The Counselor Salesperson

A Different Sales Seminar with Particular Focus on the Buyer

Please note: All participants must write a test prior to future seminars!

The Counselor Salesperson is about what happens before you begin the sales process itself as well as your responsibilities as a salesperson, once the order has been placed. The seminar is not only designed with traditional sales professionals in mind, but is also very much intended for highly-trained specialists with sales responsibilities.

The Counselor Salesperson Is a Different Kind of Sales Seminar!

You will learn about new approaches to the sales process, based on a model that focuses on the buyer’s perspective. This will help you gain a better understanding for your clients and thus create lasting buyer-seller relationships.

Participants

This seminar is for those who need to sell. Your experience is of minor importance. You are either a salesperson, consultant, sales manager or director of sales. You may, however, also be a specialist or a technician with a job that has become increasingly sales-oriented.

The facilitator will contact you prior to the seminar in order for you to discuss the areas that you wish to focus on. This will assure you the best possible preparation for and benefit from the seminar.

Reasons to Participate

The Counselor Salesperson is a seminar that trains and develops your selling skills with a win-win solution in mind. You will learn to sell by focusing on the buyer’s perspective.

The seminar aims to equip sales professionals with tools and techniques to build trust and credibility, show empathy for the buyer’s behaviour, identify the buyer’s problems and needs, present the optimum solution and create added value for the buyer by finding a solution that covers their current and specific needs in cooperation with them. The buyer will experience you as a credible problem-solving partner and counselor. The result is value for the buyer and close buyer-seller relationships in the future.

Benefits

The seminar teaches you how to become the buyer’s counselor, so that you create added value for the buyer and close, lasting customer relationships. The buyer will experience you as a credible problem-solving partner and counselor.

You will learn how to initiate and handle your direct sales. You will be equipped with tools to make you more focused on the buyer and more structured in your sales work, so that you and the buyer always know how far you are in the sales process.

You will learn to

·Prepare and initiate the sales call

·Master the salesperson’s roles during the different stages of the buying/selling process

·Define and implement a sales strategy for each individual buyer

·Support the buyer in the decision-making process and develop strong buyer-seller relationships

·Complete a goal-oriented presentation

·Establish and maintain a dialogue during the sale with regard to behavioural characteristics

·Identify the buyer’s motives to buy and analyze their needs in a new way

·Read the buyer’s behaviour and relate it to your own behaviour

·Handle objections and other obstacles in the sales process

·Recommend specific possible solutions

·Gain approval from the buyer and finalize the sale.

The seminar is based on high ethical standards where openness and honesty are key words. You will not be returning with techniques to oversell yourself or your product.

In addition, through a test prior to the seminar, you will gain knowledge of how you are perceived by your clients and your coworkers. The result of the test will be used to focus on the verbal as well as the written dialogue with various types of buyers.

The figure illustrates the difference between traditional sales seminars and The Counselor Salesperson seminar.

On traditional sales seminars you will often experience that most emphasis is on reasoning and overcoming objections in the sales process. The Counselor Salesperson seminar differentiates itself by primarily focusing on establishing credibility between seller and buyer and the importance of always focusing on the buyer’s situation (understanding and respecting the buyer’s needs and wishes). The focus is moved from selling products to selling customized solutions.

Program Overview

The seminar teaches about the sales process itself as well as about what happens before you start the actual sales work and your responsibilities as a salesperson, once the order has been placed.

The Four Phases of the Sales Process

Relating

·Plan responses to buyer expectations for sales contacts

·Open sales calls in a way that communicates empathy

·Build credibility throughout the sales process

·Gain better knowledge of how you affect others

·Know and understand the meaning of different buyers’ different behaviours.

Discovering

·Ask effective questions; listen with a focus on the buyer

·Identify buying motives, buyer roles, and buying conditions

·Make the buyer take responsibility from early on in the sales process

·Reduce the importance of the price for a sale

·Verify and confirm sales opportunities with buyers.

Advocating:

·Prepare and make effective presentations

·Recommend solutions with benefits to buyers

·Write an offer directed at the recipient

·Have effective answers for the buyer’s objections

·Ask for the business.

Supporting:

·Understand the importance of customer satisfaction in building future business

·Apply four skills that support ongoing buyer relationships: support the buying decision, manage the implementation, deal with dissatisfaction, and enhance the relationship for future business.

·Appreciate the difference in expectations between buyers and salespeople immediately after the close of the sale.

Teaching Method

The Counselor Salesperson is an intensive three-day seminar that teaches a number of skills and involves an assignment that requires a few hours of preparation in advance. Prior to the seminar, all participants must write a test on-line, which is a questionnaire about you, answered by five of your coworkers/clients.

Through role plays and exercises, you will learn effective skills to prepare, initiate and carry out sales calls with improved results.

Opportunity to Work with Your Own Case

The seminar is very practically oriented and takes its starting point in each participant’s everyday life. During the seminar, participants will thus be given the opportunity to prepare their sales strategy for a specific client as well as the opportunity to test the strategy’s sustainability, using other participants in the role as the buyer.

All participants will be contacted by the facilitator prior to the seminar in order to discuss the areas that they wish to focus on and to thus assure the best possible preparation and benefit for all participants.

Multiple Participants from One Company

If there are three participants from one company, it may be beneficial to use the seminar to discuss a current case that the three of you have in common in your everyday life.

Facilitator

Managing Director Lars Kristensen knows about sales and counseling. He always keeps each participant’s needs in mind. He has great professional expertise and is a living example of the main message in his training: Credibility and respect for the client’s needs.

Useful Material

The course material is comprehensive and contains theory, exercises and a multitude of specific tools for practical use after the seminar.

The Price Includes

3 days of instruction

2 nights of accommodation

1 facilitator

All meals

Maximum number of participants: 15

An on-line personal test

Course material – The material for The Counselor Salesperson is quite comprehensive. During the seminar, all participants will receive a binder containing theory, exercises and a multitude of specific tools for practical use after the seminar.

Participants will also receive an overview of these tools as well as a CD-ROM

A list in English of the sales terms used on the seminar

A log

A phone discussion with the facilitator prior to the seminar

An invitation to a free two-hour meeting about ”Good Learning”

Contact Mannaz

For personal advice or registration, please contact Course Coordinator Merete Bernhardtsen on phone +45 4517 6119 or send an e-mail.