Consulting and Professional Services

An engineering and consulting firm was recognized as an innovative and reliable technology provider by their clients in the media industry in North America. The company had grown dramatically through acquisitions.  Although their entire sales force was technically proficient, the salespeople varied tremendously in their sales approach and methodology. 

Sales Training Needs Assessment

The sales force was geographically dispersed throughout North America and it was not economically feasible to bring them all together for face-to-face training.  Upper management, including the Vice President of Human Resources, decided that online sales training workshops would be the most cost-effective and time-efficient way to teach everyone a needs-based sales process that they could all follow.  

Sales Training Solution

The client selected Peak Selling’s Essential Selling Skills online series. Each salesperson registered and signed up individually for this online series. The entire sales team finished all of the sales training in a few weeks with no travel expense or lost time from the field.

Upper management was very pleased with the results of the online sales training, and contacted Peak Selling for additional sales coaching and consultation. Based on a selling skills assessment survey tool that each seller had completed in the online series, we compiled aggregate results in the form of assessment sales skills reports for the two main sales divisions. This allowed upper management to view the strengths and areas of improvement for each salesperson, and to compare and contrast the results of the two divisions.

Peak Selling provided personal sales consultation that gave upper management the necessary information for them to then do their own 1-on-1 coaching with individual salespeople.  This was a great follow up action to the online sales training because the internal sales managers could interact and work with each person individually to work on improving sales skills and achieve sales goals.

An HR Outsourcing firm had built its business by offering customized products and services to large corporate clients, and needed to convert these clients toward more standard offerings in order to free up resources and improve profitability 

Business Issue

An HR Outsourcing firm had done an outstanding job of bringing in new corporate clients, but found that their original business model of offering customized solutions to each client had caused profits to erode. In simple terms, it was too costly to service existing clients and to win new clients with a continuation of this "lift and shift” business model. Management realized that existing clients had to be migrated toward fewer and more standardized product/service offerings, and identified influence and negotiation skills as a critical component in their success.

Sales Training Needs Assessment

All client facing employees were identified as the primary audience for a training workshop. Peak Selling used an internal survey with these employees and their managers, in order to identify the specific challenges and areas for improvement. Two common themes emerged. First, and most important, resistance-to-change by existing clients was viewed as a barrier to success.  Why should a client change, especially if there was no perceived value to the client to make the change?  Second, the client-facing employees anticipated that there would also be a need to influence colleagues who worked in operations because these back-office employees were accustomed to doing things the "old way”. 

Sales Training Solution

Peak Selling designed a customized workshop to address these challenges, drawing notably on Peak Selling's workshops such as Influence Skills and Sales Negotiating Skills.  Client-specific role play exercises were written to ensure that all of the practice activities were very realistic. A series of reinforcement tools and resources were also provided, notably a detailed summary of Best Practices on how to handle the most likely client objections such as "Why should I change?” and "Who will pay for this?”  The company developed metrics to measure progress of the client migration initiative. When the training concluded, they exceeded their quarterly and annual targets.

Management consulting firm wants to upgrade the influence and customer service skills of their associates. 

Sales Training Needs Assessment

Communication and conflict issues were identified internally between departments resulting in productivity declining and missed deadlines.  This had a negative effect on customer service and detracted from the ability to sell more to existing clients.  It became apparent to management that all associates needed a core set of customer service and influence skills. 

Sales Training Solution

Peak Selling designed a workshop that combined our Customer Service and Support and Influence Skills Workshops.  Participants learned to improve their communication and influence skills to enable them to build trust-based relationships, with both clients externally and colleagues internally.  

A world-wide consulting firm was losing business with current clients and needed to train their staff on cross-selling opportunities.

Sales Training Needs Assessment

This consulting firm realized that a large percentage of their staff of actuaries and practitioners were very reluctant to sell and were therefore missing many cross-selling opportunities. 

Sales Training Solution

Peak Selling designed a special Selling Skills workshop for actuaries and other practitioners to teach them how to cross-sell by asking great questions and exploring client needs, and to present service information more effectively.  The participants were transformed from "reluctant sellers" to "consultative professionals."

Relevant training materials available for managers through our Coaching kits product line, specifically Pre-Call Planning, Questioning Skills, and Handling Objections.   

A relatively new consulting firm won some large consulting engagements and needed to upgrade the capabilities of several new hires to improve their ability to make business presentations to new and existing clients.

Sales Training Needs Assessment

Due to an increased client base and a corresponding need to add more professional staff, the firm hired some additional consultants and several support personnel such as business analysts and IT personnel.  It became obvious when the new hires participated in their initial client meetings that they needed to improve presentation skills.  The new employees were technically proficient and experts in their respective fields, but could not communicate clearly and persuasively during client presentations.

Sales Training Solution

Peak Selling designed a customized version of our Sales Presentation Skills Workshop and also conducted 1-on-1 coaching sessions.  In order to make their client presentations more impactful, we focused on how to tailor each presentation for a specific client rather than deliver a canned "capability speech."  We also worked extensively on attention-getting opening remarks.  After witnessing the tangible improvement in the presentation skills of the new hires, the consulting firm decided to engage Peak Selling to teach a second and more advanced presentation skills workshop for their senior consultants.

An internationally renowned consulting firm did a good job at servicing existing clients, but had not met sales growth targets for new business development.  Due to a maturing client base, overall sales had stagnated.

Sales Training Needs Assessment

The consultants were experts within their various specialties. Consequently, current clients were extremely satisfied with the results of the consulting engagements. However, due to a maturation of the existing client base, there were fewer and fewer opportunities to sell more to existing clients.  Overall sales and profits had declined, and the firm hired a new COO to help turnaround the situation.  He decided to re-assign one of the consultants to be in charge of business development, but no substantial sales improvement occurred within the next few months. This consultant performed as the "super seller” for the firm but was unable to get the other consultants onboard to support the overall business development effort. 

Sales Training Solution

The COO and Business Development consultant used Peak Selling to coach and consult with them on business development. We worked with them in several different ways. First, we evaluated their existing business development and sales process, and recommended several changes.  As one notable example, we helped them to articulate the criteria for "best new clients” and to then focus the efforts of the organization to win these types of business.  Second, we coached the BD consultant on what he could do to get more commitment from the other consultants to spend more time on new business development. Lastly, we taught him many elements from our Sales Prospecting and Business Development Workshop in order that he could then work individually to upgrade the skills of the other consultants in the firm.