8 Responses

1. Key Skills

   Hi J

    

    

   How about using a situation reversal model?

    

   Basically, you look at the question in a negative, rather than a positive way. Highlight everything a Salesperson would need to do to become unsuccessful…

    

   So

    

   1) Pick a random object in the room and ask them to write down 10 things a salesperson could do to ensure they wouldn’t buy it.

    

   2) Summarise by now focusing on some key skills that are the opposite of step 1

    

   3) Show pictures of some famous Salespeople (Dragons Den, Richard Branson etc) and discuss what they do well.

    

   4) Final Summary of key skills…maybe an acronym to round it all off?

   http://changingminds.org/disciplines/sales/methods/sales_methods.htm

    

    

     

    

   http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_96.htm

    

    

    

2. An alternative suggestion
   I love the suggestion above!

   Before I read that I wondered about splitting your session into 3 chunks, to cover:

   What a successful salesperson has to KNOW
   What a successful salesperson has to DO
   What a successful salesperson has to BE

   and then you would be able to cover knowledge (of products, market, customer needs etc), actions (good communication skills, establishing rapport, and so on) and someting around attitudes and presence (open, friendly, interested, enthusiastic about the product etc).

   Good luck and let us know how it goes. Happy to discuss off line if you send a message to my inbox.

   Jenny

3. Whole Brain Selling

   Hi jmbsnr,

   An aspect that may well help you to improve interactivity at the interview is to get the interviewers to consider how different customers require different things from a sales call. For example if you have a technical product to sell and it is being sold to the Operations Manager they may well be interested on the specification, safety, operational use and price. This would be a typical strong L1 thinker (see http://www.wholebrainthinking.co.uk for definitions and more info). A different approach would be needed for a more right brained buyer and the sales team need to be aware of this. To get the interviewers thinking there is a picture you can show to illustrate this and would be a good icebreaker to get them both thinking and involved. contact me and I’ll email it to you. Regards, Neil

4. selling what?

   Hi jmbsnr,

    

   In addition to the excellent suggestions above you might also like to differentiate between

   B2B and B2C selling

   High value selling and high turnover selling

   Selling product and selling service

   Face to face selling and remote selling

   New business selling and existing client account management

   As the skills of the successful salesperson are not always the same for the different types of business.

   I hope this helps

   Rus Slater

   http://www.coach-and-courses.com

    

    

    

    

5. Thanks

   Thank you to all the ideas offered.  I think I can now see a way of incorporating everyones thoughts into my presentation.

   The ‘any answers’ section is proving more and more a great forum for gathering and sharing ideas.

   Many thanks.

6. Any Answers

   It’s great to see when and where the community really works at its best, so thanks for mentioning you’ve found it useful. 

   Don’t forget that we can make this community stretch to serve any need you may have, so please continue to call on Any Answers for all your training-related questions (and beyond) and if you have a specific need to discuss a niche topic, how about setting up a discussion group? 

   If you have any other ideas about how we can better serve your needs, then drop us a line.

   Sorry to hijack this thread!

7. Successful salespeople ask for the business

   Hi,

   In addition to the fab suggestions already added, one thing I used to come back to again and again training salespeople is the idea of asking for the business – so many salespeople don’t!

   One of my colleagues shared an idea with me which I shamelessly stole to illustrate this point. After a break, delegates come back to the training room to see on/near your desk a big pile of chocolate bars. You make no mention of the chocolates until one of the delegates asks if they can have one, at which time you can share them about freely with anyone who asks if they can have one too.

   This works well at the beginning of a session, or to reinforce the point if you’ve already covered asking for the business. You get the added benefit of a kinaesthetic accelerated learning experience which is a nice area to be able to bring in if asked at the interview stage.

   Good luck for the interview, hope it goes really well 🙂

8. DIY

   Dependant on how many people in the room you could hand out post it notes and get each of the audience to come up with their top 10 attributes / skills / behaviours.  (You may feel the need to tease some information from them, if there are some really strong thoughts that you need to come out) 

   When complete get them to group their post its with the others on a wall, so as to eliminate duplication.  Now tell them that they have to (as a group) come up with their top 6 attributes / skills / behaviours. They have to reach concensus on them.  

   This will force them into discussing each thought and prioritising the most important things.  You’ll need to set realistic time frames and manage the time, plus you’ll need to have some of your own thoughts in your back pocket on this topic, in case of emergencies.  (I personally though would be loathed to impose my own thoughts on this exercise, especially if they come up with lots of thoughts of their own).