Mental Health in Sales FREE Training

Mental Health in Sales - Top Question from Google

How stressful is a sales job?

Here’s the short answer:

Sales can be stressful due to pressure, rejection, and long hours. However, it offers high earning potential, accomplishment, variety, and personal development. Whether it suits you depends on your personality and stress tolerance.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. The Hidden Toll - Why Mental Health Matters

The fast-paced, high-pressure world of sales can take a significant toll on mental health. While the pursuit of success and exceeding quotas can be motivating, the relentless pursuit of performance can often come at a cost.

Statistics paint a concerning picture:

42% of sales professionals experience symptoms of anxiety and 36% experience symptoms of depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) https://www.nami.org/Home. This is significantly higher than the national average of adults experiencing anxiety (31.1%) and depression (8.4%) in the past year according to the National Institute of Mental Health https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics.
Chronic stress, a common experience in sales, can lead to decreased motivation, cognitive decline, and increased vulnerability to mental health issues, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01702/full.

These statistics illustrate the hidden toll that the demands of sales can take on mental wellbeing. Ignoring these concerns can have detrimental consequences, not only for individual salespeople but also for the entire organization.

2. The Unique Challenges of Sales & Mental Wellbeing

Sales professionals face a unique set of challenges that contribute to elevated stress and risk factors for mental health issues compared to other professions. Here are some key factors:

Pressure to Perform: Sales are often commission-based, creating significant pressure to meet or exceed individual quotas. This constant pressure to perform can lead to anxiety, burnout, and feelings of inadequacy if they miss their sales goals.
Rejection Sensitivity: Sales involves frequent customer rejection, which can be emotionally draining and impact your self-esteem. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that salespeople experience higher levels of rejection sensitivity compared to individuals in other professions [https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-18724-001].
Unpredictable Work Schedules: Many sales roles require long hours, travel, and unpredictable schedules. This work-life imbalance can disrupt sleep patterns, create difficulty maintaining healthy habits, and contribute to feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Highly Competitive Environment: The competitive nature of the sales industry can breed feelings of inadequacy, envy, and imposter syndrome, further contributing to stress and anxiety.

By understanding these unique challenges, organizations and individuals can prioritize mental health support and create a more supportive work environment for sales professionals.

3. The Impact of Poor Mental Health on Sales Performance

The negative impact of poor mental health on sales performance is well-documented and can have significant consequences for both individual salespeople and organizations. Here’s a breakdown of some key effects:

Decreased Productivity: A study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that employees experiencing symptoms of depression are 37% less productive than their healthy counterparts. This translates to decreased sales calls, missed opportunities, and lower overall revenue generation.
Increased Absenteeism and Turnover: Mental health issues can lead to increased absenteeism and employee turnover, further disrupting team dynamics and impacting overall sales performance. A 2018 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) estimated that depression alone costs U.S. employers $170 billion annually due to absenteeism, presenteeism (reduced productivity while at work), and medical expense.
Diminished Decision-Making: Chronic stress and anxiety associated with poor mental health can impair cognitive function and decision-making abilities. A study published in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience found that stress can lead to impaired judgment, reduced creativity, and difficulty focusing, all of which can negatively impact sales strategies and negotiations.

These detrimental effects highlight the importance of prioritizing mental health support within sales teams. By creating a culture of well-being and offering resources and support systems, organizations can empower their salespeople to thrive and improve their performance.

4. Building Resilience: Strategies for Salespeople

The demanding nature of sales can undoubtedly test mental resilience. Fortunately, by developing coping mechanisms and adopting healthy habits, salespeople can learn to thrive in a high-pressure environment. Here are some key strategies:

1. Cultivate a Growth Mindset: Embrace challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that individuals with a growth mindset demonstrate greater resilience in the face of setbacks and are more likely to persist towards achieving their goals.

2. Practice Mindfulness and Stress Management: Techniques like meditation, deep breathing exercises, and regular physical activity can effectively reduce stress and improve emotional regulation. A 2017 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that mindfulness-based interventions can significantly reduce stress, anxiety, and depression.

3. Seek Social Support: Building strong relationships with colleagues, friends, and family can provide invaluable support and a sense of belonging. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that individuals with strong social networks experience lower levels of depression and anxiety.

4. Celebrate Wins and Focus on Progress: Acknowledge and celebrate even small victories to maintain motivation and build confidence. Focusing on progress, not just the end goal, helps maintain a positive outlook and fosters resilience in the face of challenges.

5. Prioritize Self-Care: Make time for activities that promote relaxation and well-being, such as hobbies, spending time in nature, or getting enough sleep. Prioritizing self-care helps manage stress and prevent burnout, leading to increased resilience and overall well-being.

By adopting these strategies, salespeople can cultivate mental resilience and navigate the challenges of their profession with greater confidence and well-being. However, if in doubt please seek professional help here https://www.wellityglobal.com

5. Creating a Supportive Sales Culture

Beyond individual strategies, building and maintaining a supportive sales culture is crucial for promoting mental well-being and optimizing team performance. Here’s how organizations can create a more positive and empowering environment for their salespeople:

Open Communication and Feedback: Encourage open communication and regular feedback sessions. This allows salespeople to voice concerns, receive constructive criticism in a safe space, and feel supported by management.
Focus on Collaboration: Promote collaboration over cutthroat competition. Encourage knowledge sharing, team problem-solving, and celebrate collective wins. This fosters a sense of camaraderie and reduces feelings of isolation.
Work-Life Balance: Implement flexible work arrangements and discourage practices that lead to burnout, such as excessive overtime or constant after-hours communication.
Recognition and Appreciation: Recognize and celebrate individual and team achievements. Public acknowledgement of successes reinforces positive behaviors and motivates continued effort.
Mental Health Resources: Provide access to mental health resources such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) or online resources on stress management and mental well-being.
Destigmatize Seeking Help: Normalize conversations about mental health and encourage open communication about challenges. This reduces stigma and creates a safe space for salespeople to seek help when needed.

By prioritizing these elements, organizations can create a supportive sales culture that fosters mental well-being, boosts employee morale, and ultimately, drives improvements in sales performance.

6. Benefits of Prioritising Mental Health in Sales

Investing in the mental well-being of your sales team isn’t just the humane thing to do, it’s a strategic decision with demonstrably positive outcomes for both employees and the organization. Here’s how prioritizing mental health in sales can benefit your company:

Enhanced Sales Performance: Studies have shown a clear link between mental well-being and sales success. A happier, less stressed salesforce is more productive, resilient, and capable of handling rejection. A study by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that employees who report higher levels of well-being are significantly more likely to be high performers [https://www.apa.org/].
Reduced Absenteeism and Turnover: Mental health issues can lead to increased absences and employee churn. By addressing these concerns, companies can experience significant cost savings and maintain a stable, experienced sales team. A 2020 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion in lost productivity each year [https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression].
Improved Decision-Making: Chronic stress and anxiety can negatively impact cognitive function. By prioritizing mental health, you empower your salespeople to make sound decisions, develop effective sales strategies, and ultimately close more deals.
Enhanced Customer Relationships: A happier, more well-balanced salesperson is more likely to project positive energy and build rapport with customers. This fosters trust, strengthens relationships, and increases customer satisfaction.
Stronger Employer Brand: Companies that prioritize employee well-being attract and retain top talent. By fostering a supportive environment, you build a positive employer brand that makes your organization more competitive in the talent marketplace.

These benefits highlight the strategic value of prioritizing mental health in sales. By investing in the well-being of your salespeople, you’re not just doing the right thing; you’re also creating a high-performing, successful sales team.

7. Getting Help: Resources for Sales Professionals

Prioritizing mental health is key to success in sales. If you’re struggling, know that you’re not alone. Numerous resources exist to support sales professionals across the globe.

For Sales Professionals in the UK:

Mind: A leading mental health charity offering information and support services: https://www.mind.org.uk/
The Samaritans: Provides 24/7 confidential emotional support via phone, email, or text: https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD): Offers resources and guidance on workplace mental health for both employees and employers: https://www.cipd.org/en/
Business Partners Online: Provides free and confidential mental health support services specifically for small business owners and self-employed individuals: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/how-to-find-a-business-partner-online

For Sales Professionals in the US:

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): A national organization offering support groups, educational resources, and advocacy for mental health: https://www.nami.org/Home
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): Provides mental health information and resources, including a treatment locator tool: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/
The Jed Foundation: Focuses on mental health resources and support specifically for teenagers and young adults, including those entering the workforce: https://jedfoundation.org/
The Trevor Project: Provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services specifically for LGBTQ+ youth, a demographic with higher rates of mental health concerns: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

For Sales Professionals in Australia:

Beyond Blue: A national organization providing information and support services for depression and anxiety: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/about-us/contact-us
Lifeline: Offers 24/7 confidential support for anyone experiencing emotional distress: https://www.lifeline.org.au/131114/
Headspace: Provides mental health services and resources specifically for young people aged 12-25: https://headspace.org.au/headspace-centres/
Black Dog Institute: Focuses on mental health research and education, with resources tailored for workplaces: https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/

Additional Resources:

Headspace National Support Line (Australia): 1300 22 4636
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US): 988
Samaritans 24/7 Helpline (UK): 116 123

In addition to these resources, many Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) offered by employers can provide confidential counseling and support services. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your HR department to see what resources are available to you.

Remember, seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Taking care of your mental well-being is essential for success in both your personal and professional life.

8. FREE TRAINING

As part of our giving back Klozers are proud to offer free sales training for the B2B sales community. Course details:

Building a Sales Mindset & Mastering the Pressure Cooker of Sales

Learning Objectives:

By the end of your training session, your sales team will be able to:

Identify the unique stressors faced by B2B sales professionals.
Understand the negative impact of chronic stress on performance and health.
Apply five practical strategies to manage stress, anxiety, and pressure.
Develop a personalized plan to prioritize your mental well-being.

Course Duration – 90 minutes

Delivery – Live Online

To Request a FREE Course – >>>Contact Us Here<<<

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Online Sales Training – Supercharge Your Sales Team

by Iain Swanston

Designing the Best Sales Course

by Iain Swanston

Designing the Best Sales Course - Top Question from Google

How do you design sales training that drives ROI?

Here’s the short answer:

Identify key sales goals & customer pain points. Align sales training with business objectives and address specific buyer challenges.
Build a data-driven curriculum. Leverage your existing sales metrics & data to tailor content and delivery methods.
Develop engaging learning experiences. Combine interactive workshops, role-playing, and personalized coaching for maximum impact.
Measure & refine for continuous improvement. Track performance metrics and adapt training to ensure ongoing ROI and team empowerment.

Data: Our tailored training programs deliver higher conversion rates and boost employee engagement by.

Call to Action: Download our free guide to designing impactful B2B sales training or schedule a consultation today!

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. Designing a Sales Course That Drives Results

In the B2B sales arena, where complex solutions meet with complex decision-making, your sales team is the tip of the spear. Their skills, knowledge, and confidence directly impact your win rate and revenue. But with the sales landscape constantly evolving, off-the-shelf training programs might not be the best way forward for you.

At Klozers we are passionate about delivering results, not training. Crazy as it may seem, there are still companies who are buying training so they can tick a box.

Even though we deliver hundreds of our standard sales courses every year, there are times where our clients have a unique situation and benefit from the ability to create a bespoke sales training program. We’ve put together this simple guide to help our customers design and build a customised training program.

This helps ensure they get the most appropriate training content, which in turn, drives genuine business results.

2. Why Investing in the Best Sales Training Program Matters

In today’s competitive B2B landscape, having a highly skilled and motivated sales team is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. However, simply throwing any old sales course at your reps won’t do the trick. Investing in the best sales training program possible is the key to unlocking their true potential and driving revenue growth.

Why is this so crucial? Let’s delve into the seven key facets of why the right sales training program can be a game-changer for your business:

Boosted Revenue: A well-designed program equips your team with the knowledge, skills, and techniques they need to close more deals and boost your bottom line.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: When your salespeople are properly trained, they can better understand and meet the needs of your customers, leading to higher satisfaction levels and repeat business.
Stronger Brand Reputation: A team that consistently delivers excellent customer service through effective sales calls and meetings can help build a positive reputation for your brand.
Reduced Onboarding Time: A well-structured program can help get new salespeople up to speed quickly, reducing onboarding time and maximizing their productivity.
Elevated Employee Morale: Salespeople who feel confident and competent in their abilities are more likely to be engaged and motivated, leading to higher morale and lower turnover rates.
Sharpened Sales Skills: The program should teach essential skills like developing personalized presentations, overcoming objections, and building rapport, crucial for effective sales interactions.
Ongoing Focus on Learning: The best programs offer continuous learning opportunities through regular updates, online courses, and ongoing support, ensuring your team stays ahead of the curve.

So, what makes a sales training program the “best”?

There are many factors to consider, but some of the most important include:

Relevance: The content should be relevant to your specific industry, target market, and sales process.
Engagement: The program should be engaging and interactive, using a variety of methods to keep learners motivated.
Practical Application: The focus should be on teaching skills that can be applied in real-world sales situations.
Measurement: The program should have a clear way to measure its effectiveness, so you can track ROI and make improvements as needed.

By investing in a comprehensive sales training program, you give sales teams the tools they need to succeed. Remember, it’s not just about finding the most popular sales courses or the lowest price. It’s about finding the program that aligns perfectly with your specific business needs and empowers your team to build lasting relationships, win more deals, and ultimately, drive sustainable growth for your company.

Ready to take the next step? Explore the vast array of online and in-person training options available, from top-rated programs like Klozers. There’s a perfect program out there waiting to transform your sales team into a force to be reckoned with.

Remember, the investment you make in sales training today is an investment in the future of your business. Choose wisely, and watch your sales soar!

