Inside Our Head

Our August 10-12 "Getting Into Your Customer's Head" sales training seminar is now sold out.

Please contact us regarding future dates and locations.

When was the last time your company took a hard look at your sales proposals? The value your company provides to customers likely changes over time. Has your sales proposal changed, too? Does your sales proposal persuasively communicate that you are the preferred solution provider in your marketplace?

At TopLine Leadership, our sales training seminars can help you define and prepare a great sales proposal.

Our next sales training workshop is August 10 - 12, 2010 at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno, Nevada. This fast-paced, well-structured sales training course will help you think and feel like a customer, that is, how to Get into Your Customer's Head.

Spend less time trying to close the sale -- and more time positioning your solution as the customer's best choice.

If you don't know by this point in the sales process at least three reasons why your customer should buy from you -- reasons that have been connected to explicit customer needs (so you know they're important to your customer) -- then you have no right to ask for the business. If you have done your homework, however, now is the time to put your understanding to the acid test of preparing a convincing proposal or presentation.

Enjoy greater customer satisfaction and increase your sales by changing your approach to match your customers' changing perspective throughout the sale.

We are now offering a 3-Day Sales Training Seminar! This sales seminar will help you Sell More & Sell Faster.

By attending our sales training seminar, salespeople will sell more profitable solutions and increase their win-ratio.

• Our sales training programs are designed to help your sales team to think and feel like a customer.
• Learn how to sell based on how customers buy.
• Thoughtful sales strategy combined with effective sales tactics for each and every sales call.
• Our presenters take time prior to your sales training workshop to learn about your specific needs and customize your sales training program.

Take your sales skills to the top with TopLine Leadership's Sales Training program!
Enroll today in our 3-Day Sales Training Seminar

Need to sample before you commit? We understand. Download and review our FREE report: Top 12 Mistakes Salespeople Make by clicking the link below:
Download our free report: Top 12 Mistakes that Salespeople Make

The next seminar is April 14-15, 2010 in Reno, Nevada.
We only have 3 spots left!
Sign-Up for Our Sales Management Seminar Today!

If you have not signed-up, please hurry. This is an excellent seminar for Sales Managers!
View the Sales Management Seminar Agenda
View the Sales Management Seminar Details
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View what Participants Say about the Sales Management Seminar

About TopLine Leadership's Sales Management Seminar
Our program combines the power of introspection, knowledge, skills and an application-driven methodology into a single, high-energy workshop. Leverage your most valuable and loyal sales resource – your sales managers – into higher sales, reduced rep turnover and increased profits.

Companies interested in increasing the professionalism and productivity of their sales force often select a sales training program to solve this need. This decision, however, places the cart before the horse.

The success of a company’s sales training initiative is absolutely affected, both positively and negatively, by the company’s sales managers’ ability and commitment to coach and reinforce the sales training after the event. Our clients have come to recognize that improving the coaching skills of their sales managers is a necessary precursor to delivering effective sales training that achieves lasting results.

Recently, one of our clients, a $10 billion industry leader, conducted and in-depth assessment of their sales managers. First, they asked their sales reps to grade their manager’s abilities on several sales leadership skills. From a collection of 35 skills, the top three weaknesses identified were:

• My sales manager doesn’t identify my obstacles to performance.
• My sales manager doesn’t provide ongoing coaching, encouragement and feedback.
• My manager doesn’t review my performance on a regular basis and make plans for me to improve.

Obviously, for a sales training initiative to succeed each of the above three skills must be performed effectively by sales managers. So, it’s easy to see why so many sales training initiatives fail: they fail because the sales managers don’t possess the skill and will to coach and reinforce these new behaviors in the field. Investing in a sales training program, without managers who are committed and capable at holding salespeople accountable for implementing those new skills, is just an expense.

So, the solution is simple, right? First train sales managers to coach the sales process, then deliver sales training to the field. Right? WRONG! The same client previously mentioned also asked their sales managers, "What are the top challenges you face that prevent you from being more effective on the job?" The top four reasons were:

• Too much time on email.
• Too much time reacting to unplanned events.
• Too little time available to devote to my sales reps.
• I’m unsure- where should I spend my time so as to have the greatest impact on goal achievement?

The four preceding barriers to effective coaching have nothing to do with coaching the sales process! Rather, they are related to self management skills – the sales managers’ ability to manage themselves differently: to eliminate time-wasters, be more proactive, build more self reliance in salespeople so the manager is not perceived as the chief firefighter in charge, have a plan and stick to it, etc.

