In our efforts to assist clients in developing world-class sales forces, we focus on trying to help sales professionals provide a dramatically different experience for their customers and prospects. Much of the learning that takes place around this idea tends to be in stark contrast to what sales professionals have been exposed to before.

Perim Consulting’s sales training framework revolves around the following straightforward strategies:

• Create a comfortable sales environment

• Prove understanding continuously

• Share information in a responsible manner

• Help facilitate a decision

The key to producing dramatically different experiences for customers and prospects lies in the means utilized to achieve these four strategies. These means are the central focus of Perim Consulting’s work. The work is about helping sales professionals…

• Learn to entice the prospect to consider his/her needs in more depth (while avoiding the temptation to jump in and "sell")
  

• Facilitate a prospect’s thinking about his/her situation
  

• Prove their understanding (of the prospect’s situation, ideas, concerns and options) throughout the sales call
  

• Share information in a responsible, helpful way
  

• Discuss the "competition" in a truly professional manner
  

• Be of service to prospects and customers and earn the distinction of being a real resource for them
  

• Provide dramatically different sales call experiences that engage and enlighten both parties

"Traditional" sales training has tended to focus on how best to convince, maneuver, close and otherwise "win" business. Significant energy has been channeled into teaching strategies for getting prospects to see things the sales professional’s way using logic, reason, voluminous amounts of data/information and sometimes even subtle (or not so subtle) pressure. The problem has been that the prospect or customer has often felt left out of this process or even a victim of it.

Perim Consulting’s sales training work is designed to develop skills for working with prospects in a joint exploration of needs and potential solutions. Special skills for helping prospects explore their situations really differentiates the Perim Consulting approach and contributes towards creating a much different sales call experience than what "traditional" sales training might produce.

Another area of sales training significance lies in how sales professionals choose to handle the concerns, fears or issues (why are they called "objections" in traditional sales training? Is it because the customer is unwilling, at the moment, to be "closed" by the rep?) that may exist for customers. These are opportunities to learn more about the prospect’s situation and should not immediately become opportunities for the sales professional to flex his/her product-knowledge muscles. Quite simply, if prospects have the opportunity to articulate and explore their concerns with sellers in a non-threatening, non-combative, non-challenging environment, they may feel more engaged and comfortable during sales calls. In this way, prospects may then work with the sales professionals to address the challenges and not against them in a competition for who is "right." The chances for building mutual respect and lowering potential "resistance" from prospects are then greatly enhanced.

Sales professionals today must also have skills for establishing strong working relationships. In keynote addresses and training delivered by Perim Consulting, the concept of Emotional Intelligence ("EI") is explored as it relates to developing relationships. There are four key EI competency areas (as identified by Daniel Goleman in Working with Emotional Intelligence) that can be important for sales professionals: Self-awareness, Self-management, Social-awareness and Social skills. The skills taught by Perim Consulting can be a strong complement to this framework of EI.

When a company’s sales force provides dramatically different sales experiences for its customers and prospects alike, the company can expect dramatically different results.

Sales training through PrimeTime! For Sales Professionals, sales manager coaching, in-the-field ride-alongs, customized training and keynote presentations are several of the ways we provide value for our clients in the area of Professional Selling.