3. What Constitutes a Sales Training Course?

At Klozers all our courses are modular. This means that each course is made up of either 4 or 8 modules (1 or 2 day courses). These modules can be swapped for other modules at no charge.

Each of our modules last 90 minutes, so on a typical one-day training course we would deliver 2 modules in the morning and 2 modules in the afternoon. This is obviously then replicated for our two-day courses. The 90-minute modules allow time for breaks, and ensure the participants are never overloaded with information in any one session.

We’ve included a course agenda below as an example of what a typical 1 day sales training course would look like:

4. How Bespoke can the Training Content be?

With Klozers modular framework clients can design and create their own sales training course using any of the modules listed below at for no additional charge. Our modules are based on what we call the four “high value areas of sales” which are Finding, Klozing, Growing and Developing.

Regardless of what industry you are in the more time that your sales reps focus on finding companies/people to sell to, once they find them they have to take the prospect through a process to Kloze them and then once they have done all this hard work they need to Grow and keep their new customer. The last quadrant is “Developing” which is all about continuously developing your sales team in terms of productivity, skills and mindset.

For organisations that need a modules and a course designed exclusively for them, we charge extra for that design time. In terms of costs this varies based on your individual requirements.

This way the course can be up to 100% designed and bespoke to the needs of your organisation.

5. Choosing the Right Sales Training Modules

The training modules listed for each of our sales training courses on the website are the most popular modules for that particular course. Indeed, many companies take our sales training courses as is, however, you are equally welcome to change the modules if you believe there is another module that is more suitable.

In order to ensure that you are choosing the right modules you can follow our simple guide below:

Step 1: Diagnosing your Sales Training Needs

Think of your sales department as a high-performance engine. Before making any adjustments to increase performance, you need a thorough diagnostic. Here’s how you can do this:

Data Dive: Analyze sales metrics, KPIs, customer feedback, and call recordings to identify common strengths and weaknesses. Areas like prospecting, objection handling, closing techniques or sales process might need to be a focus.
Skill Gap Assessment: Use questionnaires or interviews to gauge individual skill levels and knowledge gaps. Are they comfortable navigating complex conversations? Can they effectively showcase your value proposition? What sales skills do they need to improve to get to the next level?
Stakeholder Interviews: Talk to sales managers, marketing, and even customers to understand expectations, challenges, and desired outcomes. What specific behaviours would boost win rates?
OKRs: If your sales team uses an OKR framework you can design the training in a way that supports the delivery of the OKRs. What skills do they need to deliver their OKRs? Which OKRs are they struggling with?
Sales Strategy: You may have a new sales strategy that requires the sales team to approach sales in a different way. For example: can your sales reps open new markets in a different vertical? Can your sales professionals reach and hold a conversation with senior level decision makers in Enterprise accounts? Is your strategy focussed on inbound sales from new accounts, or are your nurturing existing customer relationships.

Step 2: Architect the Curriculum

Imagine your training as a strategic roadmap, guiding your team from Point A (current state) to Point B (sales mastery).

Define Learning Objectives: what would you like the sales team to be able to do that they currently cannot? What would you like your sales teams to be better at, than they currently are?
Training Modules: Break down the roadmap into logical modules addressing identified skill gaps. This could include prospecting strategies, value proposition development, negotiation tactics, or customer relationship management.
Choose the Delivery Method: Will it be in-person / instructor led workshops, live online sales training, pre-recorded online sales training, blended learning, or a mix? Consider your team’s preferences, learning styles, and geographical spread. As a guide currently our most popular delivery method is hybrid where we start the project with a one-day in-person workshop which is then reinforced by 90 days of remote sales coaching.

Step 3: Inject Real-World Relevance

Textbook scenarios rarely capture the dynamic B2B reality. To make your training impactful, inject real-world relevance. So where possible we recommend you include:

Include senior people: Peer learning can be very powerful and by including senior people from your team they can help the participants connect the training to real world scenarios from their personal experience.
Role-Playing: Consider setting aside one of your modules for roleplay so we can simulate real-world sales interactions like prospecting calls, customer presentations, or objection handling. This allows your team to practice in a safe environment, fostering confidence and refining their skills.

Step 4: Accountability

Learning is great, however, implementing what is learned is equally important. It’s vital to consider how you plan to hold the sales representatives accountable to integrating what they have learned into their daily sales behaviours. This should be carried out by the sales leaders in the organisation.

Action Plans: All the courses include an “Action Plan” for participants to complete.

It’s important that their line manager follows up on this after the training in order to hold participants accountable.

Step 5: Measure and Monitor Success

Training isn’t a one-time event. To ensure sustained impact, you need to measure and monitor success:

Pre- and Post-Training Assessments: Use the same assessments used in Step 1 to track individual and team skill development. Have they closed the identified skill gaps?
Performance Metrics: Monitor sales data after the training. Did win rates increase? Average deal size? Time to close deals, Sales Process compliance.
Team Feedback: Conduct surveys or interviews to gather feedback on the training’s effectiveness, engagement, and areas for improvement.

KLOZERS SALES TRAINING COURSES	KLOZERS SALES TRAINING MODULES (90 mins each)
Sales Fundamentals (Level 100)	Building your Sales Pipeline	Questioning Techniques	Objection Handling Techniques	The Art of Klozing
AI for Sales (Level 200)	Pre-call Intelligence & Strategic Targeting	Data Driven Negotiation and Deal Structuring	Hyper personalised engagement & Relationship Building	Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Differentiation
Consultative Selling Skills (Level 200)	Consultative Selling Intro	Building a Value Proposition	Collaborative Problem Solving	Negotiation, Klozing & Customer Success
Solution Selling (Level 200)	Uncovering Customer Buying Motives	Building a Value Proposition	Mastering the Sales Conversation	Klozing & Building Long Term Partnerships
SaaS Sales Training (SDRs) (Level 200)	Sales Mindset	Building a Value Proposition	Outbound Sales Prospecting	Needs Assessment Discovery & Qualifying
SaaS Sales Training (AEs) (Level 200)	Pre-demo Preparation	Selling Value not Price	SaaS Product Demos	Objection Handling Techniques
LinkedIn Sales Training (Level 200)	Building your LinkedIn Sales Arsenal	The Art of Persuasive Communication	Mastering the Sales Conversation	LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Telephone Sales Training (Level 200)	Sales Mindset	Building a Value Proposition	Telephone Sales Roleplay	Live Calling with Coaching
90 Day Sales Planning (Level 100, 200 & 300)	Principals of 90 Day Planning	Creating an Effective Action Plan	Communication & Collaboration	Accountability & Motivation
Outbound Lead Generation (Level 200)	Building a Value Proposition	Cold Email Outreach	LinkedIn Selling Skills	Telephone Sales Skills
Inbound Lead Generation (Day 1 of 2) (Level 200)	Introduction and Case Study Review	Strategy and Planning	Creating content that converts	Building High Value Assets
Inbound Lead Generation (Day 2 of 2) (Level 200)	Technical Requirements and Set up	Selling Online	Measurements & Reporting	Action Planning
Key Account Management (Day 1 of 2) (Level 300)	Unlocking the Power of Key Accounts	Understanding the Enterprise Landscape	Building Trusted Relationships	Crafting a Winning Key Account Plan
Key Account Management (Day 2 of 2) (Level 300)	Sales Negotiation and Deal Structuring	Implementing Your Key Account Strategy	Maintaining and Growing Key Accounts	The Future of Key Account Management
Sales Negotiation Training (Level 300)	Foundation of B2B Negotiations	Planning & Preparation	Mastering the Negotiation Dance	Beyond the Deal
Enterprise Sales Training (Level 300)	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs.	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs.	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs.	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs.
Bespoke Sales Training (Level 100, 200 & 300)	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs	This course content is customised to meet your exact needs
Sales Management & Leadership (Level 300)	Sales Benchmarking & Improvement Planning	Sales Leadership Styles	Sales Performance & Coaching	Hiring Sales Winners

6. Example: Building a "Value Selling" Masterclass

This is much simpler and easier than most people think, so here’s an example of these steps in action, and used to design a bespoke “Value Selling” masterclass for a B2B software company with customised modules based on their individual requirements:

Diagnose: Sales data reveals low win rates for high-value deals. Customer interviews point to weak value proposition articulation throughout the sales process.
Architect: The 1 day curriculum includes 4 x modules on 1) identifying customer pain points via consultative questioning techniques, 2) building compelling value propositions, 3) storytelling in sales presentations, 4. Objection handling and closing techniques.
Real-World: Case studies analyze successful high-value deals within the company. Role-playing within the sessions simulate questioning techniques, value presentations and objection handling.
Engage: Interactive exercises help participants build personalized value propositions. Peers from within the business who are regularly above target share their stories.
Monitor: Win rates for high-value deals are tracked monthly. Post-training feedback assesses the course’s effectiveness in improving value selling skills.

Remember, your bespoke sales training course is an investment, not a cost. By crafting unique sales training programs tailored to your unique challenges and opportunities, you’ll empower your sales team to become top sales performers. They’ll not just push products, but become trusted advisors, crafting solutions that perfectly align with customer needs and unlock mutual value. This leads to stronger relationships, higher win rates, and ultimately, sustainable business growth.

7. Sales Manager Training

The single biggest influence on any B2B sales professional’s success is their immediate line manager. Great managers create great sales reps, but sales management courses can give them the tools and techniques to be truly impactful. Delivering initial training sessions focused on the entire sales cycle, from inbound sales methodology to account management, is crucial. But to ensure your sales teams learn effectively, their line managers need to be on board too.

The right online sales course or onsite training program for sales leaders, ideally before rolling out training to the wider organization, can significantly improve your chances of sales success. Comprehensive courses from Klozers, focusing on business development, customer acquisition, and building trust, can equip managers to lead and support their teams effectively. They’ll learn specific techniques for nurturing leads, developing personal brands, and closing deals, with real-world exercises and actionable insights to solidify their learning.

Our free virtual courses can offer a convenient and accessible starting point for sales fundamentals, while more in-depth courses with sales simulations provide ongoing learning and enhanced user experience. Regardless of the format, choose a program with a similar structure to your sales process, covering aspects like price points, overcoming resistance, and handling objections. Most importantly, it should help managers build trust with their teams and cater to their specific needs.

Leading sales isn’t just about individual performance; it’s about team dynamics and collaboration. Sales team training programs focused on building trust, developing communication skills, and fostering a customer-centric approach can make a significant difference. These programs can teach managers how to effectively build support for new strategies and initiatives, while also providing them with the tools to manage their teams efficiently and mentor individual members.

Remember, the best sales training programs are those that are unique and tailored to your company’s specific needs. Consider factors like your industry, sales process, and target audience when choosing a program. Whether it’s focusing on digital products or mastering complex sales cycles, the right training can equip your sales managers to accelerate your business growth and lead your team to win more deals.

So, invest in your sales management team with the right training. It’s not just about improving individual skills; it’s about building a high-performing sales organization that can consistently attract customers, close deals, and drive sustainable growth.

8. Post Training Support

Here are some additional ideas to take your bespoke training to the next level:

Coaching: Consider our 90 day post coaching support to help your team internalise what they have learned during the training.
Peer Coaching: Encourage peer-to-peer mentorship and practice sessions. This allows team members to learn from each other, share best practices, and provide constructive feedback in a supportive environment.
Ongoing Reinforcement: Don’t let the learning stop! We can provide ongoing access to training materials, online resources, and refresher sessions to ensure continual skill development and knowledge retention.
Celebrate Successes: Recognize and celebrate individual and team achievements. This keeps the momentum going, motivates further learning, and reinforces the value of continuous improvement.

Remember, your sales team is your engine of success – invest in your people, and watch your business soar.

We provide free consultations where you can ask any further questions you might have about specific aspects of creating your bespoke training course. We’re here to help you turn your sales team into sales champions!

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Klozers Bolsters Leadership Team

by Iain Swanston

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Klozers Bolsters Leadership Team with Appointment of Marc Smit as General Manager to Drive Expansion

Smit brings over 30 years of sales expertise and 17 + years in training experience to Klozers

[Edinburgh, United Kingdom – 01/11/2023]

UK based Klozers, a leading provider of sales training and coaching, today announced the opening of its new European Headquarters in Amersfoort, Netherlands, in conjunction with the appointment of Marc Smit as General Manager. The decision follows increased demand in Europe for their range of Professional Selling programmes throughout 2023.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

New European Office

Klozers Founder and Managing Director, Iain Swanston said “We are forecasting record growth for the mainland of Europe, mainly in the DACH and Benelux regions. Our new Amersfoort, NL office and the appointment of Marc Smit as General Manager, represents our commitment to our existing clients in the region. Marc has a great track record, not just in sales education, but also in Business Development, and we are looking forward to working with him.”

Smit brings over 17 years of experience in the sales training industry working at the highest level. Most recently, Smit worked as Partner at the European Institute for Sales, and previously as a Sales Performance Consultant at Miller Heiman where he helped clients achieve significant sales growth and profitability.

In his new role Smit will be responsible for leading Klozers Global Accounts Team and developing Klozers Worldwide Partner Delivery Network.

“We are thrilled to have Marc join our team,” said Iain Swanston, CEO of Klozers. “His extensive experience in sales training and his proven track record of success make him the ideal person to lead our new European operations. We are confident that under Marc’s leadership, we will continue to grow, expand our business, and help our clients achieve even greater success. “

Smit is a highly respected sales training expert and consultant. He is also a certified Miller Heiman Sales Performance Consultant and is passionate about helping sales professionals and sales teams improve their skills and achieve their goals.

“I am excited to join Klozers and lead the company’s growth and expansion.“ said Smit. “Klozers is a leader in the sales training industry, and I am committed to helping our clients achieve even greater success. I look forward to working with our team to develop and implement new sales training programmes and solutions that meet the needs of our clients.

