As our businesses adapt and evolve to meet evolving needs, climates, and trends, we need to ensure that the entire staff is fully trained and supported and knows how to position the company and the services offered. Selling is every employee’s responsibility, and it is leadership’s responsibility to ensure that everyone knows how to effectively do it.
Do not assume that the rest of the organisation will automatically understand what is required or have the skillset, training, and experience to position your solution, while nurturing and growing the business. Each step in the sales process requires knowledge, skills, and the ability to listen. The first step in ensuring your team is supported with the knowledge they need is to understand your client’s goals and needs and how you fit into their ecosystem. As a baseline, everyone needs to understand that they play a role in the customer experience, and that experience is what allows you to retain and grow the business. Understanding the client’s requirements, putting together compelling quotes, responding to a complaint, and chasing past due invoices requires a sales mindset. These teams also need the right tools, support, and training to deliver the right customer experience and
In several companies, we are seeing account management and client services start to move from being part of the Sales department function to the Operations department. We are also seeing SDR/Lead Generation move under the marketing umbrella. These department shifts are happening for various reasons:
Sales teams are being tasked with focusing exclusively on developing new business. Moving assisting functions to another department allows the sales team to be solely focused on new brand acquisition.
Operations or delivery teams are naturally taking on the role of client relationship managers as they develop closer relationships with the client, and it is deemed no longer necessary to add a sales individual.
Front end sales technology stack is viewed as an extension of the marketing technology stack, whereby awareness and engagement are key drivers.
What is often not taken into consideration is that everyone who is client facing may need some sales training to be truly effective in their role.
Sales training for the wider teams
When approaching sales training for the larger team, it is essential that everyone understand the sales process, the problems that the company solves, the value the company delivers, and how to actively listen to be able to deliver and speak to what the client is trying to accomplish. Other essential training that everyone on the team should have includes:
Discovery – this is a key part of the sales process, where the sales individual obtains a thorough understanding of the client’s requirements and challenges through a series of questions. Understanding the bigger picture will help put together the best solution for the client.
However, in non-sales roles, this discovery stage is often dictated by internal processes and the need to capture specific data in compliance with a job management system or CRM. Whilst this ensures that the correct information is captured for the internal workflow, it does not necessarily prompt a conversation to understand the wider possible requirements and potentially misses additional revenue opportunities.
Discovery training should focus on the below objectives
Gain a greater understanding of your clients’ requirements and challenges by asking the right questions.
·Stress the importance of listening and allowing your clients the time to explain their challenges and requirements without assuming you have the solution to their problem.
Product Knowledge – everyone in the company needs to understand the products and services offered, the problems they solve, and be able to articulate these in a way that is understandable to those who are less familiar with the solution.
Product Knowledge training should focus on the below objectives
Understand your own products and services – not only the different features, but also the benefits they offer to your individual customers and the problems they solve.
Encourage everyone to create an “elevator pitch” to describe what your organisation does and the problems it solves.
Presentation training – presentation skills are key to delivering a message that is relevant, relatable, and resonates with the intended recipient of the message. This includes setting an agenda and keeping the presentation focused on what is most important to the audience.
Presentation training should focus on the below objectives
Understanding key objectives and messages – what to include
Less is more – focus on key ideas
Delivering the presentation
Client communications training - not everyone is comfortable communicating with clients either via email, over the phone or in virtual meetings. To ensure that the right message is going out to your clients every time, it is essential to ensure that the team has best practices on general email writing and communicating with clients over the phone. While this should be included in the induction training, it is also something that should be revisited and refreshed at regular intervals.
Client communication training should focus on the below objectives
Understanding the client’s brief and full requirements
Making quotes easy to understand while also reflecting the client’s brief
Negotiation – overcoming objections
Following up on the quote – frequency and medium (email, phone etc)
Dealing with rejection – when to challenge, learning from rejection.
Put yourself in your customers shoes and see things through their eyes
Creating a collaborative culture within the various departments will significantly enhance the customer experience as the customer journey appears seamless, from opening an account to settling an invoice.
Anyone in your organisation who has direct contact with your customers needs to appreciate the impact their actions have on the overall customer experience and, in turn, revenue and growth potential.
With costs at 5 times more to acquire new business than retain an existing one, it is more important than ever to ensure that you are close to your customers, understand their current needs, and can suggest the relevant service/solution for them.
By looking after your existing customers, you are creating the perfect conditions to retain and grow existing revenue and to ensure that the revenue from new business accelerates growth instead of plugging the “leaky bucket” of lost revenue from existing customers.
Your entire organisation are sales ambassadors with numerous opportunities to represent the company daily. With the right sales training and support, you can ensure you are maximising every revenue generating opportunity.
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