It may be that an entire series of courses is not necessary to improve results. It could be that just certain course modules will make up the largest components for improvement.

Base your course and module selection priorities on the results of the Sales Diagnostic Questionnaire (SDQ).The SDQ surveys 204 observable skilled competencies in 31 areas of the sales process from prospecting to closing.

It's free and takes 30 to 45 minutes to complete. You can take as many sessions as you'd like. Take it on-line and see your results immediately in multiple reporting formats including text recommendations and graphs.

Use this cross reference to set the priority order of the courses or modules in your own personal results based curriculum.

• Basic Sales Knowledge Foundation becomes the gateway to most other courses in selling
• The Hunt - Prospecting for new business and account penetration
• Time and Territory Management to maximize customer face time
• THREE Applications Specific Value Selling Models
  • FAB/TEA Value Selling Model for call centers and retail selling
  • ACE Value Selling Model for highly competitive and price sensitive markets
  • Value Selling Strategies P.R.O.S.P.E.C.T. Model for more complex big ticket competitive selling environments
• Objection Preventing, Preempting and Responding along with how to handle the unanswerable customer concerns
• Principle Negotiations for both small and large situations where value is the key issue
• Interpersonal Communications Strategies using personality similarities and differences to enhance interactions
• Additional Communications Courses - Active Listening Skills, Managing Customer Expectations and Business Email Etiquette
• Additional Resources including "master reference modules, e-books and e-tools
• Coaching Guides for Sales Managers, Coaches and Trainers

This series of courses is designed to support the seller obtain the fundamental knowledge they need to sell. These modules are pre-requisites to many of the other courses. You only need to take them once either as a stand alone module or as a part of a course.

• Profiling & Qualifying Prospects
• Research the Customer
• Competitor Analysis to identify your Unique and Distinctive Selling Points
• Functional Product, Service and Company Knowledge

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The Hunt

Prospecting - The Life Blood of Selling

Keeping the funnel filled with qualified prospects requires that multiple methods of contact be used with a planned and measurable implementation schedule. Whether you are prospecting to penetrate and grow a current client base, or you are seeking new customers, the knowledge and skills of prospecting are essential to the profession of selling.

Prospecting methods can be active or passive. Using multiple methods in a targeted market segment produces a leveraging effect that can significantly increase prospecting effectiveness.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Construct a profile of you most profitable customers
• Identify resources to locate prospects that meet that profile
• Identify the six decision making roles involved in your sales
• Learn how to turn screeners into coaches
• Use four powerful methods to quickly establish trust and rapport
• Use seven effective active and passive contact methods to generate a stream of qualified prospects
• Structure prospecting methods to prevent most common initial contact objections
• Develop a 12 month prospecting plan that will leverage your efforts, track your results and establish your ratios
• Understand Funnel Management and Ratio Management
• Use a contact and opportunity management system to prevent priority prospects from falling through the cracks

Reference Materials

• Conditioning the Mind for Success (8 page guide (PDF)
• Prospect Management (Excel) Spreadsheet (sort capable)
  • Sample Word doc file ABC Co for Spreadsheet. (for ease of use, save in same folder as the Prospect Management Spreadsheet)

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Time & Territory Management

Develop customer and prospect contact plans that will minimize travel time and maximize selling time with accounts with the greatest potential.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Categorize and classify customers and prospects
• Determine the potential sales volume available in the territory
• Develop criteria to determine frequency of contact by type of contact
• Determine number of prospects available in the territory
• Understand the time averages for different types of client / prospect contact methods
• Develop a contact plan by type and frequency of contact
• Design a territory traveling plan
• Redistribute resources to meet goals

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Three "consultative value selling" models are available to help create the ultimate objection free sale. Your selection is based on your specific application. All three are included in the Learn Selling Online full curriculum.

FAB / TEA

Value Selling Model

The FAB/TEA is designed for call center deployment where time is of the essence and for retail sales applications where customer engagement is critical to advancing the sale. This model is a straightforward, easy to learn, and highly flexible way to sell value.