About Klozers

Klozers is a leading provider of professional sales training and coaching. The company offers a wide range of sales training programmes, exec sales coaching and consulting services. Klozers clients include Fortune 500 as well as mid-market and large SMEs.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

15 Energizing Sales Kickoff Themes for Your Team

by Iain Swanston

Sales Kickoff Themes - Top Question from Google

What Should be Included in a Sales Kickoff?

Here’s the short answer:

Sales Kickoff Essentials:
– Visionary Leadership: Set clear goals and expectations, inspiring the sales team.
– Comprehensive Product Training: Make sales reps product experts.
– Skill Enhancement: Use role-playing and case studies to sharpen selling skills.
– Recognition and Rewards: Acknowledge achievements to fuel competitiveness.
– Team-Building Activities: Foster camaraderie and collaboration.
– Open Communication: Establish feedback channels for brainstorming and improvement.

The best sales kickoff is a dynamic blend of motivation, education, and team cohesion, setting the scene for the upcoming quarter/year.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

15 Energising Sales Kickoff Theme Ideas

Start: Setting the Stage for Triumph –

Before we immerse ourselves in these sales kickoff themes, let’s decipher the essence of their significance. The art of choosing a theme lies in its power to elevate team spirits, engender unity, and steer your sales squadron toward realizing their objectives. It marks the inception of aligning your team’s endeavors with the overarching goals of your enterprise.

Theme 1: “Unleashing the Inner Dynamo”
This theme is an expedition into the latent potential residing within your sales troupe. It beckons them to unearth their inherent strengths, surmount challenges, and tap into their latent capabilities. Facilitate workshops and motivational dialogues to kindle the flames of ambition within them.
Theme 2: “Expedition to Excellence”
Sales, much like life, is a continuous odyssey rather than a static destination. This kickoff spotlights an unwavering pursuit of improvement and excellence. Share stories from your team of individuals who embarked at the very base and scaled the organisational peaks of through sheer dedication and hard work.
Theme 3: “Sales Olympics Extravaganza”
Transform your kickoff into a spirited competition. Assemble teams, appoint captains, and bestow sales targets with the aura of “medals.” Recognize and reward the champions, rendering the event as exhilarating as the Olympic Games 😉
Theme 4: “Masters of the Cosmic Market”
Infuse a celestial dimension into your event, spotlighting the vast expanse of opportunities within the sales cosmos. Empower your team to think expansively, venture into uncharted territories, and metamorphose into the sovereigns of their sales galaxies. Think BAG – Big Ambitious Goals.
Theme 5: “Customer-Centric Champions”
Shift the spotlight onto the customer. Remind your salespeople that they are not just selling products, but are, in fact, problem solvers and fulfillers of needs. Foster a customer-centric approach in every sales interaction.
Theme 6: “Innovate, or Dissipate”
Innovation stands as the linchpin to remaining at the vanguard of the sales arena. Challenge your team to traverse the realms of ingenuity, seek novel solutions, and adapt swiftly to the ever-evolving sales landscape.
Theme 7: “Rise and Shine: Morning Motivation”
Start your kickoff with an invigorating morning session, replete with rituals, exercises, and motivational oratories to infuse your team with an electrifying surge for the day ahead.
Theme 8: “Sales Safari: Conquering New Horizons”
Lead your team on an allegorical safari, exploring fresh markets and territories as if they were uncharted, exotic realms. Cultivate excitement regarding the journey of conquering these untrodden territories.
Theme 9: “Sales Superheroes Unite”
Shine a light on the extraordinary capabilities that your sales cadre possesses. Analogize them to superheroes, emphasizing their ability to swoop in and save the day for their clientele.
Theme 10: “Dominating with Data”
In the era of data analytics, unveil the potency of insights to your salespeople. Harness data-driven strategies to amplify sales and educate them on the art of harnessing analytics for success.
Theme 11: “Harmonious Sales Symphony”
Draw a parallel between the sales process and a symphony. Every member assumes a pivotal role, and collectively, they orchestrate a harmonious melody. The emphasis here is on teamwork and unity.
Theme 12: “Champions of Adaptability”
Acknowledge the inevitability of change. Encourage your team to welcome change with open arms, adapt nimbly, and thrive amidst the dynamic sales world.
Theme 13: “Globetrotters of Sales”
Accentuate the global dimension of sales. Spotlight success narratives from diverse corners of the globe, (does a globe have corners?) underscoring the immense opportunities presented by a global marketplace.
Theme 14: “Decoding the Success Formula”
Unveil the clandestine ingredients of prosperity within your industry. Furnish insights and strategies that have consistently served as the harbinger of triumph.
Theme 15: “Future-Proofing Your Sales Journey”
Bring your kickoff to a close by casting your gaze into the future. Engage in discussions about emerging trends and technologies, enlightening your team on how to stay ahead of the curve.

Conclusion: Transmuting Inspiration into Triumph

A successful and memorable sales kickoff event transcends the realm of motivation; it drives genuine behavioural change. Armed with the perfect theme, you have the potential to establish a stage for a year brimming with extraordinary sales accomplishments.

Sales Kickoff Speakers

Once you’ve chosen the right theme our team can help you design and prepare for your event. Here is our team prepping for a sales kickoff for 65 people in Amsterdam.

We can provide expert sales kickoff speakers for either an in person sales kickoff or a virtual sales kickoff.

Bonus - 5 Virtual Sales Kickoff Ideas

1. Cyber Odyssey:
Transform your remote sales kickoff into a futuristic cyber adventure. Invite your sales team members to embark on a virtual journey through a digital realm filled with challenges, puzzles, and opportunities. Each milestone reached could represent a sales goal or a new product launch. Use gamification elements and immersive technology to keep everyone engaged and motivated.

2. Around the World in Sales Days:
Take your sales team on a virtual world tour, exploring different global markets and cultures. Each day of the kickoff could focus on a different region, with presentations, market insights, and sales strategies specific to that area. Encourage team members to dress up in traditional attire, and feature virtual tours or guest speakers from each region.

3. Salespalooza Carnival:
Create a virtual sales carnival with a lively and fun atmosphere. Set up virtual “booths” for various sales-related activities, such as product demos, sales strategy games, and skill-building workshops. Participants can earn “tickets” or points for participating and achieving specific goals, which they can later redeem for prizes.

4. Sci-Fi Sales Summit:
Transport your sales team to a futuristic sci-fi universe where innovative technology and cutting-edge sales techniques are the norm. Create a virtual environment that resembles a space station, complete with holographic presentations and futuristic sales tools. Explore AI-driven sales, virtual reality demos, and discussions about the future of sales.

5. Sales Olympics:
Turn your online kickoff into a competitive sports-themed event. Assign different sales teams to “countries” and have them compete in a series of sales challenges and games throughout the event. Award medals or trophies for the highest achievers, and encourage friendly rivalry to boost motivation and engagement.

These unique virtual sales kickoff themes can add excitement, creativity and motivate team members for the next quarter.

Final Thoughts on Sales Kick off Themes

Creating the right sales kickoff theme is crucial for a successful event. Whether it’s a yearly in-person gathering, or a virtual meeting, the theme you choose can really affect how motivated and unified your sales team is. A well-chosen theme not only keeps your team interested, but also helps them understand your company’s solutions, sales strategy, and goals for the new year.

For virtual sales kickoffs, coming up with creative ideas is important to keep everyone engaged, especially if people are joining from different places. This can include things like interactive sessions, inspiring speakers, and fun online activities. These ideas help your sales team improve their skills and understand how to sell better, setting the stage for future success.

A good sales theme can also help your sales and marketing teams work together better to achieve your company’s goals. By getting your sales team involved in team-building activities, training, and discussions about your sales strategy, you create an environment where everyone is motivated to work together.

In the end, a successful sales kickoff starts with picking an exciting theme and ends with everyone growing and working together as a team. This leads to a better way of selling that brings success in the year ahead.

Best Practices for a Virtual Sales Kickoff

Planning a Successful Virtual Sales Kickoff Event

A successful virtual sales kickoff event requires careful planning and a clear agenda. Sales managers should coordinate with the marketing department to ensure that both teams are on the same page regarding company goals for the fiscal year. It’s essential to schedule breaks and include fun activities such as virtual scavenger hunts to keep the entire sales team engaged.

Motivating and Engaging Team Members

To motivate team members, consider incorporating motivational guest speakers or keynote speakers who can share success stories and insights into effective sales strategies. Sales leaders can also share tips and conduct sales strategy sessions that focus on innovative solutions and customer perspectives. This helps build a stronger connection and rapport within the sales department.

Creative Sales Kickoff Meeting Ideas

When planning your sales kickoff meeting, it’s vital to include a variety of sales kickoff meeting ideas that cater to different learning styles and interests. Consider using video clips and live events to demonstrate new products or sales processes. Hosting interactive breakout sessions can encourage team members to collaborate and brainstorm new sales strategies. Additionally, integrating fun themes like a space-related theme or a great sales meeting theme can make the event more memorable.

Building a Cohesive Sales Team

Team building exercises are an effective way to foster relationships among remote attendees and in-person participants. Activities like virtual scavenger hunts or happy hours can help maintain a positive tone and keep team members motivated. These events provide a unique opportunity for the entire organization to celebrate wins, share experiences, and develop a better understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities.

Ensuring Effective Participation and Engagement

To ensure maximum participation and engagement, sales managers should use tools like Google Docs to facilitate real-time collaboration. Encouraging the use of icebreaker questions at the beginning of sessions can help attendees feel more comfortable and ready to participate. It’s also important to keep sessions shorter and more focused to avoid information overload and improve memory retention.

Incorporating Sales Skills Development

Integrating sales skills development into the agenda is crucial for a productive sales kickoff. Sessions led by sales experts on topics such as overcoming challenges, utilizing the latest sales technology, and effective sales presentation techniques can be very beneficial. These sessions should aim to equip team members with practical skills they can apply immediately in their roles.

Celebrating Achievements and Setting Future Goals

Finally, celebrate the past year’s achievements and set clear goals for the next year. Organize award ceremonies to acknowledge top performers and share major wins. This not only boosts morale but also instills a sense of ownership and pride in the team. Discussing the company’s vision and objectives helps align the entire sales force with the overall goal, ensuring everyone is motivated to achieve new heights.

How to Host a Great Sales Kickoff

Planning a Successful Sales Kickoff Event

Hosting a successful sales kickoff event requires meticulous preparation and a well-structured agenda. Whether it’s an annual sales kickoff or a virtual sales kickoff meeting, the key is to establish a clear objective and outline the meeting agenda. Sales meetings should be designed to stay engaged and focus on motivating the entire team. Consider including a mix of live events and virtual meetings to cater to both in-person and remote attendees.

Engaging and Motivating Attendees

To ensure your sales kickoff is impactful, it’s essential to incorporate motivational speakers and guest keynote speakers who can inspire and energize the team. Sales enablement sessions led by sales experts can provide valuable insights into effective sales strategies and the latest industry trends. Including breakout sessions and interactive activities such as virtual scavenger hunts can help maintain a positive tone and keep participants engaged.

Creating a Dynamic and Memorable Experience

When organizing a sales kickoff, think creatively about the event’s theme and activities. A great sales kickoff theme can set the tone for the entire event. Consider using a combination of fun and engaging activities like skits, icebreakers, and team-building exercises to foster a sense of camaraderie among team members. It’s also beneficial to include elements like video clips and live demonstrations to highlight new products and sales processes.

Maximizing Participation and Interaction

To maximize participation, utilize various platforms and tools to facilitate interaction. Virtual settings can benefit from tools like Zoom for live sessions and Google Docs for real-time collaboration. Encourage participation by including shorter sessions, interactive quizzes, and opportunities for team members to share their experiences and success stories. This approach helps in building a deeper connection and understanding among colleagues.

Recognizing Achievements and Setting Future Goals

Celebrate the successes of the past year and set clear goals for the coming year. Organize award ceremonies to acknowledge top performers and their major wins. This not only boosts morale but also sets a benchmark for the entire team. Discussing the company’s vision and goals for the fiscal year helps align the sales force and motivates them to achieve new heights. Incorporate a marketing update and product updates to keep everyone informed and on the same page.

Leveraging Best Practices and Learning from Experiences

Adopting best practices from previous sales kickoffs can contribute significantly to the success of your event. Learn from past experiences and continuously seek feedback to improve. Tailoring your approach based on the unique needs and preferences of your team can ensure a more effective and engaging sales kickoff. Invest time in planning and preparation to create a seamless and impactful event that leaves a lasting impression.

Ensuring a Smooth Execution

Pay attention to the logistical details of the event, such as the selection process for keynote speakers, scheduling breaks, and organizing meals. Ensure that all technological systems are in place and tested to avoid any disruptions during the event. A well-executed sales kickoff can significantly impact the sales team’s performance and drive towards achieving the company’s goals.

Hosting a great sales kickoff involves a blend of strategic planning, creative engagement, and effective execution. By incorporating these elements and focusing on the needs and motivations of your sales team, you can create an event that not only sets the stage for the coming year but also inspires and energizes your team to reach their full potential.

Frequently asked questions on Sales Kick offs

Answers from the team:

1. How can I pinpoint the ideal sales kickoff theme for my team?

– Delve into your sales team members persona, aspirations, and the narrative you wish to convey. Select a theme that resonates with team members and will boost team morale.

2. What components should be integrated into a sales kickoff event?

– Your sales kickoff agenda should include: success stories, sales presentations, training sessions, workshops, inspirational speeches, team-building activities, and a clear roadmap for the upcoming year are the cornerstones.

