| Professional Sales Skills: Understanding The Key Techniques | |||
| 15 Feb 2011 | WS3465 | £249 | Birmingham City Centre |
| 16 Feb 2011 | WS3466 | £249 | Leeds City Centre |
| 17 Feb 2011 | WS3467 | £259 | London Euston |
| Click on dates above for details & booking | |||
This fast-paced, intensive but fun 1 day workshop is focussed on helping those new to business-to-business sales understand and apply the professional sales techniques that work best within the education and skills sector.
The state of the economy and Government finances can only intensify the pressure on the learning sector to increase employer contributions and grow non-funded business. It is probable that most Colleges and Providers will need to explore ways to increase the volume of business they get from existing clients, attract new employers and make better progress towards becoming the employers' first choice for all staff and management training.
For this to happen it is imperative that the front-line sales and business development teams, including non-sales specialists, are using professional techniques and approaches that have been proven to work.
Coming from a background and a sector where education and training has been “free” and consequently seen, by employers, as offering little real benefit, the sector will have to work hard if is it to take business away from the well-established, purely commercial professional training suppliers. Many front-line teams, now tasked with selling learning and securing funding from employers, are poorly equipped for the challenge. Few come from a professional sales background and even fewer have received professional sales training.
Presenting the College/Providers' products and support-solutions in a way that makes them highly desirable to the employer is essential - and this applies equally to funded, part-funded and commercial programmes. Without these skills, business development opportunities will not be maximised.
If front-line, employer-facing teams are to generate the levels of employer contributions, new and repeat business expected of them, they will benefit hugely from being trained.
This workshop is for those new to sales and business development. It provides a sound foundation for those new to business-to-business sales or who have this rôle as a secondary responsibility within their main job.
For Whom
This 1 day workshop is for employer-facing staff from WBL providers and WBL Departments within FE Colleges who have responsibility for employer engagement and delivering fee income, but have little or no formal sales training. It is also suitable for managers looking to understand the approaches and techniques their staff need to adopt if they are going to be successful in identifying and responding to employers needs and/or generating new/repeat business.
Many of the techniques and approaches covered also have relevance to those new to sales and business development in other sectors and industries where softer, but still effective, sales techniques need to be used.
Programme Aims and Objectives
As a result of participating in the programme participants will:
- Learn how to sell to and develop business from employers in the real world
- Develop techniques to get in front of prospective customers
- Understand how to undertake a productive sales meeting with new or existing customers
- Learn how to close and deal with objections
The workshop contains examples of real-world practice gleaned from a range of industries that have relevance to selling within the learning sector, as well as specific links to the training marketplace.
All participants will be asked to participate in rôle-playing sessions to ensure techniques and skills covered are practised and understood
Content
Putting selling into perspective
- The art of building confidence
- The difference between hard selling and a solution route
- The importance of long term relationships
- The requirements to be a business development professional
Business prospecting
- Understanding the local opportunities and market
- Research techniques to identify prospects
- The differences between suspect, prospect, and customer
- The secrets on what and how to keep data on prospects
Appointment Setting
- The value of appointments and who to see
- Gaining the appointment – how the Professional does it
- Cold-calling techniques to gain appointments - including the opportunity to practise
The Sales Presentation
- The professional way to go about appointments
- Understand and Practise the key steps involved
- What to look for and what to avoid
- Understand the buying signals
- Learn how to leave with the door open
Closing techniques and skills
- The different closing techniques
- Undertake some practical closing exercises
- Not closing seems the only option – is it really? – other options
Objection handling
- The professional approach to objection handling
- Recognising the core objection
- Developing responses and approaches for the most common objections
- Rôle-play objection handling in a training scenario
Presenter
The workshop is presented by a sales and business development professional who has taken the most effective and customer focussed techniques from the commercial sector development and adapted them to the learning and skills market place in a way that strengthens the, all important, provider/employer relationship and grows business levels too.
Bespoke Programmes for Internal Delivery
Please note: Our professional sales skills programmes are modular in nature and when the programmes are run as internal staff development workshops on clients premises we can adjust conent to meet specific areas of need. For example coverage of an individual element such as "overcoming objections" could be extended to form a full one day workshop.
Related Sales and Business Development for Learning Providers Workshops
- Professional Sales Skills: An Introduction to
- Professional Sales Skills: Effective Appointments and Presentations
- Professional Sales Skills: Overcoming Objections, and Closing Effectively
- Professional Sales Skills: Refining and Extending Technique
- Professional Sales Skills: 2 day Fast Track Programme
- Professional Sales Skills: 3 day programme
- Professional Sales Skills: Understanding The Key Techniques
- Sales Techniques for Non-Sales Teams
- Strategic Overview of the Learning & Skills Sector - 2010
Certificates of Professional Development.
Formal Certificates of Development will be issued, by post, to participants who complete this workshop. These certificates will detail the key learning aims and the face-to-face learning hours undertaken, enabling participants to update their CPD records and logs accordingly. The workshop also allows time, during the day, for participants to reflect on and record their personal learning development and consider how best to apply the knowledge gained on return to work. This element of the programme is designed to maximise the benefits from attending and enable participants to make better review judgments when recording their CPD activities.