Why you should ‘Never Give Up’ in Sales.

The quote made by Churchill was referring retrospectively to the first 10 months of World War II. Specifically he is referencing the fact that Britain stood alone and appeared to stand no chance in the fight. The fact that Britain never gave up and stood alone, and this paid off, is the lesson he is communicating.

So, what’s the learning for Sales people today? There is an often quoted study performed by Dartnell and McGraw Hill who found:

• 48% of all Salespeople give up after the 1st contact
• 25% give up after the 2nd contact
• 17% give up after the 3rd and 4th contact

If you add up 17+25+48, you can come to the conclusion that 90% of Salespeople give up before the fifth contact with an opportunity. Some of you may be thinking that it does not take 5 contacts to make a sale, it can be done in less. But what they also found in the same study was that 80% of all sales are made after 5 or more contacts.

You could be thinking that all this depends on a number of factors such as deal size, where the customer is in their purchasing process etc.

Furthermore, there is a huge difference between intelligent prospecting and simply contacting people repeatedly, who do not wish to be contacted.

However, it seems intuitive to believe that a lot of Salespeople run the risk of giving up a lot of the time.

Wright Solutions run Sales Academies that directly focus on creating the right mind-set within delegates to know when to give up and when to pursue business development opportunities “intelligently”.

Delegates are introduced to the first element in our core philosophy which is learning how to ‘Create’ value. This value creation mindset then forms the stepping stone to understanding how to ‘Communicate’ that value back to a prospective or existing client for the purpose of value ‘Capture’ for both parties.

Sales Academy

Building capability in your sales team often requires more than a one off sales training intervention. Wright Solutions sales academies are designed to highlight and accelerate best practice, plug sales capability gaps and create a culture of professional excellence.

What is a Sales Academy?

The components required to build an academy are unique to every organisation and sales team. The structure of a Sales Academy will therefore vary from one client to the next.

Typically, we follow the below steps to create your academy:

In-depth Diagnostic Analysis

Before a Sales Academy can be mapped out, a detailed analysis of existing processes and methodology is required.

Using tools which include:

• Customer interviews
• Employee questionnaires
• Sales data analysis
• Customer meeting observations

Our sales coaches take a deep dive into your sales processes. The findings are then presented to you in a detailed report.

Sales Competency Framework

A Sales Competency Framework is designed to show what ‘best’ looks like. It is a tool used to benchmark the skill, will and behaviours of your salespeople, enabling you to identify both individual areas for improvement and trends in capability gaps.

The Sales Academy Structure

Using the information gathered from the diagnostic and working closely with you; Wright Solutions will design a programme of learning and application that will form the basis of your Sales Academy.

What are the benefits?

A Sales Academy is a large scale initiative that works to improve sales performance and professional development at organisation level. By the end of the academy, we aim to help organisations to:

• Create a culture of high performance selling.
• Build capability and deliver improved results.
• Align the team around one common sales methodology.
• Create a common language and process to enable greater sales team collaboration.
• Build coaching capability in the sales management team.
• Provide a competency based approach to improving the sales team.
• Enable and encourage individual learning and professional development.

Our Guarantee

Since the purpose of any sales training and coaching intervention is ultimately to increase revenue, measuring ROI is critical to understanding the success of a Sales Academy.

Wright Solutions work with you from the start to define the performance success factors that will measure the impact of the Sales Academy.

Who should attend?

A Sales Academy is suited for any member of your team who interacts with customers. This could include people working in a variety of disciplines, including:

• Sales professionals
• Sales management professionals
• Account management professionals
• Business development professionals
• Customer service professionals

Delivery options

A Sales Academy will consist of a range of different learning and delivery methods, which may include:

• Classroom style sales training modules – often focused on a single sales capability, e.g. value based negotiation skills, pitching skills
• Role-play simulations – using actors to play the role of the customer, delegates get the opportunity to practice, receive feedback and refine. These simulations can also be used to evaluate delegates
• Sales Coaching – both field-based observational and/or one to one coaching
• Deal Clinics – facilitated sessions where delegates work on live deals, reviewing opportunities and accelerating these deals to closure
• E-learning modules – designed by our app and software developers to support ongoing delegate learning and development

Download an overview of this course here

We’ve prepared a helpful overview of this course to share within your organisation.