3. How can I gauge the effectiveness of a sales kickoff event?

– Monitor sales performance, team engagement levels, and feedback garnered from attendees to gauge the event’s influence.

4. Can a sales kickoff event be run as a virtual sales kickoff?

– Yes, with the right tools and meticulous planning, a virtual sales kick off event can be equally impactful.

5. How frequently should I organize a sales kickoff event?

– While an annual sales kick off is typical, consider the possibility of conducting such events on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to sustain ongoing motivation and enthusiasm.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Sales Graduate Training

by Iain Swanston

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Klozers Embarks on Mission to Empower University Graduates Through FREE Education, Aiming to Enable 100,000 Graduates to Build a Career in Sales.

[Edinburgh, United Kingdom – 05/09/2023

Klozers, a leader in B2B sales education, is proud to announce a groundbreaking mission dedicated to fostering the next Generation of Sales Professionals. Our mission is clear: to equip the next generation of sales professionals with the essential skills they need to excel in the modern sales landscape. We are committed to providing top-notch sales training to 100,000 graduates, completely free of charge, because we firmly believe that education should never be a barrier to success.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

Why We're Committed

1 in 8 Jobs are in Sales roles: Sales is one of the largest sectors within employment, and the communication skills required for selling in the modern world, are equally important in other roles, outside of sales.
Graduates need Help: Finding and retaining employment is arguably more difficult then ever. In addition, many Graduates are leaving University burdened with debt, and getting the first step on the wage ladder is hugely important.
Empowering the Workforce: At Klozers, we understand that educated, skilled graduates are the lifeblood of successful businesses. By imparting knowledge and expertise to navigate the sales landscape, we empower the workforce and contribute to the growth and prosperity of enterprises, both large and small.
Bridging the Skills Gap: In the rapidly evolving world of modern sales, staying relevant is paramount. We offer comprehensive modules covering vital topics such as Building your Sales Pipeline, Mastering Questioning Techniques, Overcoming Objections, and The Art of Closing, ensuring that graduates are equipped to thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.
Long-Term Careers: Our commitment to free education goes beyond the numbers; it’s about nurturing graduates and supporting their skills development. By investing in the early stage growth of graduates, we can help them understand the benefits of a career in sales.
Driving Economic Prosperity: Empowered graduates lead to thriving businesses, vibrant industries, and prosperous economies. Through our mission, we actively contribute to the economic prosperity of the business community and society at large. This is our way of giving back.

How You Can Join Us

We invite the business community to unite with us on this transformative journey. Partner with Klozers, and together, let’s pave the way for 100,000 graduates to unleash their true potential in sales.

Your support is not just an investment in the future of your company; it’s an investment in the future of a generation, shaping a brighter tomorrow for all.

Join us as we build a community of skilled, confident, and accomplished sales professionals, driving the business world forward.

Partner with Klozers and become a catalyst for change and good – empowering 100,000 graduates to thrive in sales, absolutely FREE.

Check out all the free courses here: Online Courses – Klozers

For media inquiries, please contact:

Iain Swanston – sales @ klozers.com

About Klozers:

Klozers is a leading provider of B2B sales education, dedicated to empowering the next generation of sales professionals with the skills and knowledge the need to excel in the modern sales landscape. Our mission is to eliminate barriers to success by providing the modern sales training to 100,000 graduates, free of charge, ultimately contributing to the growth and prosperity of the business community.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Sales Training Simulations

by Iain Swanston

Sales training simulations - Top Question from Google

What is a Sales Simulation?

Here’s the short answer:

A sales simulation uses real life sales and customer service scenarios to provide companies with real insights into their sales systems and processes. In addition they provide employees with the skills and knowledge they need to excel in their roles and deliver exceptional service to customers.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. Game changing experiences

Klozers Sales Training Simulation is designed to help businesses revolutionise the customer experience. Using proven business game techniques and expert facilitation, our simulation guides participants to discover and apply best-practice methods that have real-world application.

The simulation is a powerful catalyst for winning the hearts and minds across an organisation driving toward:

Modernized customer experiences
A unified customer-centric vision and culture
Streamlined customer support and success models
Increased customer retention and advocacy
Good-fit customers with growth and success potential

2. Training Simulation Options

We currently offer three simulation games/scenarios based on:

a) Business Growth Game

Winning new sales is no longer the sole responsibility of a sales force. By working together companies can drive faster growth and measurable results.

Our business growth game takes your entire team through a 2 year business transformation in one day. By allowing employees to view the business through the eyes of the customer we help you create a strategy and plan to accelerate your growth.

The simulation training takes your teams through the entire sales cycle, from the initial sales call through, closing deals, onboarding and renewals.

b) Sales and Marketing Training

The idea of sales and marketing being different units within a business has ended. Modern dynamic businesses no longer follow the traditional sales and marketing model. They align teams around growth and our simulation demonstrates in real time scenarios how to fast track your sales and marketing processes.

The simulations build on any previous sales training your sales team may have had and help sales managers demonstrate how every day sales decisions, sales processes, and front line sales reps, impact the entire customer experience.

These new skills help sales professionals navigate complex sales deals and and serve as the foundation of any effective sales development strategy

c) Customer Service Transformation

Churn and low CSAT scores kills every growth at best, and will kill your business at worst. Our training simulation takes your team through the systems and processes to drive improvements in customer service and sales.

By providing real life scenarios in a risk free environment we help teams build their confidence, develop their critical thinking skills and ultimately deliver sales success.

3. Live and interactive dashboards

We use state of the art business dashboards which are accelerated to allow the players to see the results in real time from the decisions and actions they take during the game.

The overall context of each game is always to make the organisation more successful. In addition we include dashboards for each “department” so they gain a better understanding of the issues and challenges within those roles.

Each game consists of three rounds which give all the sales team members the chance to learn and them implement the changes they believe will help to drive the organisation forward. Live leader boards show where the organisation is with respect to their competitors to ensure the game is realistic.

4. Assessments & Roadmaps

Whilst playing a training simulation is great fun and helps improve the culture and team building within the business it’s important to that each game delivers a business impact.

To that end, we have developed our own training process and use a series of assessments prior to training which allows us to uncover the unique challenges and business problems within each department. Our facilitators then focus the players on these issues during the game and start the conversation around what and how needs to be improved.

We also work in advance with your learning and development teams to identify the learning objectives that they are looking to achieve using the simulation.

The penultimate step in the process is to generate improvement plans and roadmaps to ensure all the learning points are captured and subsequently actioned.

Lastly, our trainers are on hand to deliver the soft skills and any sales training that your customer service and sales teams need to take them to the next level.

5. Tackling your customer challenges

Does your business need support with:

1. High Customer and employee churn

Indicating a lack of satisfaction and loyalty, which can harm the reputation and profitability of the business.

2. Poor fit customers with low growth potential

Without an understanding of strategic business selling some customers can drain resources and impede business growth.

3. Low satisfaction customer experiences

Low satisfaction can lead to decreased customer loyalty and negative word-of-mouth, harming a business’s reputation and revenue.

4. Breached service targets

Missing service targets can lead to dissatisfied customers, low trust, missed opportunities, and decreased revenue.

5. Siloed organisations, information and mindsets

A lack of effective communication and collaboration can create inefficiencies, reduce productivity, and hinder innovation.

6. Lack of scalability and sustainability

This can prevent a business’ growth over the long term, limiting its ability to adapt to changing market conditions and meet current and future customer demand,

7. Inefficient and costly processes

These can lead to decreased productivity, increased costs, and reduced profitability, ultimately hindering the organization’s ability to compete and succeed in the marketplace.

8. Low rates of FCR and limited self service

Leading to increased call volume, additional customer support costs, and increased customer dissatisfaction, as well as negatively impacting customer loyalty and retention.

6. Blended with traditional training

Whilst training simulations undoubtedly win the hearts and minds of the audience, traditional sales team training still plays an important part after the games.

Klozers provenance in sales training means that you can be sure, that in addition to the simulation training our team will work with you to develop an effective sales strategy, streamline your sales process, reduce your sales cycle and develop the sales skills of your sales managers and sales reps.

We have a range of sales, marketing and customer service training courses that we can then use depending on the assessments, game outcomes and roadmaps.

This holistic solution delivers the impact on teams that organisations need to drive real change.

7. What makes training simulations different

What sets our games apart from traditional training solutions are they are both fun and engaging in nature.

Employees love playing the games and immediately go from passive, to interacting with both the game and their colleagues.

In addition to the specific learning objectives that we would work with you to identify in advance, every game improves team building, team culture and performance. In addition to wining the hearts and minds of participants.

Organisations leave our training simulations with clear roadmaps with actions to make ongoing improvements to their business.

Our games are facilitated by experienced team leaders who customise each game to the needs of your business and your people.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

DISC Training for Sales Success

by Iain Swanston

DISC Training for SALES - Top Question from Google

What DISC Personality is best for Sales?

Here’s the short answer:

In all our years of delivering sales training and coaching we can honestly say that we have worked with great salespeople from every quadrant. Each DISC style has strengths and weaknesses and the best salespeople know how to manage these.

With that said, if you are selling into a vertical such as accountancy, where the group’s DISC culture is predominantly of a similar customer buying style, it is easier for salespeople who are from that same DISC style as the buyers, to build relationships and sell quickly.

DISC is about preferences, there are no right or wrongs and there are no can do’s and can’t do’s.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. DISC training for sales success

Disc training is a valuable tool for everyone who is customer facing, whether they be in customer service or frontline sales. If like us you believe that people buy from people, you will understand that DISC is an effective way to help salespeople build relationships, gain rapport and sell more.

Disc training helps salespeople better understand themselves and others, so they can be more successful in their sales role.

Our sales team training teaches people how to identify their own sales style, different personality types, and how to adjust their approach accordingly. With the right training, salespeople can gain powerful skills that will enable them to close deals and increase their overall sales performance.

2. What is a DISC personality test?

DISC is a personality test that helps us understand what we do and how we behave. DISC tests have been developed over many years from the original assessment, which was developed by William Marston Moulton who based his work around the teachings of Carl Jung and Jung’s book “The Emotions of Normal People”.

So what is DISC? Well every human being regardless of race, colour or creed has a preferred style of behaviours that they exhibit. Specifically, every Human Being has a preferred style of behaviours that fall into one of four categories D – I – S or C. Sometimes we are accused of labelling people, or putting them into boxes when we do this, but please do not be offended. This is no different to recognising that some people are left handed or that some people have blue eyes, or others have red hair.

There is no right or wrong, and neither is there a better or best DISC style. Each of the four quadrants has strengths and weaknesses and this just recognises that none of us are perfect.

Take a DISC Assessment Now!

3. What are the four DISC personality types?

DISC tells us that every individual has a “preferred” way of doing and behaving. These ways predominantly fall within four main types or disc styles. These DISC styles are: D Profile, I Profile, S Profile and C Profile.

Whilst many companies attach words to the styles such as D for Dominance or I for Influencer, we prefer not to, as words on their own can be subjective as individuals can draw different conclusions and meanings from the same words.

The Four most common words used to identify disc styles are:

D – Dominance

I – Influencer

S – Steadiness

C – Compliance

Not every individual fits exactly into the four quadrants and some share the traits of two or more quadrants. However, each individual does have a centre which is the DISC style they will default to under stress.

In addition to their natural sales style, some individuals have an adjusted style or work mask. Whilst the natural style never changes, the work mask can change based on the individuals perceptions of what they need to do to be successful.

4. What does DISC training do?

From a sales perspective a DISC sales profile has four main benefits as follows:

DISC assessments help salespeople identify and understand their own personal DISC sales profile. In addition to a 16 page report on their DISC sales style, each of our participants has the opportunity to book additional training and coaching.
DISC assessments helps salespeople understand different customer buying styles and quickly build stronger relationships with their customers, thus improving sales effectiveness.
DISC assessments helps sales leaders understand the strengths and weaknesses of their sales team and identify where they will need the most support.
DISC assessments helps sales leaders identify the best DISC sales profile among candidates as part of the hiring process.

5. How DISC training drives sales results

DISC sales does more than help improve communication and sales interactions. It empowers salespeople at every step of the sales process and gives each individual specific strategies they can use to improve their sales performance and the customer experience.

In sales we understand that each of us has a different way of selling and that’s what makes us unique. Without loosing our natural sales style, it’s important to acknowledge that our sales style will fit well with many customers, but it may not fit well with others.

Our DISC sales style, in certain circumstances may hurt us and negatively influence the prospect. By providing salespeople with their own disc sales profile you are enabling them to

Provide participants with the self knowledge and a deeper understanding of their own natural sales style.
Help participants explore their own natural strengths and weaknesses via the disc model.
Use the DISC sales model to quickly identify customers and their buying styles and then use that information to practice adapting their styles to each specific customer.
Discover specific strategies they can draw upon to improve sales interactions and further develop their own emotional intelligence.
Use DISC profiles by placing customers first and at the center of their communication style and build rapport fast.
Provide sales leaders with a disc sales map and list of sales priorities to help them manage, train and coach their sales team.

6. How much does DISC training cost?

Our DISC training costs £250 per person plus taxes and includes:

1 x DISC sales assessment complete with in depth information in a 16 page report and a DISC sales profile.
1 x Live, one on one training session delivered remotely with one of our DISC trainers.
For DISC sales of groups of 10 or more please contact us in advance.

We also provide DISC training on site, either on your premises, or at an external location of your choosing. Our workshops are highly interactive and designed to deliver the best possible DISC sales learning experience.
The DISC sales facilitation kit our trainers use is proprietary and not available to purchase.

Take a DISC Assessment Now!

How to Improve Sales Effectiveness

by Iain Swanston

Sales effectiveness - Top Question from Google

How do you measure sales effectiveness?

