Sales Training & Bid Coaching

 

Module One: Using Status to enhance the skills of a sales team

Understanding the use of Status can be of enormous benefit to a Sales Team. Learning how to play High Status, but also to modulate their Status to suit the situation, can give each member gravitas without them being too formal; they will project an image of relaxed authority. Using Status is particularly important if a pitch is being made in the client’s office and so, on their territory. The techniques taught in this module will help to get, then keep the full attention of their client, maintain control of the agenda and handle Q & A deftly and subtly.

Module Two: Consolidating a Sales Team

Craft of Communications can help Sales Team work more effectively in a session by exploring the dynamics within the team in a session on Group Dynamics. The understanding they gain will help each individual find their place and voice whilst still contributing to the overall effectiveness of the sales or bid team as a whole. Sessions these are conducted with the assistance of professional psychologists who work with us on an Associate basis.

Module Three: Voice coaching for Sales Teams

The human voice is an underused and underestimated aspect of business communication. It is particularly powerful in a sales environment because a well-produced voice relaxes the listener, and then works at a subliminal level to make an argument persuasive. Craft of Communication voice coaches help our clients to develop a strong vocal technique by developing a greater variety of pitch and pace in their speaking voice. This enables them to punctuate their speech, making what they say easy to follow. This is particularly important when the pitch or bid involves communicating the significance of technical data. In these sessions we can help speakers who talk too quickly, run out of breath when speaking, require accent reduction, or do not have English as their first language.

Module Four: Influencing Skills for Sales Teams

Craft of Communication’s theatre-based techniques draw on the insights into audience psychology that every actor learns. Central to this is that audiences FEEL before they THINK. This doesn’t mean they are not thinking. It means that the way they think will be heavily influenced by the way they feel. This is particularly true in a sales environment.

Learning how to change the way your audience feels is a valuable enhancement to the most experienced of sales team. This is achieved through the use of THE FEELING OBJECTIVE, a Method Acting technique which gives a performer mastery of the unspoken. The Feeling Objective can help sales teams to take the initiative in changing the way potential customers feel about the information and products.

We also teach clients how to build as pitch using Questions rather than Statements. The Seven Kinds of Question: each of these garners different kinds of information and sets up a different kind of relationship with others, helping to develop a meaningful dialogue with potential customers.

Module Five: Finding the Right style of argument and language to suit your audience

This training module draws on the work of the psychologist Professor Ned Herrmann. He divides the mind’s functions into four quadrants. Each represents a different way of relating to and experiencing reality.

Herrmann’s system is beautifully simple, but it is not at all simplistic. We are all, Herrmann says, a subtle balance of all four Thinking Preferences, each of us favouring one or two of the quadrants, with smaller elements of the others. He further states that if a group or organisation is to function efficiently, all four ways of experiencing and processing reality must be present.

One of Herrmann’s most useful insights concerns the style of argument and unique vocabulary that is attractive to Thinking Preference. In this module, our clients discover which quadrant matches their own thinking preferences. With this insight, they can move on to learn the styles of argument and the vocabulary that are most likely influence those whose profile is biased towards other quadrants.

Knowing this, and acquiring these skills, can be of great help to sales teams because it enables them to communicate effectively with everyone in a potential customers’ team.

Module Six: Rehearsing a Sales Pitch or Bid

Craft of Communication uses highly skilled actors to help a Sales Team to practise and rehearse their pitch. Our actors have the ability to absorb information about companies and individuals so they can play, with great authenticity, those that a sales team will meet when negotiating. A rehearsal session like this provides valuable direct feedback on how a sales team is coming across. The session provides an opportunity to redo and revise their approach until it is honed and perfected.

This approach consolidates the work done in the previous five modules. It enables us to leave the team with a bespoke model they can use to rehearse pitches and bids themselves in the future.