Accelerating
the Sales Cycle for Software Development Tools Salespeople Selling
to Enterprise Accounts
Why develop a sales course specific to 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.
Fact is, selling 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 dozens 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) Objection handling 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.
Pre-requisites for attendees: None
Duration of the class: 2 days of classroom curriculum;
up to one hour live coaching with each rep.
Size of the class: limited to eight reps; an unlimited
number of management personnel may audit the class.
Pricing: please call us
for details. Final pricing will be provided in a formal proposal.
Negotiation
Skills by Telephone... an ROI Approach
I'll confess: during my year as a purchasing agent, I probably
used every dastardly trick imaginable to wrangle lower price points
from my vendor companies. While teaching this course to sales
reps, a series of collective sighs invariably arise whenever I
mention each of the 20 negotiation ploys described in this class:
they've heard them all. Surprisingly, the reps rarely identified
them as techniques used by buyers to get a better price. In this
class, we learn to identify them, understand the reasoning behind
them, and then counter them, using an easy-to-use, but incredibly
effective four-step process.
The importance of this class cannot be understated. By quickly
agreeing to price concessions, your company loses money on the
current sale, and on future sales to the same customer as well
(yes, buyers take notes too, and refer to them in subsequent transactions
with your company). This course will have an immediate payback,
in terms of the better prices you'll obtain when you apply the
elements learned in the class.
Pre-requisites for attendees: Attendance at our
Accelerating the Sales Cycle course
Duration of the class: One day of classroom curriculum;
up to one hour live coaching with each rep, in actual negotiation
sessions.
Size of the class: limited to 12 reps; an unlimited
number of management personnel may audit the class.
Pricing: please call us
for details. Final pricing will be provided in a formal proposal.