Here’s the short answer:

How you measure sales effectiveness will depend on your company goals and objectives. Here are 5 measurements or sales KPIs (key performance indicators) to get you started:

Revenue growth. Not everything should be about money, but if your revenue growth is stalled or even worse, going backwards you will need to take action.
Conversion ratio. At a big picture level you will need to ensure the sales team are converting new sales leads. For more detailed conversion ratios, examine the conversion rates between each stage of your sales process such as MQL to SQL.
Average deal size. Increasing your average deal size via cross selling and upselling is a great way to improve your sales effectiveness.
Sales Cycle. Your sales cycle is the time between what we call first contact with a prospect and when you receive money in the bank for your goods and services. The shorter the sales cycle the more efficient your process.
Customer satisfaction. Never forget your customers and ensure that any improvements to your sales effectiveness are not at the expense of customer satisfaction.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. What is Sales Efficiency anyway?

Sales efficiency is simply measuring the ratio of the value gained from the costs of your sales team and the revenue they generate. The greater the ratio then the greater the return and the more effective the sales unit are.

In order to track and measure your sales efficiency you will need to be familiar with all the costs within your sales and marketing departments. Ideally you will have identified your cost per lead and your lifetime customer value.

These sales metrics may vary across products, departments and even salespeople and are the key to any sales improvement plan.

2. Sales Effectiveness framework

Over the years we have found great value in simplifying our own systems and processes, which we then share with our clients. For the last 10 years we have focussed our sales strategy, planning and improvements around what we call the four high value areas of B2B sales. These are:

Finding: you have to find people, companies and opportunities before you can sell to them.

Klozing: once you’ve found a deal you need to be able to take the deal through a sales process and win it.

Growing: once you have done all the hard work of finding and klozing new paying customers you need to keep and grow that account.

Developing: lastly, finding, klozing and growing are all activities undertaken by sales reps and we need to keep them, grow them and build a winning sales culture, all with scalable sales processes.

If you simply spend as much time as possible in these four areas it’s almost impossible not to sell more and improve sales effectiveness.

3. Finding - Lead to Opportunity Conversion Rate

Before we can convert leads to opportunities we need to first measure how good we are at generating leads. What is our process for filling the top of the sales funnel with potential customers and is it scalable? Have we explored all the different channels available and then identified the most fruitful ones.

Furthermore it’s important to define what is a lead? How close are they to your Ideal Client Persona (ICP) and what process do we use to qualify them? In our own business we use MQL and SQL which stands for Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

We deliberately keep this simple so in our world a marketing lead is simply a contact that has downloaded an asset from our website or attended a webinar, or following us social channels. An MQL is a lead that has actively asked to talk with us whether that be via our website, telephone or email. The key differentiator here is that we have never spoken to them.

Next up is our Sales Qualified leads and these are defined as people who have spoken to sales and meet the criteria of both our ICP and BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) which is a simple sales qualification process.

In our own business we measure our conversion ratio of MQLs against deals closed. Most companies would use SQL against deals closed but our system works well for us and our conversion ratio of MQLs when last measured was 42.22% which we think is pretty good.

It’s also worth noting the importance of lead response time here. According to a Lead Connect survey 78% of customers buy from the first responder. Also sales conversions are 391% higher when the first response is withing 1 minute. Lastly, leads that older than 5 minutes receive an 80% drop in lead qualification. Speed is your friend in lead generation.

New Customer Acquisition Rates

Whilst conversion ratios are important, what is equally important is new customer acquisition rates. If you have a 100% conversion rate but you only generate and close one deal a month you are unlikely to get the sales results you want or need.

Wherever possible we would recommend a data driven approach and starting with your ICP. The most efficient marketing is laser targeted on the ICP which then generates a better quality of lead. Small changes in messaging and design can have a huge impact on this.

Often times an easy win for both marketing and sales is to use campaigns and special offers to increase conversions and new customer acquisition. Most often recognised as tactics for B2C we have had huge success with clients building campaigns around a special offer.

Interestingly the most successful special offers we have worked with clients on ended up being more expensive than the original offer. The art of selling is not about discounting, it’s about selling your product at your price.

For obvious reasons it’s important that your customer acquisition rate exceeds your customer attrition rate which we cover later in this article.

4. Klozing and Sales Performance

As previously stated Klozing comes when you have found a deal or opportunity, and you then take that deal through your sales pipeline and win it. Most companies will base their sales metrics and how they measure sales effectiveness on closing sales qualified leads.

These sales metrics are influenced or driven by the sales team’s ability and performance. Ability refers to the skills and traits of the sales team to close deals and performance refers to their output. You can have the most highly trained sales reps in the world but unless they perform and are highly engaged they will not close deals. We therefore define sales effectiveness as Ability + Performance = Sales effectiveness.

Let’s break down Ability first. If ability comes from traits and skills what does this mean in real terms?

Traits are important at the hiring phase – what are the sales reps hobbies out of work? Would you hire a gamer who is stuck in their bedroom overnight of the captain of the local football team? Sports people normally excel in sales because they have great traits, self discipline, good work ethics and they are team players.

Skills are obviously important, however, in sales there are a myriad of skills required some of which are more or less relevant depending on the role. For example an AE (Account Executive) will potentially need communication skills, presentation skills, objection handling and negotiating skills to close deals.

A salesperson focussed on selling to the public sector via bids and tenders would require a completely different skill set.

5. Growing - Retention and Expansion.

A major part of sales effectiveness comes from the ability to not just win new business but hold onto it and expand within those accounts. After all the most difficult and most costly part of sales, namely new client acquisition is done. Growth & retention via cross selling and upselling should be mandatory in every company strategy.

Often the first step in growing is to ensure retention and reduce customer attrition or churn. Companies measure sales churn in different ways for example saas companies may measure churn on their monthly paid subscriptions, however, some companies may be heavily geared to annual subscriptions and this then needs to be taken into account.

Our own belief is that reducing churn is the area of sales effectiveness that every sales organisation should address first. There is no point winning new business if you cannot retain it.

The Critical metrics most often used to reduce churn would be customer satisfaction, user engagement and changes in customer needs.

6. Developing - scaling people and process

In our experience developing falls into two main categories as follows, firstly the startups.

Many company founders and sales leaders rush to scale their business before they have the fundamentals in place. They want to hire an entire sales force before they have in some cases proven their value proposition, let alone put in place scalable systems and sales processes for profitable growth. One sales rep who can’t win deals quickly becomes 10 sales reps who can’t win deals which compounds the problems and adds to the existing workload of already time poor sales leaders. Step 1, focus on the value proposition and making it as attractive as possible. Step 2, focus on building repetition and sales effectiveness at scale not just on individual salespeople.

In Developing the second group we deal with are established businesses who need to either reduce costs (no necessarily the cost of people, but the cost of customer acquisition) or simply want to drive performance and an effective sales team.

For these companies the status quo and change is the biggest challenge. Tenured salespeople can be resistant to changes which needs to be taken into account when you are planning for improvements in sales effectiveness.

In many cases delivering sales training is the easy part, creating meaningful behavioural change across an entire team is the bigger problem. So big that many sales leaders simply put up with subpar performance and average output from their sales force.

These are actually the most rewarding projects as they always deliver the biggest impact.

7. How to boost sales effectiveness - key questions

Sales Enablement is one of the most common approaches to drive sales effectiveness across sales teams. Sales Enablement is a way of providing the right tools, content, sales training and resources that the sales teams needs to be win more deals.

In addition a modern Sales Enablement department would be responsible for supporting the implementation of the company’s sales strategy, their sales processes, and measuring sales effectiveness across the organisation.

If your sales organization does not have it’s own sales enablement team our recommendation would be to first get a baseline understanding of the overall sales performance of your sales team’s effectiveness.

Its important that any evaluation is from the top down and includes the sales leaders, the sales managers and every sales rep. This would include things like sales opportunities generated, best practices, win rates, quota attainment and effective selling skills and behaviours.

Key Questions

1. What data do I have?

Sometimes we let perfection get in the way of progress. What data do you have that you can take actions from?

2. What data should I have?

What data are you going to need to make the right decisions and how can I start recoding it?

3. What data is easy to collect?

Data itself and can end up overwhelming. Where possible make data collection easy, avoid adding workload to salespeople.

4. No data?

If you don’t have data score each section on a 1 through 10 with 10 being perfect.

5. Where are the easy wins?

Find some easy wins to give your project some momentum.

6. Which are the biggest leavers?

Which improvements are going to have the biggest impact?

Taking time out to take a complete measurement of the sales organizations overall effectiveness will provide you with a better understanding help you to identify realistic goals in terms of improvements that you can achieve.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Sales Consultancy | Unlock Your Sales Potential

by Iain Swanston

Sales Consultancy - Top Question from Google

What do sales consultants do?

Here’s the short answer:

We are professional sales consultants specializing in helping B2B companies by improving their sales performance and achieving their sales goals. We work with a wide range of clients, including SMEs, Mid-Market and Enterprise accounts.

Our sales consultants look at your business as a whole and typically work with clients to identify areas for improvement in sales strategy, sales performance and sales process. Whilst many companies come to us for sales training, we have learned that in some cases training is the wrong place to start.

Therefore, we only provide training that we know will be impactful and aligned with the companies overall sales objectives.

Sales consultants may also work with clients to develop marketing and sales materials, such as brochures, presentations, and proposals, and they may provide guidance on sales techniques and best practices.

Our goal as sales consultants is not just to increase sales, but to do so in a way that is scalable and profitable. Furthermore we love to leave a legacy after us in terms of an improved culture and continuous improvement in sales performance.

We do this by providing expertise and guidance on a wide range of sales and marketing-related topics, and by working with clients and their sales teams to develop and implement effective growth strategies.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. Why is sales consulting important

No CEO, VP, or Sales Director can be an expert in everything. A proven sales consultant who is external to the business can bring different skills, experiences and perspective to your business. The reality is that there is nothing that we bring that any CEO or VP of Sales could do themselves. What we bring is speed – our teams knowledge and skills will fast forward your business quicker that you can do working on your own. In addition to speed our team brings:

Our consultants bring expertise and experience in sales and marketing to our clients. They can provide valuable insights and guidance on a wide range of sales and marketing-related topics, and they can help you identify areas for improvement in your existing sales approach and to develop effective strategies to achieve real sales growth.
Working with our consultants, we help our clients improve their teams sales skills, productivity and sales performance resulting in real business growth. Our sales consultants will help you to identify and address bottlenecks in the sales process, and they can provide guidance on best practices and strategies to increase new sales enquiries and sales.
Klozers sales consulting services are flexible and scalable, which makes them suitable for companies of all sizes and in a variety of industries. Companies can work with us on a short-term or long-term basis, depending on their needs, and they can scale their support up or down as needed.

We serve as trusted advisors to CEOs and Sales Directors by supporting not just their sales team, but their sales operation as a whole.

Every business is unique so we would love to talk to you and learn more about your business. Contact us now for a free and no obligation sales consultation.

2. Common Consulting Projects - Sales Process

Often B2B sales can seem complicated and we do our best wherever possible to simplify everything. Sales is a process and should have logical and measurable start and ending points. Without a process it’s simply not possible to achieve consistency in either results or performance and more importantly it’s not scalable.

Our sales consultancy helps you:

Identifying areas for improvement: we work with clients to identify bottlenecks or other issues in the sales processes that are preventing them from achieving their goals. They can then develop strategies to address those issues and improve the sales process.
Providing training and development: we can provide training and development to help your sales force improve their skills and achieve better results. This might include training on sales techniques, product knowledge, or customer service skills.
Developing sales strategies: we work at CEO and Sales Director level to develop sales strategies that align with their business objectives. This might include identifying target markets, developing sales processes and systems, and creating marketing and sales materials.
Analyzing data and market trends: we use data analysis from your CRM and market research to identify trends and patterns that can inform your sales strategy. We can then use this information to develop changes to the sales approach whilst if necessary retaining the original sales strategy.
Providing group pipeline coaching and individual one to one coaching support: we work with sales people to develop 90 day sales plans for their teams and then provide coaching to help the sales teams deliver on the plans.

As part of our endeavours to simplify sales we break each area of the sales process down into the four high value areas of sales. Which are Finding, Klozing and Growing – we’ve found if you focus all your energies on just finding more people to sell to, then improving your klozing to get more deals over the line and then ensure that you both retain and grow those accounts, its impossible not to sell more.

The fourth and last high value are of sales is Developing which is the constant development of skills, confidence and knowledge of the sales people themselves.

3. Common Consulting Projects - Sales Training

Klozers started as a sales training business back in 2014 and sales training and coaching is at the heart of our business. We’ve successfully delivered sales training across multiple countries and verticals, from frontline SDRs to boardroom sales leaders.

Developing bespoke training programs: our clients have typically tried generic sales training courses and come to us looking for something different – results. We work with clients to develop customized sales training programs that meet the specific needs of their people and their organization. These programs might include training on lead generation, sales techniques, customer service, or other relevant topics.
Providing training workshops: our sales consultants can conduct sales training workshops for salespeople, either in person or online. These sessions might include lectures, group discussions, and hands-on exercises to help salespeople learn and practice new skills.
Providing ongoing coaching and support: we have team of experienced sales coaches who provide ongoing coaching and support to salespeople to help them apply their new sales skills in the workplace and to overcome any situational challenges as they arise. This might include providing feedback and guidance on sales techniques, as well as encouragement and support.
Evaluating the effectiveness of training: our consultants can also help clients to evaluate the effectiveness of your in house sales training programs, by collecting data and analyzing the results. This can help clients to identify areas for improvement within their sales force and to refine their training programs as needed.
Sales Team activity: training and improvement to sales processes are important, however, many sales teams struggle to execute the right types and level of sales activity. Every sales team needs to be held accountable to delivering the sales activity required.