Feature: Tell the Feature
Advantage: Explain it
Benefit: Ask how the Benefit will fill the previously identified need.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Use the primary research questions to orient the customer in areas where you are strong, the competitor is weak and the customer has needs
• Structure those interview questions so they lead directly into the value selling model
• Use your strengths to offset areas competitors advantages that you are unable to neutralize

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ACE

Value Selling Model

ACE is a favorite of sales professionals who sell highly competitive and price sensitive products and services. It is used both in-person and in TeleSelling environments.

ACE directly incorporates the FAB-TEA model in the the Add a benefit question and then expands it to include direct questions related to what it Costs the customer (subjectively and financially) not to have the sellers unique or distinctive selling points' benefits. And then sets Expectations with the prospective customer that they can get those benefits.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Profile and Qualify a prospect
• Review the process of Researching the Prospect and the competition
• Conduct a Competitor Analysis
• Use multiple questioning strategies to gain critical information
• Understand the ACE Value Selling process and its function
• Know what objections to expect and how to prevent them
• Focus the topics of conversation in areas where you are strong, your competitor is weak and the customer has needs
• Quickly uncover needs that only you can fill with your unique and distinctive selling points
• Minimize price pressure
• Set expectations that only you can meet to help the customer rule out the competitor.
• Help the prospect defend your unique and distinctive selling points

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Value Selling Strategies

P.R.O.S.P.E.C.T. Model

Value Selling Strategies (VSS) model is used for both small ticket items and multi-million dollar sales conducted in-person or over the phone. This course includes a full audio program to reinforce the skills and strategies.

Similar to the previous two value selling models, in the Value Selling Strategies process, the actual selling is done during a strategically designed interview structured around major closing strategies and is designed to prevent most common sales stopping/stalling objections

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Conduct a Strategically Designed Sales Interview
  • Use a sales interaction model that is guided by the psychological buying process
  • Identify the real buying influences, decision makers and buying process
  • Guide the prospect to discover the value of your product/service
  • Avoid common pitfalls of presenting solutions after discovering needs
  • Create a sense of urgency for the prospect to own your product and service
  • Prevent most objections including price
  • Help the prospect set the product/service selection buying criteria
  • Include your unique and distinctive selling points in the criteria
  • Let the prospect rule-out and lockout the competition for you
  • Discover priority buying motives
  • Let the prospect make the claims of performance, rather than you
  • Rehearse the prospect to sell internally for you
  • Structure your sales interactions around major closing strategies
• Use an Interim Action Plan and other tools to block the competition between contacts
  • Prevent competition from invading between contacts
  • Set the action items as your next call objective
  • Use the interim close to set your next meeting
  • Continually advance the sale
• Use this unique Value Proposition to address the customer's criteria that now include your unique and distinctive selling points
  • Enable the buyer to systematically rule out the competition
  • Present your product/service to the customer's selected criteria
  • Structure your presentation around major closing formats
• Prevent and Respond to Objections
  • Prevent most objections from occurring
  • Respond effectively to objections with a powerful three-step process
  • Utilize a master list of 85 sales stopping objection prevention and response strategies

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Objection Handling

A fundamental principle of the quality process is to prevent errors. In selling, objections are process errors. Once an objection occurs, the next step is to work back up stream to find the root cause, then develop a way to prevent it from occurring again. Continually getting the same objections, that cost sale after sale, signal the need to develop effective prevention and response strategies.

There are just ten different categories of objections. Sales Professionals hear the same ten objections stated a dozen different ways. But, most Sales Professionals get most of their objections in just 5 categories. Continuous field research clearly demonstrated that once a strategy has been developed to prevent and respond to three or four objections in a specific category, then all objections in that category are handled. That means, that for most sellers, learning to deal with just 5 objections is all that is necessary to significantly impact sales!

