Sales Fundamentals
Rajeev Goyal
PooRa Learnings
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Module One: Getting Started .............................................................................................................4
Workshop Objectives ................................................................................................................................ 4
Module Two: Understanding the Talk .................................................................................................5
Types of Sales............................................................................................................................................ 5
Common Sales Approaches....................................................................................................................... 5
Glossary of Common Terms ...................................................................................................................... 5
Module Three: Getting Prepared to Make the Call ..............................................................................6
Identifying Your Contact Person ............................................................................................................... 6
Performing a Needs Analysis .................................................................................................................... 6
Creating Potential Solutions ..................................................................................................................... 6
Module Four: Creative Openings ........................................................................................................7
A Basic Opening for Warm Calls ............................................................................................................... 7
Warming up Cold Calls.............................................................................................................................. 7
Using the Referral Opening ...................................................................................................................... 7
Module Five: Making Your Pitch .........................................................................................................8
Features and Benefits ............................................................................................................................... 8
Outlining Your Unique Selling Position ..................................................................................................... 8
The Burning Question That Every Customer Wants Answered................................................................. 8
Module Six: Handling Objections ........................................................................................................9
Common Types of Objections ................................................................................................................... 9
Basic Strategies......................................................................................................................................... 9
Advanced Strategies ................................................................................................................................. 9
Module Seven: Sealing the Deal ....................................................................................................... 10
Understanding When Its Time to Close ................................................................................................. 10
Powerful Closing Techniques .................................................................................................................. 10
Things to Remember ............................................................................................................................... 10
Module Eight: Following Up ............................................................................................................. 11
Thank You Notes ..................................................................................................................................... 11
Resolving Customer Service Issues.......................................................................................................... 11
Staying in Touch...................................................................................................................................... 11
Module Nine: Setting Goals .............................................................................................................. 12
The Importance of Sales Goals ............................................................................................................... 12
Setting SMART Goals .............................................................................................................................. 12
Module Ten: Managing Your Data .................................................................................................... 13
Choosing a System That Works for You .................................................................................................. 13
Using Computerized Systems .................................................................................................................. 13
Using Manual Systems............................................................................................................................ 13
Module Eleven: Using a Prospect Board ............................................................................................ 14
The Layout of a Prospect Board .............................................................................................................. 14
How to Use Your Prospect Board ............................................................................................................ 14
A Day in the Life of Your Board ............................................................................................................... 14
Module Twelve: Wrapping Up .......................................................................................................... 15
Words from the Wise .............................................................................................................................. 15
Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask
someone what you are looking for before
you begin looking for it.
Winnie the Pooh
Module One: Getting Started
Welcome to the Sales Fundamentals workshop.
Although the definition of a sale is simple enough, the process of
turning someone into a buyer can be very complex. It requires you
to convince someone with a potential interest that there is
something for them in making their interest concrete something
that merits spending some of their hard-earned money.
This workshop will give participants a basic sales process, plus
some basic sales tools, that they can use to seal the deal, no matter what the size of the sale.
Workshop Objectives
Page 4
In the modern world of business, it is
useless to be a creative original thinker
unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvie
Module Two: Understanding the Talk
In this module, we will be looking at the types of sales, common
sales approaches, and common sales terminology.
Like any profession, sales have their own special vocabulary.
Theres nothing particularly difficult about the language of sales.
Mastering it just takes a little study and practice. Knowing the
language will make you feel more confident and prepared to start
selling.
Types of Sales
Common Sales Approaches
Glossary of Common Terms
Page 5
The concept of Ill play it by ear is a
guarantee of mediocrity at best.
David A. Peoples
Module Three: Getting Prepared to Make the Call
Preparing to make a call begins with learning about your client
specifically, what your client needs, and how you can meet those
needs. Before you even pick up the phone you need to have a clear
impression of how not only youre opening, but the following few
stages of the conversation are going to go.
In preparing this way you will be able to anticipate various reactions
from the potential customer enthusiasm, caution, reluctance etc.
and tailor your responses to their questions or expressions of
reluctance. This will ensure that you can mold your selling tactics to
get the best results time and again.
As a salesperson, you will be required to make many phone calls to potential customers, whether they
are cold calls or warm. The object of the calls will be to try and get a sales agreement in place as
soon as possible, so you need to get as many facts nailed down as possible. Having a pen and paper
nearby is obviously handy, and you should then decide on a strategy for going forward with the call. The
more you know about the person to whom you are speaking, the nature of their business, and what you
can do for them, the better for any eventual sales pitch.
Identifying Your Contact Person
Performing a Needs Analysis
Creating Potential Solutions
Page 6
Begin at the beginning and go on till you
come to the end: then stop.
Lewis Carroll
Module Four: Creative Openings
Starting off on the right foot is absolutely essential in sales
meetings. Simple things go a long way toward making a good first
impression: looking and acting professional, treating clients with
courtesy and respect, and coming up with a creative way to
introduce yourself and your company.
Being memorable (for the right reasons) will ensure that your name
comes up time and again when possible solutions are being
researched.
A Basic Opening for Warm Calls
Warming up Cold Calls
Using the Referral Opening
Page 7
The key to being a professional salesperson
is not to sound like one.