Our sales training can be delivered either in-person at a location of your choosing, remotely online or a hybrid of the two. All our training is aligned with the companies overall sales strategy and goals which ensures you will receive the outcomes, results and business growth you are looking for.

4. Common Consulting Projects - Sales & Marketing Alignment

Aligning sales and marketing within a business is important because it helps to ensure that both teams are working towards the same overall goals and objectives. Here are some examples of the type of projects we work on to align sales and marketing within a business:

Establish clear and common growth goals and objectives: The first step in aligning sales and marketing is to establish clear and common growth goals and objectives for both teams. Examples include setting overall OKR based goals for the business, such as increasing sales revenue or expanding into new markets.
Define roles and responsibilities: It is important for both sales and marketing teams to understand their roles and responsibilities within the entire sales process. This may involve defining the specific tasks and responsibilities of each team, as well as how they will work together to achieve the overall goals of the business.
Communicate and collaborate: To align sales and marketing effectively, it is important for both teams to communicate and collaborate regularly. To this end we are great advocates of “Growth Pods” whereby we remove traditional siloed sales and marketing departments and place professionals from sales and marketing into smaller pods where they work together with common goals.
Use data and analytics: By using data and analytics, both the sales team and the marketing team can better understand the needs and preferences of their customers, and make more informed decisions about how to reach and engage them.
Use shared metrics: Using shared metrics can help to align sales and marketing efforts, as both teams can track progress towards common goals and objectives. This may include metrics such as customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, or lead conversion rate.

Aligning sales and marketing is a subject close to our hearts as we have gone through the process as a business ourselves. We can show you exactly how we did it, including the results, warts and all.

5. Klozers B2B Sales Consultancy - Join us

We’re growing fast and keen to hear from experienced sales consultants who would like to join our team. Our clients quite rightly demand the best and here are some of the vast array of skills that you will need:

Sales and Marketing: sales and marketing are inextricably linked in modern selling so you will need to demonstrate expertise in all aspects of B2B sales and marketing.
Communication skills: you will need to be a natural communicator and be able to effectively communicate with clients, from CEO & Sales Director level, through to the front line sales team. You should be able to clearly and concisely convey information and ideas, and be able to adapt your communication style to suit different personas.
Analytical skills: we will help you analyse the data in your CRM system to help your clients identify trends and patterns, from which you will need to develop solutions for sales growth.
Problem-solving skills: we love working with our clients on complex problems and helping them find the best solution for their circumstances. We don’t believe in a one size fits all solution so you’ll need to be creative in terms of your problem solving.
Consultative skills: our genesis as a business was delivering consultative selling skills which is still our best selling course. Our sales consultants are our brand champions so you will need to be able to work with clients in a consultative manner, and build strong relationships based on trust and mutual respect.
Business acumen: sales never operates in isolation of the wider business and our sales consultants need a strong understanding of business principles and how to apply them to different sales scenarios. You should be able to analyze market trends and customer needs, and to develop sales strategies that align with clients’ business objectives.

Klozers are a full life sales and marketing consultancy meaning we cover everything from the initial value proposition development through to closing more sales deals. What this means to you is that we work in a fast paced environment and no two days are the same. It’s great fun and hugely rewarding.

We are currently recruiting consultants throughout Europe and North America so please feel free to call us for more information.

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

90 Day Sales Plan | Free Download

by Iain Swanston

90 Day Sales Action Plan - Top Question from Google

How do write a 90 Day Sales Action Plan?

Here’s the short answer: To write a 90-day sales action plan, your sales team should follow these steps:

Identify measurable goals: The first step in creating a 90-day sales action plan is to identify your specific goals. These should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that will help you to achieve success within the next 90 days. The sales goals in your plan should always be aligned with the companies overall sales and business strategy. Focus your goals on sales activities and behaviours, rather than revenue – if you do the right behaviours the revenue takes care of itself.
Break down your goals into actionable tasks: Once you have identified your goals, you will need to break them down into smaller, actionable tasks. What is it that you need to do to achieve the goals? These should be specific and achievable steps that you can take to move closer to your goals. Again avoid thinking about revenue. As an example; look at your sales process and identify where you can either increase the volume new sales enquires generated and increase the conversion ratio of the deals you are generating.
Assign deadlines and priorities: For each task, assign a deadline and a priority level. This will help you to stay organized and focused, and ensure that you are making progress towards your goals. Use the 30, 60 and 90 day milestones to hold yourself accountable rather than waiting till the end of the 90 day period.
Create a timeline: Use a timeline or calendar to visualize your progress and keep track of your tasks and deadlines. This will help you to stay on track and stay focused on your goals. We’re great fans of vision boards so make sure all the salespeople create and maintain a personla vision board.
Monitor and review your progress with your Sales Manager: Regularly review your progress to ensure that you are on track to achieve your goals. If you are not making the progress you expected, adjust your plan as needed to get back on track.
Make yourself accountable: Planning is great, however, doing is better. The best sales plan in the world is worthless if you do not execute the actions within the plan. B2B sales can be a tough environment and it helps to have the support of others around you like a sales manager to help hold you accountable to your new sales plan.

Top tip: include the four high value areas of sales (Finding, Klozing, Growing and Developing) in your sales plan to ensure you allocate the right amount of time for your circumstances. For example some salespeople may need to focus on generating new leads, whilst others need to develop relationships with existing customers. Check out the FREE template below as an example of this.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

90 DAY PLAN TEMPLATE

Download a FREE copy of our 90 Say Sales Plan template and make this your sales year.

1. Why are 90 day sales plans important?

90-day sales plans are important because they provide a clear, focused framework for sales reps to work towards specific goals and objectives over a defined period of time. A well-crafted 90-day sales plan can help the entire team to:

Stay focused and organized: Sales is the easiest job in the world but the most difficult to be effective. With so many distractions planning is an important part of sales success. By breaking down goals into specific tasks and assigning deadlines and priorities, a 90-day sales plan can help sales professionals to stay organized and focused, and ensure that they are making progress towards their goals.
Track progress and make adjustments: Schedule weekly checkpoints to track progress, a 90-day sales plan can help sales professionals to identify areas of sales activities where they are falling behind, and need to make up the numbers to get back on track. In addition to sales activities the plan can help identify skills gaps where reps are doing the activity, but not getting the results.
Increase personal motivation and accountability: There is something comforting and reassuring about having a plan and then working the plan. By setting clear goals and tracking progress, a 90-day sales plan helps sales professionals to stay motivated and accountable, and feel more engaged in their work.
Enhance communication and collaboration: Often times the sales leadership in a company are unsure of exactly what their direct reports are doing. 90 Day plans are a great way to ensure that sales reps are working on the right activities at the right time. By working towards shared goals, your 90-day sales plan can help sales professionals to improve communication and collaboration with their sales leadership and colleagues in their team.

Overall, a 90-day sales plan is a valuable tool that can help sales reps to focus their efforts, track their progress, and stay motivated and accountable as they work towards specific goals and objectives.

2. Are 90 day sales plans for a sales manager different to one for a sales person?

A 90-day sales plan for a sales manager will be different from a 90-day sales plan for a salesperson, as the responsibilities and goals of the two roles differ.

For a sales manager, a 90-day sales plan may focus on goals such as improving team performance, increasing team productivity, improving the sales skills of the team, or building relationships with key clients.

It may also include tasks such as conducting performance evaluations, providing training and development opportunities for team members, or creating strategies to target new markets.

90 day plans are a great tool to help new sales managers to demonstrate an impact in a new position. In addition to their management responsibilities many new sales managers also have a sales quota and are directly responsible for a few strategic clients.

For a salesperson, a 90-day sales plan may focus on goals such as increasing sales revenue, closing new deals, or improving customer retention. It may also include tasks such as identifying and qualifying leads, making presentations, or following up with prospects and customers.

Like the salespeople’s 90 day plans, the sales managers plans should always be linked to the company’s overall business plan and sales strategy.

3. Who should create the sales plans - the Reps or the Manager?

Sales plans should always be created by the salespeople who are responsible for executing the plan even when they are new sales reps to the company.

Here are a few factors to consider when creating your 90-day sales plans:

a) Modern sales management is an extremely busy role and creating action plans for every member of your team takes time because of the variables involved.

b) Where new hires lack the skills or experience to create their own 90 day plans, sales managers should use the planning process to help train and coach their direct reports to be more self sufficient.

The sales manager should always be involved as they ultimately have to sign off the plans. However, giving responsibility to the salespeople, helps build their skills and more importantly give them a sense of ownership of the plan, which in turn provides better engagement across the team.

4. How do I choose the right Goals and Objectives for my plan?

The goals and objectives in a 90-day sales plan should be aligned with the company’s overall sales strategy. Your sales strategy is your long-term plan that outlines the approach and tactics that your company will use to achieve its sales goals. By aligning the goals and objectives of the 90-day sales plan with the overall sales strategy, sales reps and sales managers can ensure that they are working towards the same overall goals and objectives as the company.

Here are a few ways to align the goals and objectives in a 90-day sales plan with the company’s sales strategy:

Identify the measurable goals of the company: The first step in aligning the 90-day sales plan with the company’s sales strategy is to understand the overall sales goals of the company. These may include goals such as increasing sales revenue, expanding into new markets, or improving customer retention.
Determine how the 90-day sales plan fits into the overall strategy: Once you have identified the overall sales goals of the company, you can determine how the 90-day sales plan fits into the overall strategy. This may involve identifying specific tactics or approaches that the team can use to contribute to the overall sales goals.
Use OKRs to set goals: The OKR system is a business goal setting framework used by many companies to drive growth and improvements. We use this in our own business and with our clients who love it.

Overall, aligning the goals and objectives in a 90-day sales plan with the company’s sales strategy can help sales reps and sales managers to work towards the same overall goals and objectives as the company, and contribute to the success of the overall sales strategy.

5. How do I implement 90 day action plans with my sales team?

Salespeople can be a tough audience and they especially don’t like change or something they feel threatening. This is why it’s so important to take a collaborative approach and make sure you win their hearts as well as their minds. This is as much about Change Management as it is about sales.

With that in mind, facilitate a workshop and with your team:

Identify the goals and objectives of the team: The first step in creating a 90-day sales plan is to identify the specific goals and objectives that the team should work towards. These should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that will help the team to achieve success within the next 90 days.
Break down the goals into actionable tasks: Once you have identified the goals of the team, you will need to break them down into smaller, actionable tasks. These should be specific and achievable steps that the team can take to move closer to the goals.
Assign deadlines and priorities: For each task, assign a deadline and a priority level. This will help the team to stay organized and focused, and ensure that they are making progress towards the goals.
Create a timeline: Use a timeline or calendar to visualize the team’s progress and keep track of the tasks and deadlines. This will help the team to stay on track and stay focused on the goals.
Communicate the plan to the team: Once the plan is complete, communicate it to the team and make sure that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.
Monitor and review progress: Regularly review the team’s progress to ensure that they are on track to achieve the goals. If the team is not making the progress you expected, adjust the plan as needed to get back on track.

Remember the most powerful workshops are those where the salespeople get to talk, are heard and believe its their own ideas they are about to go out and execute.

6. How do I hold my sales team members accountable to the 90 day plans?

A culture of accountability is essential for any business to be successful and all sales plans are worthless unless they are delivered. If you are introducing sales plans for the first time you should set the activity bar low so it’s achievable. You can gauge this by the activity level of the top performer and by using them as a benchmark you can immediately remove the argument that it cannot be done because everyone is too busy.

Communicate the plan clearly: Make sure that the salespeople understand their goals and the specific tasks that they need to complete in order to achieve them. Clearly communicate deadlines and priorities, and provide any necessary resources or support to help them succeed.
Set up regular check-ins: Schedule regular check-ins with sales team members to review their progress and provide support and guidance as needed. These check-ins can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video conference.
Track progress and review results: Use tools such as dashboards or performance tracking software to track the progress of sales team members towards their goals. Regularly review these results to identify areas where team members are falling behind, and provide additional support as needed.
Provide feedback and coaching: Offer constructive feedback, training and coaching to sales team members to help them improve their performance and achieve their goals. This can include providing guidance on best practices, identifying areas for improvement, and offering support and resources to help team members succeed.
Set consequences for non-compliance: Establish clear consequences for sales team members who are not meeting their goals or following the plan. These consequences could include additional training or coaching, reduction in commissions or bonuses, or even termination if necessary.

The art of sales management is to push your sales force, however, if you push too hard you will lose them mentally. Better still link their personal goals to your business goals and watch them push themselves.

Be sure to get include a “Commitment Statement” in your plan and get your Reps to read it an sign it. This is great for setting the scene and reminding them that they are responsible for their own results.

7. 90 day sales plan for new hires vs sales plan for existing salespeople?

A 90-day sales action plan for a new salespeople should be very different to this 90-day sales action plan which is designed for existing salespeople. In most cases the hiring manager will use the first 30 days to provide what we call non sales training to a new sales rep. As part of the initial onboarding and training process a new employee would be given training on the new company’s vision, the company’s mission, product training and industry knowledge,

Next up during the 60 – 90 day sales plan the training quickly focuses more on sales knowledge topics. This should include, the value proposition, target markets, generating new leads and key clients that need to be prioritised.

