Why develop a sales course specific to application and software development tools? In my five years of selling in-circuit emulators, debuggers, and regression testing tools, I quickly recognized the fact that inside salespeople were constantly worried that they didn't know enough about the technology, and, as a result, didn't do a very good job of asking questions of Project Managers, Directors of Software Development, and VPs of Engineering. To mask this, they'd "feature dump" constantly, and would tune out important details that could have gotten them the sale much faster. This problem is exacerbated by throwing technical manuals in front of salespeople.
Selling application and software development tools involves determining the difference between what you need to know, and what you don't have to know. That's where this course comes in.
In brief and easy-to-understand terms, we describe how an enterprise account goes about developing and testing software applications, explains the different players and what they do, an offers meaningful questions that must be asked to fully understand the development project. Companies such as Mercury Interactive and Rational Software have hired us to train hundreds of inside sales reps, and the individuals taking these course have raved about the curriculum, telling us that they never realized the software development process was this easy to understand. They felt empowered to ask more appropriate questions of their prospects and, as a result, were more effective in leveraging small sales within an enterprise to gain larger, "standardization" sales.
Accelerating the Sales Cycle is our foundation sales skills course, appropriate for junior-level sales people as well as highly experienced sales professionals. Initially, we unveil the mysteries of how application software is developed in large enterprises, describing two major approaches (Waterfall, and Object-Oriented), and discussing personnel involved in analyzing, designing, developing, testing, and managing the applications. Afterward, the curriculum is devoted to essential communication basics, and quickly ramps up to sophisticated analysis, questioning, and closing techniques. The class focuses on the following five discrete sales skill elements:
1) Contact skills. If you can't reach a real person, you can't ask qualification questions, or make a sale. This element focuses primarily on contacting people high on the decision chain.
2) Questioning skills. How do you ask every question you'll need to ask in order to fully qualify the prospect, and do it in 10 minutes or fewer? And how do you do it on the first call? This is the essential skillset needed to determine your prospect's business need, and return-on-investment requirements.
3) Closing skills. No trickery here. We teach you to frame the solution to make functional and economic sense within the technology and business mindset of the prospect.
4) Constructing skills. In enterprise selling, understanding, then charting both the decision, and the sign-off chains of command is critical to the business at hand, and future business as well. We teach you to ask the questions that will enable you to draw a line from your contact directly up to the CEO, and be able to identify everyone in that chain.
5) Overcoming Sales Objection skills. Superior questioning skills are the critical element to understanding roadblocks the prospect may unveil during the closing process. Here, we'll discuss the most common objections, and provide specific answered customized to your company's solution.
As the final part of the classroom curriculum, we'll conduct role-playing situations identical to the ones you'll face once you're out of the class and back on the telephone. Each rep will be tasked with selling to a "prospect" he or she will reach by telephone.
After the class, we will coach each individual rep during actual telephone calls, with real prospects, in the rep's actual sales territory.
Duration of the class: 2 days of classroom curriculum; up to one hour live coaching with each rep.
Pricing: please contact us for details. Final pricing will be provided in a formal proposal.
In addition to the Accelerating the Sales Cycle class on this page, our Negotiation Skills by Telephone: an ROI Approach course is a great way to increase sales by countering the sales objections used by your prospects and customers.