Sales training exercises that any manager or sales coach can use.
If you watch football training sessions or the equivalent in any sport, you will see a lot of repetition. The players or athletes involved will be practising basic manoeuvres, over and over. Winning rests on absolute mastery of the basics. Sales training exercises should have the same purpose.
Research gathered by Malcolm Gladwell for his book, Outliers, suggests that acquiring expertise in anything takes about ten thousand hours of doing the thing.
No Cost or Low-Cost Improvement Opportunities
Sales managers can employ this well-understood principle to improve results without spending any money. Having salespeople set aside time to practice the basics increases performance no matter how experienced they are.
If you are in a selling role consider this question: How much time do you spend each day/week/month practising the basics?
You would not be alone if you struggled to recall any time spent doing this in the last year. Training courses rarely take the time to allow practice through repetition. It takes too long and can be perceived as boring.
Reading or listening to books about selling, as most authors point out, has no value unless the principles, ideas, or methods are tried out, practised, and practiced.*
Trying new things in the field is risky. The results could be worse than they would have been if things were done the old way, leading to lost business or poorer performance. If you play golf and have had professional lessons you will know how hard it is to apply what was learned on the practise range to improve performance in a real game.
Here are some basic sales training exercises that will test new and experienced salespeople. Those who improve their ability to answer these questions improve their performance. See tips for practising at the end.
Sales Training Exercises
Answer the question, “How are you different from all the other suppliers who offer similar things?”
This is one of the most difficult questions to answer in a convincing manner. Superlatives just don't work. Those who simply say, “We are better than the others” without substantiating the statement with evidence, simply undermine their own integrity.
The best answers string together three facts that allow people asking the question to draw their own conclusions.
Answer the question, “How do we know that what you are offering is the best value?”
If a customer asks this question it is because they want to avoid the cost of evaluating other potential suppliers.
The most common answers we hear in training classes have two flavours. One involves acknowledging that the customer should check out competitors and the other indicates that good discounts are available!
A better solution would be to explain why the customer would be getting the best value available using a string of three facts.
Respond to the objection, “The price is too high”
This is a classic objection that is most often raised early in a selling conversation or at the end of the buying process. Even experienced sellers can be caught out by it.
The best way of handling it is to have customers turn around their own objections.
Give reasons for a customer engaging in a conversation
Most sellers quickly learn the key value or benefit statements that customers respond to however, delivery can always be improved.
The most common sin is being too long-winded. Anything that takes longer than about 15 seconds, risks causing the customer to tune out.
If you are a sales manager, you can use these sales training exercises to have team members practice answering difficult customer questions. Ask each salesperson to answer these questions or to respond as they would in a customer situation. Have them record what they say on their phone. Encourage them to identify ways to improve what they say. You can have a group do this in pairs rather than putting people on the spot. Allow some time for completion of the exercise and then have each pair share their improved answers with the whole group.
It’s important to allow people time to create better responses and to try their improved answers immediately. Their own ideas will always be easier to adopt than anyone else’s.
Praise all efforts to improve. There will be no need to criticise. Participants will do that for themselves.
There is not much value in practising responses to a question or statement just once. Swap the pairs around and have them repeat the exercise.
Revisit each exercise at least once a month until it seems the responses can't be improved. Then repeat the exercises again after three to six months to incorporate new developments. Answers should keep on getting better as they take into account new innovations and ideas.
As a manager, you might be expected to do the exercises yourself as a demonstration of what is good. It is helpful to acknowledge that your responses are also subject to improvement.
If you are a salesperson, recruit your manager or a peer as a coach and work through the exercises as prescribed. You will find that you quickly increase in confidence and effectiveness.
Practise is about doing the mundane while exercising the imagination. As Einstein put it, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”.
Without practise, practice is given over to chance. If you aren’t already practising, you are almost certainly missing an opportunity to raise your game and enjoy better results.
Any manager or salesperson can use these sales training exercises to practise and improve skills. Regular practice inevitably leads to increased sales performance.
* Since the distinction between the word, ‘practise’ and ‘practice’ may depend on where you learnt English, in this article I have used the British definition – i.e.. ‘practise’ is a verb meaning to do something repeatedly whereas ‘practice’ is a noun that refers to the act itself.
Article by Clive Miller
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