Sales Academy Webinar Program
The Reinforcement Program
Webinars for Continued Learning
To reinforce participant learning, a series of webinars will be provided at no additional cost to Sales Academy participants in the months following their Sales Academy boot camp.
These virtual learning experiences have been designed to reinforce the behaviors and techniques learned at Sales Academy to achieve lasting behavioral change and master new skills.
CLASS OF 2011 WEBINAR SERIES
Thursday, 21 July 2011, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CDT
Bonding & Rapport and DISC
Bonding & Rapport
Building relationships with your clients/prospects is the first step in the Sandler Selling System. It is imperative that you have a good relationship with your prospect/client and that rapport continues through each phase of the Sandler system.
People buy from people they are comfortable with. Being able to establish rapport quickly indicates that you have the ability to make your client/prospect feel comfortable. There are several elements of communication to use when trying to establish rapport. The first are the words we speak; the second is how we speak, our tonality; and the third way we communicate is through physiology, or body language.
Since over 50% of your message is not what you say, but is related to your nonverbal communication, it is important to know what your body language says about you and how you can use this to your advantage.
DISC
Attitude and motivation are based on a true understanding of your nature. Answering the question, “What motivates me?” will help you discover the secret of self-actualization and understand the reasons behind your internal motivation. Personal motivation will never develop if you have desire and belief without a well-organized plan of action that will lead to accomplishment. Learn how to develop a plan of action in order to achieve your goals.
• Understand and interact with prospects in their preferred style.
• Recognize your own personal communication style and how to adjust it for other types.
Thursday, 15 September 2011, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CDT
Up Front Contracts
By establishing an up-front contract with your prospect you will develop a set of rules for your interaction. Understanding and setting expectations for your interaction with the buyer allows both parties to know exactly where they are in the selling (or buying) cycle.
Since a contract is only as strong as its weakest link, you must be able to come away from every meeting with a clear, concise, verbal agreement as to what will happen next in order to proceed forward in the selling process. The amateur salesperson that sets weak contracts, or no contracts, will get nowhere.
Selling using up-front contracts is an enjoyable experience for both you and your prospect. There’s no mystification as to what happens next and the pressure inherent in traditional selling disappears.
Thursday, 3 November 2011, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CST
Pain Process
People make decisions for two reasons: They are either moving toward pleasure or trying to move away from pain. Although prospects buy emotionally, their decisions are intellectual. The strongest emotion your prospect experiences is pain. Your goal as a salesperson is to get your prospect emotionally involved so he/she will experience pain, and reveal the cause of the pain so you may provide the solution. As a Sandler-trained professional, your focus is on the prospect and how you can allow your product or your expertise to gently unfold, as the prospect provides the fit.
An important rule in the Sandler Selling System is, “Stop selling features and benefits.” You will quickly realize that selling features and benefits is hard work. There is a world of difference between feature and benefit selling and developing pain.
Thursday, 12 January 2012, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CST
Questioning Strategies
This lesson will instruct you how not to spill your knowledge and expertise into your prospect’s lap. The strategy of asking a question in response to a prospect’s question is called reversing. Reverses are verbal probes that make sure you answer the prospect’s “real” question. When handled in a nurturing manner, reverses help the prospect uncover his/her true motivations for buying, without pressure from you. Learn how to use softening statements preceding a reverse in order to decrease the pressure on the prospect.
Also in this session, participants will learn how to use questions to handle the stalls and objections heard most often from prospects. The only person qualified to handle the prospect’s stalls and objections is the prospect. By using questions to bring up the common stalls and objections before the prospect has a chance to, you remove the roadblocks.
Thursday, 8 March 2012, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CST
Budget and Decision
Budget
The Budget Step is the most important step; yet it is the step salespeople have the most difficulty handling. It is very difficult talking about money, dealing with money, and asking other people about money. However, in order to be successful in sales, money has to be talked about. The Sandler Selling System deals with the budget up-front instead of at the end of the selling process.
The budget step allows you to uncover how much money is allocated for your product or service, how your prospect plans to make the investment, where the money is coming from, and how it gets paid. If you, as a salesperson, are relaxed when dealing with money, your prospect will be at ease and will feel no pressure.
Decision
How many times have you given a presentation to a prospect who didn’t have the power, the authority, or the capability of giving you an answer, either “yes” or “no?” Many salespeople will externalize this frustration and become angry at the prospect. But, whose problem is it, really?
You must qualify your prospect for decision making. Let the prospect know that saying either “yes” or “no” is acceptable. However, you also must let him/her know that he/she cannot say, “I want to think it over.” Qualifying the prospect’s decision making ability becomes paramount in order to get the desired answer. If your prospect says that he/she can make the decision all by him/herself, check it out! He/she has probably been telling salespeople for ages that he/she can, but when the time comes, he/she really can’t.
As a Sandler-trained professional you know how to turn your intermediate decision maker into an “inside salesperson.” You can use the “rehearsal” technique to bubble up questions the actual decision making committee might ask. Plus, you know how to get your “inside salesperson” committed to the hilt before going in front of the committee for you.
You will get a lot more “noes” than you ever have in the past, but the good news is that you will also be hearing a lot more “yeses” too. Mastering the Decision Step of the Sandler Selling System is crucial to your success as a selling professional.
Thursday, 10 May 2012, 12:00-12:45 p.m. CDT
Fulfillment and Post Sell
The entire success of a Sandler presentation relies on having established a good, binding, and mutually acceptable contract. The presentation is merely the fulfillment of the contract. There is absolutely no room in the contract for any type of mystification and the words fulfillment and presentation are interchangeable. To make sure your presentation doesn’t fall apart at the end of each pain you’ve just presented, ask your prospect if that particular pain has been solved by your product or service.
The Post-Sell Step is a simple matter of making sure the sale is locked up by deliberately giving your prospect a chance to back out while you are still in front of him/her. If there is a crack in the sale, you can patch it up on the spot.
