As I wrote recently, talking about Sales Presentations is not an easy task nowadays: Covid-19 changed the majority of our commercial rules, especially those related to presentations.
We shifted to a fully remote model which forced us to always present behind a screen and the big projectors, the whiteboards and the pointers have been replace by numerous online tools.
The words Pitching& Presentation refer to the ability of presenting a solution in a convincing way with PowerPoint slides, blackboards, flipcharts or other visual tools.
The words Closing Strategies refer to the use of different types of questions asked during the sales process to get gradual commitment by the prospect in order to close the sale or disqualify it.
For several years closing has been considered a manipiulative technique aimed at forcing the customer decision putting him / her on the spot.
There’s nothing further from the truth: this kind of techniques are ineffective, unprofessional and can harm the relationship with the buyer.
This idea has its roots into an old concept of selling that considered closing as an independent stage of the sales process, next to proposal and negotiation.
The plain truth is that there’s not only one closing phase: there’s a time for signing the agreement there is the result of the sales and negotiation process.
Closing Strategies are experienced throughout the entire sales process in order to evaluate the interest of the prospect and get his commitment to move on with the sale.
Here a visual for it:
Due to this reason an effective training should give the salesperson the skills to:
Identify and evaluate the interest of the prospect by recognizing different types of cues;
The word Negotiation refers to a communication process between 2 or more people aimed at reaching an agreement: in this scenario these people have common interests, but they hold different positions.
The idea of Interactive Listening comes from the Active Listening theory developed by Thomas Gordon in his best-selling book ‘Leader Effectiveness Training’.
Objections Handling happens when a prospect raises questions about a product or solution a salesperson is trying to sell and it’s her duty to mitigate these concerns in order to advance the sales process.
The words Insight Cold Calling refer to a calling strategy aimed at avoiding the classical cold call and the related pains, disadvantages and discomfort.