The Strategic Selling and Conceptual Selling programs combine to offer a process to strategically pursue complex opportunities by understanding both the buying and selling processes at work. The program, which uses both the Blue and Green Sheets, helps map out both the sales opportunity being pursued and the expected outcomes of each critical customer interaction.

In the Strategic/Conceptual Selling® program you will learn, apply, and practice the following opportunity management and identification strategies and tactics.

Strategic Selling®

Change

• Understand how your customer reacts to change
• Identify the most critical changes in your selling environment

Single Sales Objective

• Clarify your current position by defining a Single Sales Objective for every opportunity

Euphoria-Panic

• Determine how you feel right now about closing this Single Sales Objective
• Define your position on the Euphoria-Panic Continuum

Define the Players: The Four Buying Influences

• Avoid the common dead end by focusing on players' roles, not their titles
• Learn why an uncovered base with any Buying Influence could give your sale to the competition

Degree of Influence

• Differentiate the varying Degrees of Influence for each Buying Influence
• Define the factors that affect the Degree of Influence, ranging from internal politics to organizational changes
• Learn why it is important to cover people who have a low Degree of Influence

Modes

• Learn how understanding each reaction to change helps predict receptivity to the sales proposal
• Identify what sales approaches you can develop for each of the four modes

The Win-Win Matrix

• Ensure wins for your customer and yourself
• Discover the four possible outcomes of every sale, and why three of them are recipes for disaster

Getting to the Economic Buyer

• Uncover the three problems in getting to the Economic Buyer. Dealing with the "float factor," the internal blocker, and intimidation
• Establish your credibility by providing the one thing the Economic Buyer always wants

Competition

• Learn the types of competition
• Understand how focusing on the competition can be just as dangerous as ignoring it
• Leverage a new strategy to use against competition

Ideal Customer

• Measure the fit of your opportunity using the Ideal Customer Profile: a reliable tool for concentrating on win-win business
• Sort and prioritize prospects according to this profile

The Sales Funnel

• Maximize your most precious resource: selling time
• Leverage the Sales Funnel for account tracking and territory management
• Avoid the "boom and bust" income cycle
• Discover an effective balance between the four types of selling work

Strategic Analysis: The Blue Sheet

• Pull it all together into an action-based strategy for a structured, proven, 60-minute sales analysis
• Leverage a complete, detailed picture of your Single Sales Objective
• Illustrate who should do what and when to move your sale toward a close

Conceptual Selling®

Customer's Concept

• Understand what the Customer's Concept is and why it is necessary to understand it
• Connect the Concept Sale and the Product Sale
• Know why the Concept Sale always has to come first

Action Commitments

• Set customer action targets for every call
• Determine your Best Action Commitment: the most you can expect from the customer as a result of the call
• Identify your Minimum Acceptable Action: the least you'll settle for
• Know what to do when you "can't get" the minimum
• Use the Guidelines for Commitment: make sure they are specific, realistic, and measurable

Single Sales Objective

• Learn the most common error in setting objectives
• Identify Single Sales Objectives that are measurable and tangible
• Hear examples of "fuzzy" and sharply defined SSOs

Valid Business Reason

• Establish a business reason for each call
• Develop the criteria you must have for an effective VBR

Credibility

• Hear why credibility is key to getting started in every call
• Learn the three types of credibility: earned, transferred, and established by reputation
• Understand why you should test your credibility on every call

Getting Information

• Recognize what information is missing and who is the best person to ask
• Leverage questioning as a process to confirm and uncover information
• Explore the five question types: Confirmation, New Information, Attitude, Commitment, and Basic Issues

Superb Communication

• Maximize the understanding between yourself and the customer
• Compare the effects of "Question Shock" and Golden Silence
• Discover the proven benefits of Golden Silence

Giving Information

• See why differentiation is imperative to buying decisions
• Understand the importance of leveraging your unique strengths to differentiate your company, product or service
• Decipher the difference between unique strengths and features and benefits
• Use the acid tests for differentiation: "So what?" and "Prove it!"

Sales Call Approaches

• Compare traditional selling approaches and the joint venture
• Evaluate which works and which doesn't
• Utilize logic to get to win-win results with your customers

Getting Commitment

• Learn how each sales call ends on what the customer will do next
• Know when the customer is ready for action by understanding commitment signals
• Define why customers won't commit and overcome basic issues

Sales Call Plan

• Bring it all together and detail your action plan for your upcoming sales calls
• Use the Green Sheet checklist questions to build your strategy