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Differentiate objections, conditions and resistance
• Use the Competitor Analysis tool to know which objections to expect in each sales situation and to provide the information needed to prevent, preempt and respond to these objections
• Learn the ten buyer beliefs, that when missing, cause objections
• Identify which buyer beliefs are missing by types of objections
• Develop strategies to put the buyer beliefs in place that will prevent objections
• Use the three step Objection Response Strategy to develop effective responses
• Use the response strategies to Preempt objections
• Learn how to answer the "unanswerable" objections

Linked to this course are the 85 most common sales stopping objections along with Prevention strategies and Responses that other salespeople have used successfully.

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Principled
Negotiations

This course is designed to equip you with the knowledge, skills and strategies to negotiate win-win outcomes.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Differentiate adversarial negotiation tactics with those of principled negotiations
• Learn five different means to establish power
• Understand how to counter Adversarial Tactics
• Learn about the Fundamental Human Needs and the Business Needs that motivate a person to negotiate
• Understand how to use the "Needs-Interests-Position" model to turn non-negotiable "Position" statements into negotiable "Interest" statements
• Understand and use the principles that guide negotiations
  • Principle # 1: Know the options - yours and theirs
  • Principle # 2: Know what you have to negotiate
  • Principle # 3: Transition non-negotiable "position statements" into negotiable "statements of interest"
  • Principle # 4: Identify and set "standards of legitimacy" to establish value
  • Principle # 5: Set criteria for re-selecting options
  • Principle # 6: Present solutions that meet the criteria
  • Principle # 7: Never give in to pressure; only to principle
• Use the negotiations checklist to prepare for any type or size negotiations

A case study development worksheet supports learning and can be used to prep for real-life negotiation scenarios.

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Interpersonal Communications Strategies*

The purpose of of this program is to understand that each of us has a Personality Driven Interaction Style and how that style interacts with different styles. A style is a set of personality preferences that, when combined, form a our method of interaction with others. By identifying our own style and the the styles of others, we can learn strategies for better communication.

Any professional who must communicate ideas, instructions, sell, or work in a team environment will benefit from this session.

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Identify your own Personality Driven Interaction Style
• Recognize the basic characteristics of Personality Driven Interaction Styles
• Determine the preferred style of others
• Develop a strategy to interact successfully with people whose styles differ from your own

* This course is based on the work of Carl Jung and of the mother daughter team of Myers and Briggs.

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Special Communications Courses

Active Listening Skills: The purpose of this course is to present techniques that will allow you to provide feedback to the speaker in your conversations in such a way as to deepen trust and respect as well as prevent communications based errors.

Business Email Etiquette: Communicating with both internal and external customers by email is now as routine as talking with them on the phone. Email Etiquette is now a mission critical skill set in today's marketplace. In fact, for many companies, email communications are many times more frequent than actual telephone calls. What this means is that one unintentionally aggressive message in a stressful encounter can cause significant damage to a long-standing relationship all of which could have been prevented with a brief training course in Business Email Etiquette.

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Master Reference Modules (non-interactive lists and resources)

1. 85 Most Common Sales Stopping Objections with Prevention and Response Strategies provided
2. 53 Step Diagnostic Strategic Sales Plan: with Tactics to implement each step provided
3. 15 Clues an Account is in Trouble
4. 10 Tips to Building Better Relationships
5. 39 Closing Strategies
6. 6 Strategies to Enhance Customer Satisfaction
7. 20 Presentation Formats
8. 8 Question Structures
9. 9 Ways to Reassure the Customer

e-Books and Tools

1. Priority Prospect Project (P3) Strategy Session Manual (PDF)
2. P3 two page instruction guide (PDF)
3. Strategic Sales Plan - 116 page manual (PDF)
4. Strategic Sales Plan - 2 page check list (PDF)
5. Conditioning the Mind for Success - 8 page guide (PDF)
6. Prospect Management Spreadsheet (sort capable)
   • Sample Word doc file ABC Co for Spreadsheet. (for ease of use, save in same folder as the Prospect Management Spreadsheet)

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