Seminars: Entrepreneurship & Intrepreneurship:
Studies of the “best practices” of successful businesses reveal a strong correlation between achieving superior business performance and being leaders in communication, sales, account management and customer service. Successful businesses are discovering that everyone has to “sell”, whether it’s selling an idea or your capability internally, within the company, or selling a product or service externally, to customers.
For technical enterprises this can create a significant challenge. They often find that their technical professionals have outstanding technical expertise, but are unfortunately lacking in the necessary “soft skills” — communication, sales, negotiation and customer service skills– to be effective in the business development arena. Fortunately, this is not usually due to lack of ability in these areas, but rather a lack of training. This course focuses on the fundamentals in the areas of communication, sales and negotiation that are necessary to be an effective “business developer”.
Unlike traditional sales training courses which may appear to advocate “manipulative” techniques, this session promotes a consultative, “win-win” approach to sales and business issues in general, designed especially for technical professionals. Participants will acquire a set of tools to facilitate effective communication. By learning effective questioning, listening and communication skills, our clients dramatically improve their confidence as well as their credibility and effectiveness with customers and colleagues. that get people to say “yes”.
Course Objectives:
Equip technical personnel with basic communication, sales, and negotiation skills to communicate effectively with customers and colleagues.
Help develop the strategies and techniques necessary to better recognize and control selling opportunities
What You Will Learn.
Communication Strategies and Tactics
- How to listen effectively.
- How to avoid assumptions and confusion.
- How to effectively deal with clients or colleagues questions and objections.
- How to leverage your personality characteristics in communicating with others.
- How to listen more and talk less.
- How to get colleagues and customers to make and keep commitments.
- Questioning strategies to uncover the truth about where your colleague/client stands on an issue.
- How to get decisions to move ahead, to say Yes or No.
Sales Fundamentals
- Understanding the Sales Process.
- Overcoming the stigma of sales.
- How to deal with the pitfalls of traditional selling.
- How to be comfortable in every situation, staying “OK” in “not-OK” situations.
- How to overcome fear of rejection.
- Knowing how and when to use technical knowledge, expertise and information.
- Understanding and identifying sales opportunities: the needs, wants, problems, and motivating factors for action.
- How to help internal or external prospects discover they need your idea, product, service, etc.
- Controlling the selling process knowing what is going to happen next.
- How to differentiate yourself from the competition.
- How to deal with self-imposed limitations.
Negotiation Fundamentals
- How to deal with “No”.
- When to give up on an opportunity.
- How to get colleagues/clients comfortable enough with you to open up.
- Identifying and eliminating potential problems up-front.
- How to create a process of mutual consent.
TOPICS COVERED
The Buying/Selling Process * Communication Strategies & Tactics * Identifying Problems & Priorities * Dynamics of Human Relations * Establishing Rapport * Communication and Sales* Getting Committments and Decisions*The Psychology of the Sale
Course Format
The material is presented in a manner to facilitate the process of learning from the initial phase of understanding (knowing) a concept, to the advanced phase of applying (owning) it. Much interaction is encouraged, with participants having an opportunity to discuss and practice specific techniques. Industry specific examples are cited to assist with the application process. Role playing of actual situations is included. Course materials are provided for each participant.
Who Should Attend.
All technical professionals who spend a good portion of their time dealing with people–whether it’s internally with colleagues, or externally with customers. This audience includes:
- engineers/ scientists
- project managers
- sales personnel
- directors and managers
- manufacturing and finance personnel
- other professionals who want to improve their “business development effectiveness”