Australian Business Training - Case Studies - The Art & Science of Selling - Generated significant increases in new business

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The Art & Science of Selling
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The Art & Science of Selling
Generated significant increases in new business

Packages Inc * is a global packaging company that specialises in paper and plastics, offering packaging solutions to retailers, such as paper plates, plastic coffee cups and cardboard egg cartons.

Challenge

The success of Packages Inc relies on its people being able to win large contracts to supply packaging to other businesses. It means understanding the clients' needs, building solid relationships and delivering excellent service to ensure Packages Inc maintains sales over competitors. The sales team needs to sustain its relationships with existing clients and try to win further business from them, plus seek new opportunities from prospective clients.

With such a heavy dependence on the ability to sell, Packages Inc wanted to develop the sales and marketing team's selling skills. By improving the team's core ability, the business would be able to maximise its sales results. Despite receiving some sales training in the past, Packages Inc saw a need to update the team's skills, with a particular focus on understanding the client, building the client relationship and winning new business. Packages Inc also wanted to help the sales team become more effective in the 'hard to do' tasks, like negotiating price increases.

Solution

ABT tailored its 'Art and Science of Selling' program to match the needs of the Packages Inc sales team. This program teaches participants the importance of understanding the client and how to gain their commitment. Like all of ABT's training, it focuses on changing participants' attitudes by developing their emotional intelligence.

To achieve long term behavioural change and exemplary performance it is important to address the three components of behavioural change: the participant's attitude, feelings and actions. The program aimed to bring about the attitudinal and behavioural change required to maximise sales and business opportunities.

With an emphasis on the "will do", the program was designed to produce behavioural change and build new sales habits. To maximise the training outcomes it was critical to show participants how to manage the negative emotions associated with change and doing high pay-off activities.

ABT delivered four workshops. The first developed their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has proven to be twice as important as any other competence in a sales role. The workshop showed the team how to break through discomfort barriers to do the high value hard tasks.

The second workshop developed the key sales behaviours that are linked with successful sales calls. The third workshop developed the sales and marketing people's communication skills. It focused on how to read the customers' communication style and adjust the selling style to suit the customer and build a trusting relationship.

The fourth workshop showed participants how to effectively negotiate. Participants learnt how to plan and complete negotiations from a position of strength to overcome price resistance and maximise margins.

The training workshops were reinforced with post-training assignments to ensure the training was transferred into behaviour. The outcomes were monitored and supported by individual coaching sessions after each workshop.

Results

As a result of the training intervention, the sales and marketing team gained a new set of attitudes and skills to encourage proactive sales. They increased their confidence and ability to communicate. Importantly, the sales team developed a new strategy for selling based on the customers' needs. They commented that they were now active listeners, able to identify the customers' key issues, needs and buying motives.

The emotional intelligence training showed participants how to manage their thinking and feelings. Besides becoming more empathetic, they also learnt mental toughness. Their newly developed confidence and resilience meant they were better able to pursue sales goals and motivate themselves after failure.

Here are some of their comments following the training:

"I firmly believe that the sales training, especially the 3D questioning model and learning about my optimism level enabled me to out do my own targets and the company's. A strategic plan, an understanding of the objectives and a clear path to get there make all the difference to the outcome. I made the biggest sale in the history of the company using a simple and brilliant method of sales. No more 'tell sell'. It's almost like the customer sells their need of the product to you."
"Asking questions is a way of leading the customer down a path that gets them to understand what their issues are and how to link our product to their issues."
"I get the customer to open up more and we now get to the real issues."
"It's been a wake up call for me. I'm now taking the next step and doing what has to be done."
"I'm now focusing on value added to the customer and this will continue to grow as I get more competent with the skills."
"I have a more effective line of communication with customers."

The Evidence

Participants were asked to rate themselves on a variety of indicators of emotional intelligence and selling skills. The results illustrate their perceived improvement following ABT's intervention.

skills comparison 1

skills comparison 2

The sales team members were also asked to rate ABT's course. Their responses show that they highly regard the course and strongly recommend it to other sales teams.

course rating