SCOTSMAN® Masterclass in Commitment Selling
Selling is not a problem, it’s a process. When it’s not a process, it becomes a problem.
Our flagship programme trains participants on how to prepare a team plan to win a major sales project. The programme examines the steps needed to gain access to key people, the best sequence to meet them, and how to handle meetings to build up a need for your services. It examines how to create, qualify and structure the resulting opportunity to deal with the politics and competition — and applies the concepts in a sales business game that simulates 12 months of trading.
Professional sellers running major B2B deals
Classroom & Virtual
2 day classroom
Pipeline Simulator
Inside the Masterclass.
Sales Campaign Planning Overview
We examine and discuss a model of all the activities in a sale and put them into context.
Qualification using SCOTSMAN®
We examine the eight criteria of SCOTSMAN® to help us decide whether or not a project is worthwhile. We examine the verbal skills needed to qualify the opportunities that arise, and the planning skills to map out the way forward.
Sales Meeting Objectives
We examine the difference between the agenda for a meeting and the objectives of a meeting. The objectives are always customer commitments. Senior people expect you to give them some sort of decision to make and will be frustrated with the meeting if you don’t. So we examine the sort of decisions they might find interesting, and the type of commitments we need from them – qualification, timetable, lobbying or criteria commitments.
Political Map
To win big sales, we must understand the politics involved. Participants draw up the political map for an account – Who’s who in the zoo? The participants audit their relationship and level of engagement with their accounts.
Selling to Senior Executives
We discuss the language of senior executives so that we can engage with them in a discussion about their business. Participants examine the difference between the needs of senior executives and junior executives. Senior people buy policy not product. They are generally more interested in return than cost. Senior people are interested in competitive edge and increased effectiveness.
Selling Styles
We discuss different selling styles, in particular the difference between selling to recognised needs and selling to unrecognised needs – responding to needs versus creating needs, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Need Creation
Participants learn the skill of encouraging the prospect to
open up and talk about their ambitions, concerns, and
issues. They also learn how to introduce those company
strengths which the prospect might not yet have
considered
Listening
Benefits come in two flavours, business and personal. The personal motivations to buy are much stronger than the business. They are the hidden agenda. Yet understanding these needs is the key to a good relationship at an individual level. Participants learn to uncover personal needs and tune into their “emotion buttons”.
Giving Evidence
We differentiate between claims and evidence, and examine how to use reference stories – to translate our products and services into a language which senior people relate to, as the spearhead for prospecting when we have a suitable solution, and as a way of putting across company strengths.
Beating the Competition
We examine what process is needed to beat a competitor
in a sale. The fact that we are different or unique is not
enough. The only thing that matters is whether or not that
difference is important to the prospect. We raise these
differences in the prospect’s brain.
Selling a Timetables
We examine how to sell a timetable to the prospect to
structure the sales opportunity to find out if they are
serious. We get them to “make a decision to make a
decision”. This includes access during “Death Valley” – that
difficult period after you have submitted your proposal, but
before they decide
Sales Campaign Planning
We revisit the need for every meeting to have both an
agenda and commitments. A Sales Campaign Plan is defined
as a list of all the meetings leading up to the decision. Each
meeting is defined by the commitments wanted at the end.
What participants take away.
By the end of this programme, participants can:
- Gain access to key individuals within new and existing accounts.
- Hold effective sales meetings.
- Set up meetings with senior executives in prospect companies.
- Create major opportunities at a senior level.
- Gain commitment at each stage of the sale.
- Qualify these opportunities very thoroughly — they take a lot of resource.
- Identify “Potential Showstoppers” for the sale and what is needed to address them.
- Structure the resulting findings into a winnable sales opportunity.
- Uncover the complex decision processes of large organisations.
- Understand the “Political Map” in your accounts.
- Structure the plan to gain access to all key people at all levels within new and existing accounts at key times.
- Talk the language of senior executives.
- Decide the key activities at each stage of the sale.
- Improve the chance of having discussions after the bid is submitted.
- Put in place specific activities to differentiate your company from its competitors.
- Influence the specification towards your company strengths.
- Rehearse friends so that they put across your company message.
How this programme runs.
Classroom
2 or 3 day.
Virtual
4 × 2.5 hrs Virtual Classroom, plus 12 hrs Online Modules.
SCOTSMAN® Pipeline Simulator
The programme includes the SCOTSMAN® Pipeline Simulator.
What this programme sets out to do.
- To teach participants how to handle major sales opportunities.
- To develop a plan for how to win a major piece of business.
- To understand and use the processes needed to develop that plan.
- To teach experienced sales people how to win the politics of major sales.
The Power of SCOTSMAN® and Commitments
SCOTSMAN® qualifies the opportunity. Commitments qualify the customer’s intent. Together — the Power of Two — the only honest measure of a major deal in progress. Read before the Masterclass.
“A real game changer that gives you confidence to better qualify and focus your pipeline.”