I was recently hired by a company that is growing, doing well and wants to develop and train their salespeople to create a repeatable process for their current and future salespeople.
As often happens, the client is not willing or able to spend the amount of time and money up front to have us experience their environment as well as do our extensive research and analysis.
We interviewed salespeople and managers, pre/post support people. We looked at win/loss reports and reviewed their current presentations and proposals. We talked with the people responsible for their CRM, and created a clientized program for them that addressed the most significant areas including:

• Mirroring using a combination of DiSC and Meyers-Briggs
• Prospecting to be less dependent on incoming leads,
• Discovery, via our S.PRI.N.G. Dialogue to better qualify the sales process
• Presenting and Objection Handling to present more value and navigate the sales process and close more business.

The training went well. People were participative, receptive and open to the new techniques we were practicing. The feedback was excellent. However, the most relevant, significant, important and impactful part of going through and experiencing the training were the insights that we had together.
Here is my summary to my client regarding these insights:
Thanks for the commitment to IPG and our program. I want to note your presence in the training which was significant. Here are my observations (those in bold are the insights):

1. Salespeople need to use S.PRI.N.G. to keep better control of a sales process and not get lost as often as they do
2. Salespeople need to integrate and address the issues much earlier in the sales process that are most common, important and prevent sales from occurring. These include:
   • Planting seeds that differentiate and demonstrate XYZ's value
   • During the S.PRI.N.G. Dialogue, asking qualifying questions (budget, process, competition, etc.) later in the process vs. too early to help get better answers
   • Address the reasons people defer
   • And understand where XYZ's solution fits in their priority scheme, ESPECIALLY if there is no definitive compelling event
   • Develop a standard presentation and proposal format that captures the key elements of the S.PRI.N.G. Dialogue AND addresses the most common reasons people defer on going with XYZ
   • Practice the best ways to anticipate and handle the most common objections
   • Get more comfortable using analogies to present XYZ's process so that people don't get confused
   • Create their hit list of accounts they want to sell and use the prospecting techniques and why you why now to get more appointments
3. The management team needs to:
   • Embrace and become experts at the key elements noted above especially around mirroring
   • Develop, mentor and reinforce a repeatable sales process
   • Integrate these into the sales fabric of XYZ including:
   • Commit to a weekly schedule of practicing and role playing
   • Using 1:1's and forecast sessions
   • Bring into discussions of deals that are crucial or in trouble
   • Integrate into NetSuite as a support mechanism

Jonathan London - President of the Improved Performance Group, Jonathan has been in sales and management for 34 years. He has been the #1 performer worldwide, (and in many cases industry wide) for such companies as Olivetti Corporation, NBI Word Processing, IBM/Rolm, BusinessLand, Wyse Technologies and PictureTel. Jonathan founded IPG in 1994, has trained over 15,000 people in 23 countries using the same techniques that made his own selling career so successful. His book "An Entrepreneurs Guide to Selling" will be published Q2 2009. He has successfully sold through 3 recessions.