Sales Advantage Series

To compete in today's complex sales environment, salespeople must go beyond traditional sales approaches and serve both their customers and their own organizations as consultants and strategists. The Sales Advantage Series focuses on building a consultative mindset by employing critical consultative approaches, skills, and tools to create business-level value for the client. To build the strategist mindset, the series includes modules focused on helping salespeople identify high-yield opportunities for their own company, while managing the competition in a way that is beneficial to the client.

"Consultative selling"—the ability to understand and link solutions to a customer's business priorities—is a critical skill but is no longer by itself a differentiator. "Strategic selling" is also required—being a strategist for one's own organization, selecting high-yield opportunities, and demonstrating business value, all while managing the competition in a way that is beneficial to the customer. The real opportunity to stand out from the competition lies in becoming both a true consultant to the client and a strategist to the business, asking a different set of questions focused on the customer's core business processes.

Once the salesperson thoroughly understands these consultant and strategist processes—how they link to each other and what kind of information is exchanged among them—it is possible to identify unique opportunities to improve key metrics for the client organization.

Overview

The Sales Advantage Series equips high-performing salespeople to be seen by clients and their own organization as true business advisors, setting them apart from the competition. The series takes salespeople through the most crucial aspects of consulting: discovering the customer's critical success factors, aligning the solution to the customer's buying processes, differentiating the customer offering, and improving the customer's business processes.

The series also builds salespeople's strategist skills to more effectively manage opportunities, influence client decisions, and manage the competition so they are not blindsided.

All of these areas are vital to creating business value for the customer and profitable opportunities for the selling organization, which is a requisite for competing effectively in today's market. Each Sales Advantage Series module introduces strategic approaches that equip your salespeople to become the business advisors their clients require.

Series Outcome

Companies need expertise and solutions that address business fundamentals such as productivity, efficiency, financial results, and return on investment. Customer organizations need salespeople who can help them respond to these needs. Selling organizations need salespeople who can manage the business side of their portfolio, driving better business for them and their company. Addressing these two sides of the equation will result in salespeople equipped to win, keep, and grow more profitable business.

Approach

The Sales Advantage Series is comprised of configurable, instructor-led modules. The modules include:

Aligning Sales with Business Value
Conducting Strategic Business Calls: Discovering Critical Success Factors
Aligning with Customer Buying Behaviors
Creating Differentiated Offerings
Managing Opportunities
Managing Decisions
Managing Competition

Modules can be taken independently or as a complete series over time. Participants complete pre-work for each module to better leverage session activities that bring the concepts to life through reflection, case work, and application of new tools. Salespeople also work on their own client opportunities to advance their understanding and use of the tools.

Optional half-day application sessions are available to reinforce key concepts and allow salespeople to put new ideas into practice and further advance their understanding.