Close that sale!

Overview

Close and negotiate new sales and repeat business with more certainty, less luck and greater accuracy. This course is suitable for all types of business – both B2B and B2C – and small- and large-value sales orders.

Training objectives

As a result of this course, participants will be able to:

• Improve the qualification, progression and conversion of opportunities in their sales and business pipelines
• Manage trials and evaluations
• Overcome objections and obstacles to the sale
• Use proven contract renewal tactics

Audience

All sales professionals, at any level, including account managers and directors and business development consultants.

Format

A highly interactive one-day course involving practical exercises, role play and case studies.

Special features

The course can be tailored to include any specialist topics such as advanced telephone skills, dealing with complaints, internal planning, etc, according to organisational need or the skill level of the participants.

The expert trainer

Graham specialises in providing high-quality consultancy, coaching and training in sales, sales management, customer service and personal productivity. He has a long career in sales and was a top-performing IT and solutions sales professional and sales manager. His most recent full-time role was as Managing Director of Sales Productivity and Development for Thomson Financial, helping develop a large European sales force.

His work has taken him all over the world and involved him in working closely with hundreds of different organisations from all business sectors, his client list including such organisations as BT, Vodafone, AT&T, Orange, Pfizer, GSK, Boots, Unilever, American Express, Thomas Cook, Apple, Sony, Motorola, Cisco, MFI, Barclays Bank, LIFFE, Abbey National, Prison Service, Home Office, Law Society, BBC, Daimler-Chrysler, Citroen, Weetabix, Nikon, Shell and many, many others. In addition he has written over twenty books published in several different countries, including Companies don’t succeed – people do!, 90 Brain Teasers for Trainers, Customer Service Games for Training, Sales Training Games, Telephone Tactics and Working Smarter.

Known internationally as both a trainer and a popular motivational speaker, he believes that effective learning has to be interactive and challenging. All his learning events are built around practical exercises, role play and case studies. His training style focuses not on just explaining new ideas or developing new skills, but also on motivating people to use them and to develop themselves as individuals. This approach gets results, as the following comments from course participants show:

‘Brilliant course, really interesting and very focused to my job role and day to day work.’

‘Took away some very good ideas that I can use every day… good examples too.’

‘Very confident in the subject, and amusing too. Made the course very interesting. A very clear sales model to use going forward.’

‘Full of useful hints and tips which I will apply to my job.’

‘Extremely well presented and structured’

‘A very intensive course and a lot of concrete tools provided.’

‘Useful data, tools and insights; engaging and interesting as always.’

‘Very good… contained everything we do on a regular basis and problems we have come across… the exercises made it very interesting too.’

Course outline

1. Introduction to the five laws of closing sales successfully
   • Develop ‘a killer’ attitude – why and how your attitude must change
   • The importance of timing – knowing when to close
   • Knowing how to close – new and sophisticated models and methods for customer-focused selling
   • Isolating and developing a strategy to remove cognitive buying dissonance (buyer’s remorse)
   • Negotiate and manage the end game effectively
2. Developing ‘a killer’ attitude – why and how your attitude must change
   • Qualifying and analysing what needs to happen to help the customer make a buying decision
   • How to change gears within a sale – tactics to stop selling and start closing
   • Developing the right attitude and instil confidence in your confidence through visualisation
   • Involving others – the role of a ‘TOM’
3. The importance of timing – knowing when to close
   • Recognising and testing conscious and unconscious buying signals from customers
   • Consensus selling – how to close multiple decision-makers and influencers
   • Closing worksheets and planning tools
4. Knowing how to close
   • New and sophisticated models and methods for customer-focused selling
   • Use an ‘option generator’ to simplify complex proposals and close sales faster
   • Get decisions made faster and overcome objections with greater skill and precision using the customer decision criteria tool
   • How to tailor your closing strategy based on sound psychology decision-making principles
   • Why you only need one closing question – the 180 degree turnaround tool
5. The power to persuade
   • Isolating and developing a strategy to remove cognitive buying dissonance (buyer’s remorse)
   • The three things that stop people buying – and how to remove them
   • Overcome objections more openly and accurately using a high-impact approach
   • The five ‘Es’ that can remove the customer’s perception of risk
   • Work with the customer to develop a decision action plan
6. Introduction to negotiating and managing the end game effectively
   • Deal more effectively and profitably with price objections
   • Learn to recognise negotiating tactics and stances
   • Be able to apply a proven structure to new business negotiations