Professional Selling

With economic uncertainty looming over the current business environment, there is a great pressure to make changes and provide solutions for the unknown, particularly around Sales, because ultimately if there is no revenue, there is no business growth.

Sales is at the heart of every organisation, therefore, having a sales team that are innovative, adaptable and true representatives of your brand is your biggest advantage. Yet, only a little over half of employers upskill their employees in customer service, sales and communications.

Pairing this with the fact that salespeople often implement outdated sales approaches and experience a lack of relevant training, it’s unsurprising that many organisations struggle with the same problems of missed opportunities, margin erosion, transactional sales and high sales employee turnover, to name a few. But these are all symptoms of a wider challenge – skills shortage in professional Sales.

So, what needs to be done to break a cycle, which continues to stifle business productivity?

In a function that is paramount for business success, investing in your people is of upmost importance. According to Impartner, 90% of recruitment managers say that finding the right corporate sales professionals has become more challenging, so why not look internally and upskill the individuals that are already within your business? You can boost productivity and revolutionise your sales approach through behaviour, knowledge and skills focused diagnostics, training and support.

The journey to success

People are an integral part of any business, especially in sales, as it’s down to our salespeople to position our products & services in such a way that they create real customer value. But, our people can also be one of the biggest barriers to an organisation’s success. Traditionally, training is a very reactive solution to our people barriers – if someone is underperforming in their role, action is taken to resolve the ‘problem’.

However, in order to achieve a long-term solution, it’s time to make a change.

You need to establish a set of clear and concise outcomes, which can only be achieved by truly understanding where your business is now, where it needs to be in the future and how your sales function can be a vehicle to achieve this. Creating a benchmark, consisting of the most desirable traits and behaviours for your different sales roles, is a useful method, as it enables key stakeholders to establish ‘what good looks like’ for each role to measure individuals against, which then helps organisations to determine the necessary training required.

Not a one-size-fits-all approach

All salespeople aren’t the same, so their development journey shouldn’t treat them as though they are. By establishing ‘what good looks like’ for your sales function, it becomes easier to determine what needs to be done, both as individual salespeople and the entire sales team. Based on this, your sales team will be able to create personal development plans and engage in relevant training to embark on a development journey that is bespoke to them. As a result, you’ll begin to experience wider business outcomes such as:

  • An uplift in workforce productivity
  • Increased employer brand value
  • The ability to better position your products & services
  • Selling on value rather than transactionally

The Discovery Way

Discovery are game-changers in the world of sales transformation, trail-blazing a fresh approach to building workforces for the future. We have pioneered a methodology that helps our clients truly understand what stretch is required within the commercial functions to deliver on the future ambitions and increase shareholder value, and for many of the organisations who have adopted our sales transformation approach, it has not been uncommon for them to experience a four-fold increase in customer order values and higher margins.

The current business market requires a greater focus on sales to help protect businesses through current turbulent times. Discovery offer a Level 4 Sales Executive Apprenticeship in which your Sales employees, who have been in the role for a minimum of 6 months, can benefit from a 15-month blended learning development programme, consisting of classroom sessions, on-going support and coaching and unlike many other providers, we also deliver experiential learning throughout modules. What’s even better? It gives organisations an opportunity to utilise their apprenticeship levy to support employee professional development.

Are you ready to optimise your sales function? Contact us on 0121 665 4060 to start your sales transformation journey.