you’ve never had a class in it, will be advanced techniques for troubleshooting where you may be lacking and tools and exercises for taking your listening skills to another level. We’ll connect what you hear to a dozen ways to use that information in various strategies.
  
  
• How to sell early adopters & beta sites – When your company releases a new product, despite what others may say every one of your clients is NOT a good prospect for it. Being the first or fifth install is much different than being the hundredth customer. Trying to sell a client who wants everything perfect before they buy is a waste of time here. The early buyer has a set of characteristics and needs to be qualified to fit. And, there are benefits to being first. It’s a different sales process and this class teaches you that. So, you’ll end up getting the kinds of clients that will be successful and become references for the later adopters.
  
  
• Strategies For Clients At Risk – It costs a lot more to sell a new client than to keep an existing one. This class focuses on strategies for those clients that are at risk of leaving. Something triggered it whether it was poor product performance, poor service, a change in management or something else. We identify a dozen reasons and a strategy for each one. We also cover prevention, what you can do to reduce the risk of them even thinking about leaving.
  
  
• Qualifying & Responding to RFPs (& RFIs) – You need to respond differently to RFPs & RFIs depending on who sent them, how involved you’ve been up to this point, and a number of other factors. We cover all of that in this class and give you the best strategies for each situation.
  
  
• Client Portfolio Management – As an account manager, whether you have 5 clients to manage or 50 or more, you have to decide how to much time to spend with each client. How to plan out the whole year (account managers)
  
  
• Rapid Onboarding – What’s the fastest and best way to get a new rep (or sales support person) up top speed and productive? Well, it starts with successful hiring. And once on board, giving them a plan for their first 90 days. Every piece is important and most steps build on each other, so there’s a certain order that’s better. We give you that in this class. How often you meet with them, how to involve others & who to involve. Onboarding sales people is different than with other employees and in this class you’ll learn what to do & how.
  
  
• Creating & Presenting New Product Playbooks – When a new product is released, someone from marketing or product management presents to the sales force. This is a good idea, and we help you how to do this effectively in this course but even better is when you add a playbook. A good playbook gives your salespeople all the information they need to sell it from qualification criteria to key differentiators to questions to ask to how they can get support. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to sell the product you’re responsible for and this class helps you do that. This should become your stand operating procedure for all new product releases, but if not, you’ll set yourself apart (in a good way) by doing so.
  
  
• Closing for Commitment – whether it’s moving on to the next step or finalizing the deal, there are ways that work better than others. Getting the words right (for your personality), practice, and confidence are key. We’ll teach all that in this course.
  
  
• Creating a business plan both you & your boss will love – Every year, you should put together a business plan for yourself, whether your boss or the company demands it. Most are created and collect dust on shelf or a server. But a good plan acts as a map, a GPS, to reach your goals. Even better is when you do this quarterly. There are many ways to put one together but we’ll go thru the key components you need to have to reach your goals and we’ll even critique your completed plan if you’d like us to!
  
  
• Forecasting with Accuracy – For sales managers, this class teaches you how to interrogate sales pipelines from your salespeople and/or account managers efficiently so you can forecast more accurately. You also get the Predictive Sales Indicators class as a bonus!
  
  
• Upgrading Your Sales Team with The Right Hire – It’s tempting to settle, when you need to hire someone yesterday! Sales managers, do not settle. Instead, hire someone that will improve your team. In this class, you’ll learn an efficient and effective method to identify the best sales candidates, interviewing questions that verify the skills you want, presenting the right information to get them excited about joining you and then how to select the best candidate from a batch of possibilities.