A large number of newly hired account executives needed to sharpen their selling skills to sell display advertising in a newly launched retail publication.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
A large publishing firm decided to launch a new weekly "events" publication that would be customized for discrete communities in a major metropolitan area. Their business model and strategy determined that they needed to quickly blanket all of the targeted communities in order to build visibility and not give the existing competitors time to react. As such, they needed to hire many new advertising account executives. To ensure that the new salespeople would succeed, the senior management team decided that the intensive new hire training program would include selling skills training in critical competencies such as questioning & empathy, closing, cross-selling and handling sales objections that were likely to arise when selling display advertising to smaller retailers.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling designed a customized sales training program to address all the selling skills and sales competencies mentioned above. Modules from our Selling Skills and Value Selling training programs were used in the initial new hire training. We also designed an advanced follow up workshop to be given a few months later, and coached the account executives on a one-on-one basis in the interim. The sales manager and upper management saw an immediate improvement in the competence and confidence of the new account executives.
Additional training materials available for managers through our Coaching Kit product line, specifically the Selling on Value Not Price kit.