I need to confess and at the same time ask for your advice

Hi all

My name is Peter and I have been involved in training for about 12 years, I look after the sales and business development, you would think being a partner in a training company I would be expert! Shamefully I admit I’m not, the business has grown almost entirely through referrals meaning my partner Debra and her highly talented crew are the main reason for our success. It does prove one thing; they are very good at it.

Its true I have been lazy in my own development and taken our success for granted and my confession means I am willing to do something about it.

I have to come up with our own open or public sales course, one that wouldn’t insult people’s intelligence (when I say people I mean me) one that fits our philosophy of learning by doing.

So I know what the problem is and I know what is needed, all that’s left is the how?

My initial thoughts are around a two day course using professional role-play actors and I want to stay with the same sale throughout the two days. From the early stages of the sale through to the close, I want to dip in and out of the scenario, try out stuff, see my mistakes, get feedback, do some exercises dealing with the subject and then go back and try again, I want to able to see where I go wrong and of course re-enforce what I do right, did I ask the right questions, did I listen to the answers properly and what impact was I having on the buyer. I want it help my self awareness around my behaviour when dealing with a customer, above all it must be as near as dam it true to life.

If you have any thoughts please let me know.

Cheers Pete

Hi Peter,

Good on you for trying to do something about it!
Well, the easiest way to deal with this one is to come up with some variety of personality types which most people would deal with. If you are unfamiliar with the course I am referring to it is based on four colours.

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So, based on this here is a basic outline of what each one means:
Yellow - outgoing and fun person - highly likeable and cares about what people think, being liked and likely to make impulsive decisions. This person would respond to pictures and mentioning people as referrals within a sales presentation.
Recognisable as getting bored with detail and likes to talk alot.

Red - dominant person who is driven and often quite self focused on success. would respond to clear and precise presentation with results and solutions to their problems

Blue- figures person - wants many figues and takes longer to make decisions

Green - softer and more caring person wants to be liked but not very concerned with detail.

Okay, so what you could do is give the sales people an explanation of each of these and how you would present your product to them. What methods you would use on each personality type and how that would work.

You could also look at what the main objections are by these different personality types and why they would use that as a reason. ie personality type blue is likely to say: I want to think about it. This is a trust concern and the sales agent has not given enough information to secure this prospect in their decision.

It is hard for me to explain everything to you in this forum but feel free to post me a reply and I can give you more detail.

I hope this has helped



Melissa

Business Development Manager

Hi Peter. Welcome to the community.

Welcome Peter.

Many of the "experts" in sales training are not, in fact, experts at all.

There is, however, some good advice on these boards if you dig in and take what you need.