Here are some additional things you should consider for new sales team members:

Focus: A 90-day sales action plan for those in a new sales job should focus more on onboarding and training, while a 90-day sales action plan for existing salespeople, may focus more on specific goals and objectives. For example, new sales team members will need more support understanding their sales territory, the sales process, background to any key accounts they are taking over.
Tasks: A 90-day sales action plan for new hires may include tasks such as learning about the company’s products and services, meeting with key stakeholders, and observing sales calls, while a 90-day sales action plan for existing salespeople may include tasks such as making presentations, following up with leads, and closing deals.
Goals: A 90-day sales action plan for new hires may include goals such as becoming familiar with the sales process and building relationships with key stakeholders, while a 90-day sales action plan for existing salespeople may include goals such as increasing sales revenue or improving customer retention. It’s important that every new sales rep understands how the company defines success and

Overall, the focus and tasks included in a 90-day sales action plan may vary depending on the specific needs and goals of the sales team or individual, as well as their experience and expertise in sales. It is important to choose goals and tasks that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) in order to maximize the chances of success. This includes weekly personal goals, following the companies sales processes, and producing high quality work that measurably impacts their sales quota.rep

“A fantastic learning experience”

Amanda – Account Manager

Mastering the Art of Asking For The Order

by Iain Swanston

asking for the order - Top Question from Google

How do you ask customers for the sale? (The short answer)

You should always remember, people do not like being sold to, but they love buying. With this in mind the best way to ask for the order, is not to ask for the order. If you use a consultative sales approach the customer will realise for themselves that there is a good fit between what you are selling and their needs. The best sales professionals never have to ask for the order. They simply create the right conditions for the buyer to buy.

If you are using a traditional sales approach in B2B sales, there are several ways to ask customers for sales, depending on the context and the relationship you have with them. Here are some examples:

If you are in a business setting and have already established a relationship with the customer, you can ask for a sale by stating the benefits of your product or service and explaining why it would be a good fit for their needs. For example, you could say, “Our product has been proven to improve efficiency and save time, which I think would be valuable for your business. Would you like to discuss a purchase?”
If you are cold-calling or contacting potential customers for the first time, it’s important to be polite and respectful. Start by introducing yourself and your company, and then explain how your product or service can help them. For example, you could say, “Hi, my name is [Name] and I’m with [Company]. We offer a [Product/Service] that can help [Benefit]. Can I schedule a call to discuss how it could benefit your business?”

Overall, the key to asking for the sale or indeed anything, is to be polite, respectful, and informative. Show the value of your product or service, and be prepared to answer any questions they may have.

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…

1. Why it's important for salespeople to ask for the sale?

Not everyone is familiar with, or uses a consultative sales approach. Therefore, it’s very important for those using traditional sales methodologies to ask for the sale. Asking for the sale is the final step in the sales process, and it’s what ultimately determines whether the salesperson is successful in making a sale.

By asking for the sale, the salesperson is taking the initiative and putting the decision in the hands of the customer. This can be a powerful way to persuade the customer to make a purchase, and it can also help the sales person to close the deal more efficiently.

In addition to winning more sales, asking for the sale is also a crucial part of building a successful sales career. Sales is a profession that requires persistence, confidence, and the ability to handle rejection.

Asking for the sale helps sales professionals to develop these skills, and it can also help them to build a track record of success. The ability to ask for the sale has a direct impact on the sales performance of your sales team.

2. Why asking for the sale can lose sales professionals the deal

Asking for the sale is an important step in the sales process, and it’s essential for making a successful sale. However, if it’s not done in the right way, it’s possible that asking for the sale could lose the deal. Here are a few reasons why this might happen:

The customer isn’t ready: If the customer isn’t ready to make a decision, asking for the sale can be premature and can push them away. It’s important to carefully gauge the customer’s level of interest and readiness before asking for the sale.
The customer has objections: If the customer has objections or concerns, asking for the sale without addressing those issues can be counterproductive. It’s important to listen to the customer’s objections and to address them before asking for the sale.
The sales person is pushy or aggressive: Asking for the sale in a pushy or aggressive manner can be off-putting to the customer. Salespeople should be direct and clear in their request, but they should also be respectful and professional.
The customer is dissatisfied: If the customer is unhappy with the product or service, or with the salesperson’s performance, asking for the sale can be futile. In these cases, it may be better to address the customer’s dissatisfaction and try to resolve the issues before asking for the sale.

Overall, asking for the sale is a crucial part of the sales process, but it’s important to do it in a way that is appropriate for the specific situation and customer.

3. How fear of rejection stops sales professionals asking for the sale

Fear of rejection can definitely stop salespeople from asking for the sale. Asking for the sale is an inherently vulnerable position, and it requires the salesperson to put themselves out there and potentially face rejection. This can be intimidating, and it’s natural for salespeople to be afraid of being rejected.

However, it’s important for salespeople to overcome this fear and to ask for the sale anyway. Rejection is a natural part of the sales process, and it’s something that every salesperson will experience at some point in their career. By accepting that rejection is a possibility and by developing the skills and strategies to handle it effectively, sales people can overcome their fear of rejection and become more successful in their careers.

Sales people can overcome their fear of rejection in a number of ways, including the following:

Develop a positive attitude: A positive attitude can help salespeople to stay motivated and focused, even in the face of rejection. By believing in themselves and their abilities, salespeople can maintain a sense of confidence and resilience, which can help them to overcome their fear of rejection.
Practice effective rejection management: Sales people can learn how to manage rejection effectively by using techniques such as reframing, refocusing, and redirecting. These techniques can help sales people to view rejection in a more positive light, and to move on from rejection quickly and confidently.
Seek support: Sales people don’t have to face their fear of rejection alone. Seeking support from colleagues, mentors, and peers can provide valuable encouragement and advice, and can help sales people to feel more confident and capable.
Learn from rejection: Instead of viewing rejection as a failure, sales people can learn from it and use it as an opportunity to improve. By analyzing why a particular sale didn’t go through, salespeople can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to overcome similar objections in the future.

By adopting these strategies, sales people can overcome their fear of rejection and become more successful in their careers.

4. How to build confidence in salespeople

Here are some tips for building confidence in a sales team:

Provide training and development: A sales team who are well-trained and well-equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed are more likely to be confident in their abilities. Invest in sales training and development programs that provide sales professionals with the tools and resources they need to be successful.
Encourage positive thinking: Positive thinking is a powerful tool that can help sales professionals to build confidence and overcome challenges. Encourage sales professionals to focus on their strengths and to believe in their ability to succeed.
Set achievable goals: Setting challenging but achievable goals can help sales professionals to feel a sense of accomplishment and to build their confidence. Create a goal-setting framework that provides clear benchmarks and rewards for success.
Provide support and encouragement: Sales can be a tough and demanding profession, and sales professionals often face rejection and disappointment. Provide support and encouragement to help salespeople stay motivated and focused, and to build their confidence over time.
Celebrate success: Recognizing and celebrating the successes of salespeople can help to boost their confidence and to reinforce the behaviours and strategies that lead to success. Make sure to celebrate both individual and team successes, and to provide public recognition for outstanding achievements.

By implementing these strategies, sales managers and leaders can help sales teams to build confidence, improve sales performance and to become more successful in their careers.

5. Why salespeople feel uncomfortable asking for the sale

Asking for the sale can be uncomfortable for a sales person because they may fear rejection or feel like they are being pushy or aggressive. Additionally, some people may be unsure of how to ask for the sale in a way that is polite and respectful, or they may not be confident in their product or service. Here are some reasons why a sales person may feel uncomfortable asking for the sale:

Fear of rejection: Asking for the sale means putting yourself out there and potentially facing rejection. This can be intimidating and uncomfortable, especially for people who are sensitive to criticism or who have low self-esteem.
Concern about being pushy or aggressive: Some people may worry that asking for the sale will make them appear pushy or aggressive, which can be off-putting to customers. This may be especially true for people who are naturally reserved or introverted.
Uncertainty about how to ask for the sale: Asking for the sale is a skill that requires practice and finesse. If a sales person does not know how to do it effectively, it can make them feel unsure and uncomfortable.
Lack of confidence in their product or service: If you don’t believe in your product or service, it can be difficult to persuade others to buy it. This lack of confidence can make it uncomfortable to ask for the sale.

Overall, asking for the sale can be uncomfortable for many people because it involves overcoming these fears and doubts. However, with practice and the right mindset, you can learn to ask for the sale in a way that is confident and persuasive.

6. What are sales closing techniques?

Sales closing techniques are strategies that salespeople use to persuade a potential customer to make a purchase. These techniques can take many forms, but they all aim to help the salesperson overcome any objections the customer may have and to move the conversation towards a successful sale. Some common sales closing techniques include using a trial close to gauge the customer’s level of interest, asking for the sale directly, offering a discount or special deal, and using scarcity or urgency to create a sense of need. Sales closing techniques can be effective, but it’s important for salespeople to use them in an ethical and transparent manner.

Examples of sales closing techniques:

The trial close: This involves asking the customer a question that helps the salesperson gauge their level of interest in the product or service. For example, the salesperson might say, “Based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like this product could be a good fit for your needs. Am I correct?”
Asking for the sale directly: This is a straightforward approach where the salesperson simply asks the customer if they would like to make a purchase. For example, the salesperson might say, “Do you want to go ahead and place your order today?”
Offering a discount or special deal: This involves offering the customer a financial incentive to make a purchase. For example, the salesperson might say, “If you decide to order today, I can offer you a 10% discount on your purchase.”
Using scarcity or urgency: This involves creating a sense of need or urgency to persuade the customer to make a decision quickly. For example, the salesperson might say, “This offer is only available for a limited time, so if you want to take advantage of it, you’ll need to act now.”
In certain circumstances such as selling home products like kitchens and windows, it can help to introduce an order pad or order form to help capture the customers order details. The visible introduction of the order pad can prompt the buyer into moving forward.

It’s important to note that these are just examples, and every sales person should use the closing techniques that are most appropriate for their specific situation and customers.

7. Handling objections in sales

Objections from prospects are common as they try to reach the best buying decision for themselves. However, in most cases they are not objections, they are simply the buyers way of saying that they require more detail. Nonetheless, the inability to handle objections will cost both the sales person and the company in lost sales. Here are some tips for handling objections in sales:

Listen carefully to the objection: It’s important to understand exactly what the customer is saying and why they are objecting. Ask clarifying questions and pay attention to their body language and tone of voice to get a better sense of their concerns.
Acknowledge the objection: Show the customer that you understand their concerns and that you are taking their objections seriously. This can help to build trust and rapport with the customer.
Address the objection: Once you understand the customer’s objection, provide a response that addresses their concerns. This might involve providing additional information, offering a solution, or addressing any misconceptions the customer may have.
Ask for the sale: After you have addressed the customer’s objections, it’s time to ask for the sale. Be direct and clear in your request, and be prepared to overcome any additional objections that the customer may have.
Follow up: If the customer still isn’t ready to make a purchase, follow up with them at a later date. This can help to keep the conversation going and can increase the chances of making a sale in the future.

It’s important to remember that handling objections is an ongoing process, and every sales person should be prepared to handle objections at every stage of the sales process.

8. What are sales transition statements and how do you use them?

Sales transition statements are phrases that help you smoothly move from one part of a sales conversation to another. They can be used to introduce a new topic, ask for a sale, or overcome objections. Here are some examples of how you can use sales transition statements:

Introducing a new topic: “In addition to [current topic], there is another aspect of our product that I think you might find interesting. It’s [new topic].”
Asking for a sale: “Based on what we’ve discussed, I think our product would be a great fit for your needs. Are you ready to move forward with a purchase?”
Overcoming objections: “I understand your concern about [objection]. Let me assure you that [reassurance/solution to objection].”

To use sales transition statements effectively, make sure they are smooth and natural-sounding. Avoid using language that sounds too salesy or pushy, and focus on addressing the customer’s needs and concerns. By using these phrases to move smoothly from one topic to another, you can help guide the conversation and ultimately persuade the customer to make a purchase.

9. What are the most popular sales closing phrases?

Sales closing phrases or sales closing questions are used to conclude a sales conversation and persuade the customer to make a purchase. Some of the most popular sales closing phrases include:

“Are you ready to move forward with a purchase?”
“Can I count on you to buy today?”
“If you’re happy with everything we’ve discussed, shall we go ahead and get started?”
“Based on what we’ve discussed, I think our product is a great fit for your needs. What do you think?”
“I’m confident that our product will help you [achieve goal/solve problem]. Are you ready to make a commitment?”

It’s important to remember that these phrases are just suggestions, and the best sales closing phrase will vary depending on the situation and the customer. The key is to find the right questions or phrase that feel natural and authentic, and that helps you conclude the conversation in a way that persuades the customer to make a purchase.

10. Why a consultative sales approach is important in modern selling

A consultative sales approach is important in modern selling for several reasons. First, it allows the salesperson to better understand the customer’s needs, goals, and challenges, and to tailor their solutions to meet those needs. This can help to create a more personalized and effective sales pitch, and it can also help to build trust and rapport with the customer.

Second, a consultative sales approach is more focused on the customer’s needs than on the salesperson’s goals. This can help to create a more mutually beneficial and long-term relationship with the customer, rather than a transactional one-time sale.

Third, a consultative sales approach is more adaptable and flexible than traditional sales approaches. In today’s fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, salespeople need to be able to adapt quickly and to provide solutions that meet the customer’s evolving needs. A consultative sales approach allows salespeople to do this more effectively.

Overall, a consultative sales approach is important in modern selling because it allows salespeople to provide more effective solutions, to build stronger relationships with customers, and to be more adaptable to changing business conditions.