TopLine Leadership’s Solution: Phase One

This is where TopLine Leadership’s comprehensive solution comes in. Our first component, Sales Management Leadership, is an intensive two, or three-day workshop that provides both the self management skills as well as the sales process coaching skills that sales managers need to make sales training stick.

Over 35,000 sales managers from many of the world’s most successful companies have participated in our program. The goal of our program is to provide sales managers with the skill, tools, and process for managing themselves differently, and coaching salespeople more effectively. Click here for more information, and a course description.

To help our clients achieve maximum impact we will often deliver a three-day Sales Management Leadership workshop as follows:

• Course pre-work
• Two-day session (during which each manager completes a 90-day implementation plan.)
• Conference call reinforcement at 30-day and 60 day and 90 days intervals after the initial session.
• Approximately four months after the initial training a second workshop, one day in length, is delivered. A second 90-day plan is created, which often includes how to successfully implement a sales training program.
• Conference call support

Phase Two: Sales Training

The second phase of our solution is Getting Into Your Customer’s Head sales training. For years, the focus of sales training has been on the selling process – while ignoring customer buying behavior. But tomorrow’s big winners in sales will be those who learn to join customers in their buying process.

When it comes to selling, have we had it all wrong?

At TopLine Leadership, our sales training programs are designed to help your sales team to think and feel like a customer, that is, how to get into the customer’s head. In short, your sales team will learn how to sell based on how customers buy.

The buying process unfolds in a series of eight predictable steps that your salespeople can anticipate.

Our sales training programs teach your salespeople eight easily understood sales rules that correspond directly to the steps of the buying process. Our sales rules: Student, Doctor, Architect, Coach, Therapist, Negotiator, Teacher and Farmer, provide a disciplined, repeatable method for closing more sales, faster, while your competition wonders why they lost out.

Most of our clients have salespeople who make complex sales – selling to multiple decision-makers for a single sales opportunity. For these clients we add on our Winning the Complex Sale.

Getting Into Your Customer’s Head is a sophisticated sales approach made simple.

Many of our clients are looking for a common language, a consistent and measurable process for solution selling. Without a common language salespeople tend to sell on their instincts, and some wander aimlessly through a sales process without a plan, missing many opportunities during the buying process to intensify the customers’ needs and differentiate your solution.

At TopLine Leadership, we understand what it takes to improve your team’s closing ratio – a thoughtful sales training strategy combined with effective sales tactics on each and every sales call. Our sales training programs will show your salespeople how to add more value, sooner, to your prospects and customers. Reinforcement tools include a hardcover book, CD book, Coaching Guide, and even a customizable web application tool.

Is your sales team lagging well behind where they should be? You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “success breeds success.” Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: failure can breed failure.

Here are some specifics about how you can turn around a lagging sales team. Even if your team is doing fairly well, you’re bound to pick up some tools and techniques for immediate sales improvement. Below are a few of the topics we will discuss at our upcoming Sales Management Training Seminar:

• How to set minimum standards with consequences for poor sales results.
• How to gain the buy-in for team development by involving your top salespeople in setting standards.
• De-hire those not making a positive contribution.
• How to leverage your best people to contribute more to the team’s development.
• How to manage yourself better, and make better decisions about how you allocate your time.
• Lead from the front. Get out in the field and make coaching salespeople your #1 priority.
• How to create a contest that will get everyone fired up and focused on making those extra sales calls that can make the difference.
• Coach sales skills. Coach sales strategy.

Click here for more information on our Sales Manager Training Seminars.

Does your company have one or more sales managers who would benefit by learning new skills to develop an elite, hi-performance sales team? Seats are still available for our next open enrollment Sales Management Leadership workshop.

Our next Sales Management Leadership Seminar is November 4-5, 2009, at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno, Nevada.

Please note, seating at our sales training courses is limited, and the seminars fill-up quickly.
Cost: 1 Manager - $1,695 each
2 or more (same company) - $1,550 each

Our Sales Management Leadership Seminar includes continental breakfast and lunch plus morning and afternoon breaks. Each participant receives a 200-page participant guide. Walk away with the tools you need to implement immediately, including Select-Quest Interviewing System, Mutual Commitment Performance Management Tool, Tactical Map planning guide, and much more!

We offer a money back guarantee if you are not 100% satisfied with the training.
Click here to reserve your seat today.

Many salespeople are not getting inside the buyer's mind. Too often, salespeople focus on their sales processes and objectives, without carefully considering how people make purchase decisions. Consequently, salespeople proceed too quickly: they push. Buyers hate "pushy" salespeople. Pushy salespeople reap a huge harvest of objections from buyers.

