As the old saying goes “Nothing happens until a sale is made.” But before we look into sales training itself how do we define this fundamental element of business? At its heart lies something that we are all familiar with but is somehow tricky to define. At Node Digital we define sales as the transference of enthusiasm. In that, if we can transfer our own genuine belief and enthusiasm for something, then we can make a sale. Fail to transfer this enthusiasm and you will not make the sale.
Now if you can approach this transference in a structured and systematic way, then you can ensure that all the potential customer’s boxes are ticked and then they will indeed most probably convert to a sale. Because we are dealing with people here there are no absolutes nor are there any clickbait guarantees of success like the typical “Do these 7 things and close every sale!”. Rather, in the real world, we increase the chance of success. Do everything right and the customer has every reason to sign and no (real) reason not to.
At Node Digital we have developed a “needs-based selling” framework which is essentially a consultative approach to selling to B2B customers that we know works especially well for B2B and Software as a Service (SaaS) clients alike. It is indeed the exact same approach that Google use when selling its own advertising products. But Google did not invent this rather they copied it from Yellow Pages. As luck would have it, that is also where we learned the framework, back in the Web 1.0 days (yes, that is pre-iPhone).
Which means we have been testing this framework with B2B clients over a 15-year period and in various markets. Be it English speaking countries like Ireland, the UK and the US. Or German-speaking countries in the DACH region (Germany, Switzerland and Austria). The Framework does what is supposed to do: increase the chance of success. Given it has worked so well for so long with so many B2B and SaaS clients we decided to package it up for you as our Initial Sales Training (IST) Course.
To best impart this Initial Sales Training (IST) Course and for students to learn it completely we usually adopt the classic classroom approach, including a final exam and role play. We follow this training with 1-on-1 coaching for all students, in real-life sales calls to help them make the theory practice.
Over the years we have also noticed a linear relationship between the success of students and how closely they stick to the framework. It’s causation not a correlation for all those data-driven folks out there.
Our Sales Training and Coaching program was a part of our core offering because in the final analysis what is the point of all that effort generating leads if they are not getting converted into sales. Contact us today to discuss your specific training and coaching requirements.