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Objection Handling Training | Transform Resistance into Results

by Iain Swanston

Objection Handling Training - Top Question from Google

How do you teach Objection Handling? (The short answer)

There are several different ways to teach objection handling in sales, and the best approach will depend on the specific situation and the learning goals of the sales team. Here are a few common approaches to teaching objection handling in sales:

Workshops and presentations: One approach to teaching objection handling is to provide workshops and presentations on the topic, covering the key principles and strategies for effectively responding to customer objections. This can be an effective way to provide an overview of the topic and to introduce the key concepts to the sales team.
Case studies and examples: Another approach is to use case studies and examples to illustrate the principles of objection handling. For example, a trainer might provide a case study that describes a real-life situation where a customer raised an objection, and then ask the sales team to brainstorm responses to that objection. This can be a useful way to help salespeople apply the principles of objection handling to real-life situations.
Role-playing and simulations: Role-playing and simulations are hands-on activities that can help salespeople practice and develop their objection handling skills. For example, a trainer might ask the sales team to role-play different scenarios where customers raise objections, and then provide feedback and guidance on how they can improve their responses. This can be an effective way to help salespeople develop the skills and confidence they need to handle objections effectively in real-life situations.

Overall, there are several different approaches to teaching objection handling in sales, and the best approach will depend on the specific situation and the learning goals of the sales team. By using a combination of training, case studies, and hands-on activities, trainers can help salespeople develop the skills and strategies they need to handle objections effectively and move forward with the sale.

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1. What are sales objections?

Sales objections are concerns or reservations that potential customers may have about a product or service being offered. These objections may be related to price, value, quality, or any number of other factors, and they can make it difficult for sales professionals to close a sale.

Objections are a natural part of the sales process, and it is the job of the sales professional to address these objections and overcome them in order to move the sales process forward.

Some common sales objections include concerns about cost, lack of need or interest, and competitors’ offers.

2. Are sales objections ever a good thing?

Sales objections can be a good thing, as they provide an opportunity for salespeople to better understand the customer’s concerns and address those concerns in a way that moves the sale forward.

By listening carefully to the customer and asking clarifying questions, salespeople can gather valuable information and use that information to tailor their response to the customer’s specific objections.

In addition, sales objections can provide valuable feedback that can help salespeople improve their sales techniques and strategies.

For example, if a customer raises an objection about the price of a product, the salesperson can use that feedback to develop a more compelling value proposition or to negotiate a more favorable price. By learning from customer objections, salespeople can improve their sales pitch and increase their chances of closing the sale.

Overall, sales objections can be a good thing because they provide an opportunity for salespeople to better understand the customer’s concerns and address those concerns in a way that moves the sale forward.

By listening carefully to the customer and using the information they provide, salespeople can improve their sales pitch and increase their chances of closing the sale.

3. What is the difference between a stall and objection in sales?

A stall in the sales process typically refers to a moment when the conversation between the sales professional and the potential customer reaches a point where it seems to stop moving forward. This might happen because the customer is unsure about how to proceed, or because they are hesitant to make a decision.

In contrast, an objection in the sales process typically refers to a specific concern or reservation that the potential customer has about the product or service being offered. This might be a concern about price, quality, or any number of other factors.

The key difference between a stall and an objection is that an objection is a specific issue that the sales professional can address and attempt to overcome, while a stall is a more general lack of progress in the sales process.

4. What skills are involved in objection handling?

Objection handling involves a range of sales skills that are designed to help salespeople effectively respond to customer objections and move forward with the sale. Here are a few examples of skills that are involved in objection handling:

Active listening: Effective objection handling involves being able to listen intently to the customer and understand their specific concerns. This requires salespeople to pay attention to what the customer is saying and to ask first open ended questions and then clarifying questions to gather more information.
Empathy: Being able to empathize with the customer and understand their perspective is an important skill in objection handling. By being able to put themselves in the customer’s shoes, salespeople can better understand the customer’s concerns and provide a more effective response.
Persuasion: Persuasion is an important skill in objection handling, as it involves being able to persuade the customer to overcome their objections and move forward with the sale. This requires salespeople to be able to articulate the value of the product or service and to convince the customer that it is the right solution for their needs.
Conflict resolution: Objection handling often involves resolving conflicts or disagreements between the salesperson and the customer. This requires salespeople to be able to stay calm and composed, even in difficult or stressful situations, and to find creative solutions that address the customer’s concerns and move the sale forward.

Overall, objection handling involves a range of skills that are designed to help salespeople effectively respond to customer objections and move forward with the sale. By developing these skills, salespeople can improve their ability to handle objections and close deals more effectively.

5. Which part of the sales process receives the most sales objections

Sales objections often occur during the later stages of the selling process, when the customer is considering making a purchase. This is typically the point in the process where the customer has a good understanding of the product or service being offered and is weighing the pros and cons of making a purchase.

Objections can occur at any stage of the selling process, but they are most common during the following stages:

Sales calls: More and more sales people are struggling to speak with the right person, establish trust, and address prospect’s objections at the very start of the sales cycle on outbound sales calls.
The presentation stage: During the presentation stage, the salesperson is typically showcasing the product or service and highlighting its key features and benefits. At this stage, the customer may have questions or objections about the product, its features, or its price.
The handling objections stage: As the name suggests, this stage is specifically focused on addressing any objections that the customer may have. The salesperson will need to carefully listen to the customer’s concerns and provide specific responses to address those objections.
The closing stage: The closing stage is when the salesperson is trying to persuade the customer to make a purchase. This is typically the most challenging part of the sales process, as the customer may have lingering doubts or concerns that need to be addressed before they are willing to make a decision.

Overall, the handling objections stage is where sales objections are most likely to occur, as this is the stage where the salesperson is specifically focused on addressing the customer’s concerns. However, objections can occur at any stage of the sales process, and it’s important for salespeople to be prepared to handle them at any time.

6. Are there different ways to handle objections in sales?

Yes, there are several different ways to handle objections in sales. Here are a few common approaches:

Acknowledge the objection and validate the customer’s concerns: This approach involves acknowledging the customer’s concerns and showing them that you understand why they might have those objections. For example, you might say something like “I can understand why you might be hesitant about making a decision right now. Many people have similar concerns, and I’m here to help you understand why our product is the best solution for your needs.”
Ask clarifying questions: Another approach is to ask the customer clarifying questions to better understand their objections and address their concerns. For example, you might ask, “Can you help me understand why you’re concerned about the price of our product?” or “What specifically about our product is causing you to have doubts?” By asking questions, you can gather more information and tailor your response to the customer’s specific objections.
Address the objection directly: Another approach is to address the objection directly and provide a specific response to the customer’s concerns. For example, if the customer is concerned about the price of your product, you might respond by explaining the value that your product offers and how it can save them money in the long run.
Use a trial close: A trial close is a technique where you ask the customer a question that moves them closer to making a decision, such as “Based on what you’ve told me, do you think our product is a good fit for your needs?” If the customer responds positively, you can use that momentum to move forward with the sale.

Ultimately, the best way to handle objections in sales will depend on the specific situation and the customer’s concerns. It’s important to listen carefully to the customer and tailor your response to their specific objections.

7. Are sales objections real or a smokescreen?

Sales objections can be real or a smokescreen, depending on the situation and the customer’s motivations. In some cases, a customer may raise an objection because they genuinely have concerns or doubts about the product or service being offered. In these cases, the prospects objections are real and need to be addressed in order to move forward with the sale. In most cases a common objection is simply a request for more information to help the prospect move to the next stage of the buying process and make the right buying decision.

However, in other cases, a customer may raise an objection or make a false statement as a way to stall or avoid being sold to. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as if the customer is not fully convinced of the value of the product or if they are feeling pressured to make a decision. In these cases, the objections may be a smokescreen and not reflect the customer’s true concerns.

It’s important for salespeople to carefully listen to the customer and determine whether their objections are real or a smokescreen. If the objections are real, the salesperson can address them directly and provide specific responses to address the customer’s concerns. If the objections are a smokescreen, the salesperson can use various techniques, such as asking clarifying questions or using a trial close, to move the conversation forward and help the customer make a decision.

8. What are the most common sales objections?

There are many different sales objections that customers may raise, and the specific objections that a salesperson encounters will depend on the product or service being sold and the customer’s individual needs and concerns. However, there are some common objections that salespeople often encounter, including:

The price is too high: Salespeople often receive price objections, especially if the product or service being offered is more expensive than the customer’s budget, or what they are used to paying.
I need to think about it: This objection is often raised when the customer is unsure about making a decision and needs more time to consider their options.
I’m not interested: This objection is often a polite way for the customer to say that they are not interested in making a purchase.
I’m not ready to buy right now: This objection may be raised if the customer is not currently in a position to make a purchase, either because they are not ready or because they do not have the necessary funds.
I’m happy with my current provider: This objection may be raised if the customer is satisfied with the product or service they are currently using and sees no reason to switch to a new provider.

Overall, objections can vary widely depending on the situation and the customer’s specific concerns. It’s important for salespeople to be prepared to handle a variety of objections and to tailor their response to the prospects concerns and objections.

9. How important is role plays in objection handling training?

Role-playing is an important part of sales objection handling training, as it provides an opportunity for salespeople to practice handling objections and develop their skills in a simulated environment.

Role-playing can be especially useful for helping salespeople overcome common challenges and obstacles that they may face when handling objections. For example, role-playing can help salespeople practice staying calm and focused under pressure, or dealing with difficult or aggressive customers.

In addition, role-playing can be a fun and engaging way to learn, which can help salespeople retain the information and skills they are learning.

Overall, role-playing is an important part of sales objection handling training, as it provides an opportunity for salespeople to practice and develop their skills in a simulated environment.

By role-playing different scenarios, salespeople can learn and experiment with different strategies and responses, and build the confidence and skills they need to handle objections effectively in real-life situations.

10. What sales topics are included in objection handling training

Sales objection handling training typically covers a range of topics related to effectively responding to prospects objections and moving forward with the sale. Here are a few examples of topics that might be covered in objection handling training:

Common objections and how to respond to them: Sales objection handling training often covers common objections that salespeople may encounter, such as concerns about the price, the product’s features, or the customer’s readiness to make a purchase. The training will typically provide specific strategies and responses that salespeople can use to effectively address these objections and move forward with the sale.
Listening and questioning skills: Effective objection handling involves being able to listen carefully to the customer and understand their specific concerns. Sales objection handling training will often cover listening and questioning skills that can help salespeople gather more information and tailor their response to the customer’s specific objections.
Overcoming objections and closing the sale: The ultimate goal of objection handling is to overcome the customer’s objections and move forward with the sale. Sales objection handling training will often cover techniques and strategies that salespeople can use to persuade the customer to make a purchase, such as using a trial close or highlighting the value of the product or service.

Overall, sales objection handling training covers a range of topics that are designed to help sales reps effectively respond to customer objections and move forward with the sale. These topics can help salespeople develop the skills and strategies they need to handle objections and close deals more effectively.

11. Are their any sales objection handling games for training?

Interactive training games are an important part of your training course materials. There are several sales objection handling games that can be used for training purposes. These games are designed to help sales reps practice handling common objections and develop the skills and strategies they need to effectively respond to customer concerns.

Here are a few examples of sales objection handling games that can be used for training:

Role-playing: In this type of game, a sales rep can practice handling objections by role-playing different scenarios. For example, one salesperson can play the role of the customer and raise objections, while the other salesperson plays the role of the salesperson and responds to those objections. This type of game can help salespeople practice different strategies for handling objections and see how those strategies work in a simulated environment.
Case studies: Case studies are real-life scenarios that salespeople can use to practice handling objections. For example, a case study might describe a situation where a customer raises an objection about the price of a product. The salesperson can then analyze the situation and come up with a response to address the customer’s concerns.
Interactive workshops: Interactive workshops are sessions where salespeople can learn and practice handling objections through group activities and discussions. For example, a workshop might include activities where salespeople work in teams to brainstorm responses to common objections, or where they practice role-playing different scenarios.

Overall, sales objection handling games can be an effective way to train salespeople and help them develop the skills and strategies they need to effectively handle objections and move forward with the sale.

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Mental Health in Sales - Top Question from Google

How stressful is a sales job?

In this article we will cover...

There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

1. The Hidden Toll - Why Mental Health Matters

2. The Unique Challenges of Sales & Mental Wellbeing

3. The Impact of Poor Mental Health on Sales Performance

4. Building Resilience: Strategies for Salespeople

5. Creating a Supportive Sales Culture

6. Benefits of Prioritising Mental Health in Sales

7. Getting Help: Resources for Sales Professionals

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How much does online sales training cost?

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1. Online Sales Training Courses

2. Online Sales Courses Available via Klozers

3. Online Training vs In-Person Sales Training Courses

4. Sales Coaching Online

Exec Sales Coaching

5. Advantages of Online Training Courses

A more flexible way to learn:

A Bite Sized Approach to Learning

Keeping Your Team Productive

Course Structure

Finding Specific or Bespoke Content:

Continuous Learning

6. Self-Paced Sales Training Courses

7. Post Training Support

8. In Conclusion

Designing the Best Sales Course - Top Question from Google

How do you design sales training that drives ROI?

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1. Designing a Sales Course That Drives Results

2. Why Investing in the Best Sales Training Program Matters

3. What Constitutes a Sales Training Course?

4. How Bespoke can the Training Content be?

5. Choosing the Right Sales Training Modules

6. Example: Building a "Value Selling" Masterclass

7. Sales Manager Training

8. Post Training Support

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Sales Kickoff Themes - Top Question from Google

What Should be Included in a Sales Kickoff?

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15 Energising Sales Kickoff Theme Ideas

Sales Kickoff Speakers

Bonus - 5 Virtual Sales Kickoff Ideas

Final Thoughts on Sales Kick off Themes

Best Practices for a Virtual Sales Kickoff

How to Host a Great Sales Kickoff

Frequently asked questions on Sales Kick offs

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Sales training simulations - Top Question from Google

What is a Sales Simulation?

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There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…

1. Game changing experiences

2. Training Simulation Options

a) Business Growth Game

b) Sales and Marketing Training

3. Live and interactive dashboards

4. Assessments & Roadmaps

5. Tackling your customer challenges

1. High Customer and employee churn

2. Poor fit customers with low growth potential

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