The sales process then becomes a struggle when it might otherwise be a pleasant partnership between two professional business people: a relationship built on mutual respect yielding long-term benefits both ways.

If you change the way you sell to closely conform to how people buy, you will see a reduction in the number of objections from buyers. More than 80% of the objections we experience as sales people focus on the price/value issues involved.

If a price objection arises early in the process, respond by asking history, symptom, cause, complication and cure questions. These questions help your prospect recognize the seriousness of ongoing problems, thus increasing the value of your solutions. By becoming a goodDoctor, you prevent price objections.

Price objections occurring late in the sales process are typically caused by fear, or a desire to get a better deal.

Fear is emotional, not logical. Traditional objection-handling techniques don't work when the prospect is fearful. Better to become the Therapist. Draw out the real fear issues. Get them into the open. Softly and sensitively empathize with the prospect. Allow him or her to work through their own fear.

The desire to get a better deal is natural and understandable. The best way to respond here is to assume the role of Negotiator. Create a win-win agreement!

Finally, another way of responding to price objections, and other objections, is the "verify / feel / felt / found" technique.

This technique has been around for a long time, so avoid using the actual words because you might turnoff the client by appearing to be manipulative. Actually, this way of handling the objection helps both parties discover new issues, or clarify items already covered. Here are the steps you can use:

Ask a question to understand the real objection and derive more information.
Ask if the objection were to be addressed satisfactorily, would the prospect commit?
If they say no, then you don't have the real objection on the table.

Describe a real example of a client who had a similar objection, and the way they finally resolved it.
"Mr. Prospect, I understand your concern. Mary Thompson of Thompson Graphics across town had the same concern when we were talking about a similar system last month. Once she learned about the system's flexibility she decided to go ahead. She discovered that she could do all the things she needs to do today, and have room to grow."

It is a good idea to have materials--such as testimonial letters--to substantiate your claims!

This is just one example of the sales techniques we teach at TopLine Leadership.

Does your company have one or more sales managers who would benefit by learning new selling skills to develop an elite, hi-performance sales team?

Our next Sales Management Leadership Seminar is November 4-5, 2009, at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno, Nevada.

Please note, seating at our sales training courses is limited, and the seminars fill-up quickly.
Cost: 1 Manager - $1,695 each
2 or more (same company) - $1,550 each

Our Sales Management Leadership Seminar includes continental breakfast and lunch plus morning and afternoon breaks. Each participant receives a 200-page participant guide. Walk away with the tools you need to implement immediately, including Select-Quest Interviewing System, Mutual Commitment Performance Management Tool, Tactical Map planning guide, and much more!

We offer a money back guarantee if you are not 100% satisfied with the training.
Click here to reserve your seat today.

Your client has certain expectations of you and your product or service. If their expectations are met, or exceeded, they will be satisfied. Simple.

Not always.

For your product to be successfully implemented into the client's daily working life, the client must move through a learning process. This process can be described through five phases, helping you understand the way people learn, and your responsibility in helping them.

Phase 1 | Unconscious Incompetence | Your customer does not know that he does not know.

Your customer has signed the order, product is delivered and they are enthused. They expect to realize the benefits of this product, benefits you have described and promised throughout the sales process. However, the customer's expectation of benefit is at its highest point right now, and their understanding of the learning required is underestimated. To derive benefit they must learn, you must teach them, but they aren't ready for the learning just yet.

Phase 2 | Conscious Incompetence | Customer knows he doesn't know.

Customer frustration mounts during this phase as they come to realize that change / learning will be difficult. Habitual ways of working must be altered. Productivity may suffer in the short term while people learn to use the new product. The customer may wrestle with a feeling that they are worse off than before.

Phase 3 | Conscious Competence | Customer works hard at what he doesn't know.

With application, the customer begins to learn how to operate the equipment. They begin to seen the benefits in the real work environment. The product begins to make a real contribution, as promised.

Phase 4 | Unconscious Competence | Customer begins to make the new habitual.

The customer has a real sense of accomplishment now that the product is fully integrated into their office and the daily routine. Results are being realized. Everyone is happy!

Phase 5 | Conscious Unconscious Competence | Customer easily explains the new benefits of the new product, and how to derive them.

In-house experts can now train others in the office as the entire team develops an appreciation for the equipment. It has become part of the family.

Other considerations: if the product is complex, expect the learning process to take more time, and expect it to be more frustrating for the customer. Likewise, have these expectations if the customer is inexperienced. Often, the people who actually make the purchase decision are not the end-users. Therefore you may experience outright resistance to the product by end users who did not participate in the buying decision.

Bottom line: meeting and exceeding customer expectations is not easy, but it is well worth it.