Sales Coaching for a Teleseller: A family-owned business was in the process of transitioning their business to the second generation of family members, which included transferring sales responsibilities from the founder to one of his sons. This change in sales responsibility coincided with the need to also change the way that their products and services were sold. The founder had originally sold to local clients, and had relied almost exclusively on face-to-face sales calls and cold calling. As the business grew to become more national, it became more necessary to sell over the phone and to use webinars to demonstrate the usage and benefits of their products and services.
The son who was selected as the primary salesperson was chosen because of his product knowledge and computer savvy, which they felt would help him in the webinar portion of the sales cycle. Peak Selling was brought in to work with the new seller to develop his interpersonal and selling skills. In simple terms, he was selling too much based on his technical expertise and was not doing a good job on building rapport, getting the first appointment, or asking for the order. The net result was that he was spending his time doing a lot of webinar presentations but was not closing enough sales. We developed the one on one sales coaching sessions around modules from our Essential Selling Skills, Sales Negotiation Skills, and Selling on Value workshops to broaden his ability to use other selling styles and to win more sales.
Negotiation Coaching: Peak Selling worked with an experienced business owner who was in the middle of a real-life negotiation that unexpectedly had become quite adversarial. Peak Selling assisted the client by coaching in two ways. First, we provided some information and consultation on how to respond effectively to adversarial negotiation tactics. Secondly, we helped him plan thoroughly for the negotiation, with emphasis on acceptable alternatives in the event that the negotiation remained adversarial. A Peak Selling consultant acted as a sounding board to debrief after each of the subsequent negotiation sessions, and helped to make necessary adjustments to the plan going forward.
Coaching and Sales Quotas: A salesperson had missed quota for a few months, and wanted to get back on track as quickly as possible. Peak Selling began by consulting with the salesperson to identify the underlying reasons for missing quota, and to learn as much as possible about the organization's products and services. We also had the salesperson complete a Selling Skills Inventory (see details in box below) to assess the salesperson's natural strengths and areas for improvement. The results of this coaching interview and analysis of the inventory confirmed that the seller was quite skillful, but needed some fine-tuning and focus to win the best new sales opportunities. Sales quotas were met or exceeded for the next several months, starting with the month immediately following the coaching engagement.