Jeffrey Gitomer
Module Five: Making Your Pitch
Once you have made it past the opening, its time to make your
pitch. In preparing your pitch, work on coming up with a clear,
persuasive explanation of what your product can do for the client.
Be prepared to answer the all-important question that all clients
have: Whats in it for me?
This is, after all, the basic question in all financial dealings. If you
are trying to persuade people to part with money they have
earned, you may well need to work to give them reasons to do so.
The central point in any sale is getting the customer to see why
what you are offering them is better than any competitors
offering, and that you will see that their best interests are served.
When making a pitch it is important to get the balance right between attractiveness and believability.
You can promise the earth to a potential customer in order to get them to sign on the bottom line, but if
they do not believe you can deliver on what you are offering then it will be completely pointless.
Also, as most deals have a cooling off period, the chances are that if you oversell your product they
will be dissatisfied and bring the deal to an end before it has had time to become established.
Features and Benefits
Outlining Your Unique Selling Position
The Burning Question That Every Customer Wants Answered
Page 8
Big shots are only little shots who keep
shooting.
Christopher Morley
Module Six: Handling Objections
Customers who are not ready to decide on a purchase often come up
with objections, statements about what is holding them back. You can
overcome these objections if you are prepared to respond to them in
a calm, rational way. Often all that customers need is more
information to make them feel more confident about their purchase.
In these situations you need to be careful not to start an argument
with a customer or belittle the customers concerns. In fact, you
might decide to agree with a customer to a certain point but then
show the customer a different way of thinking about the purchase.
For example: I know that buying new windows is a big investment,
but lets look at what you can expect to save in energy costs.
There is a saying: If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Although this is something of a clich and
not 100% applicable, it gives a good example of how you can deal with customer objections by turning
them to your advantage.
Naturally, people will be reluctant to part with money that they have worked hard to earn, and will not
want to spend without being absolutely convinced that the spending has been worthwhile. This means
that they will be on the look-out for things that will make the purchase less worthwhile. Your task as a
salesperson is to hear and understand their objections, but convince them to look at things differently.
Common Types of Objections
Basic Strategies
Advanced Strategies
Page 9
We were born to succeed, not to fail.
Henry David Thoreau
Module Seven: Sealing the Deal
You have worked hard to get your foot in the door, tell customers
what your product can do for them, and respond to any objections
they might have. Now its time to seal the deal. Or is it? A good
salesperson needs to know when its time to close and how to go
about doing it.
Misidentifying the moment to close can carry numerous problems
with it, not least the fact that a customer with extra thinking time
can very easily suddenly decide that they are not so interested after
all, and a customer who is pressed to complete the deal too early
can be left with a negative impression of the salesperson one
which may be impossible to conquer.
The point at which it is advisable to close on a deal will be fairly obvious to any experienced salesperson.
The moment will become apparent, usually after you have gone through a typical sales pitch, responded
to the potential customers objections and talked them around, and they have begun to give a positive
impression with regards to buying whether they do this verbally or through their body language and
non-verbal comportment.
At this point, you should begin to speak as though they are going to buy, while not talking as though
they have already bought the product or service.
Understanding When Its Time to Close
Powerful Closing Techniques
Things to Remember
Page 10
The deepest craving of human nature is the
need
to be appreciated.
The deepest
craving of human nature is the
need to be appreciated.
William James
Module Eight: Following Up
The closing is not the final stage of a sale. The final stage is
following up, which is actually a process that may continue
indefinitely. This stage may have two valuable outcomes:
referrals and future sales.
The nature of a follow-up to a sale will depend on how the
sale was carried out. If you sell via mail, then the delivery
should be accompanied with a compliments slip thanking the
customer for their custom and making clear your hope that
you can do more business in the future. If you sell in person,
then it can be very beneficial to follow up with a call a few
days later asking how they have found the item.
When you carry out the follow-up, it is important to leave the customer feeling like they have been well
treated. It is likely that you can think of a case where you have been given excellent customer service
you probably told your friends and family about it, and when you have required anything in the same
niche you will have thought immediately of the salespeople that covered your sale and gave you such
excellent service before.
You will want to ensure that you receive that level of service again. As a salesperson, this is how you
want people to think of you, too. By providing an excellent level of service every time, you will gain more
business from the friends and family of that customer, and from the customers themselves.
Thank You Notes
Resolving Customer Service Issues
Staying in Touch
Page 11
We find no real satisfaction in life without
obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
Maxwell Maltz
Module Nine: Setting Goals
If you want to accomplish anything important in life, you
need to have goals. Goals give you something to shoot for.
They keep you focused and motivated. They let you know
when to celebrate and when to start shooting for something
higher.
Goals are a part of all human endeavor both in the
workplace and in life in general. We measure ourselves by
how we do in relation to the goals we have set ourselves and
those we have set for us by management. By achieving a goal
consistently we can benefit in a number of ways we will gain recognition, potentially advancement
within the company, and frequently will benefit from financial incentives.
So, we know the benefits of reaching goals but there is more to goals than what happens when we
attain them. When we are set goals, they are usually set at a reasonable but challenging level and we
will be able to achieve them if we do our job well enough.
Although we should all be well motivated to do our jobs anyway, the presence of targets keeps us
honest and encourages us to always make as much effort as we can possibly make. Therefore sales
targets have a dual effect the incentive of what happens if we reach them, and their simple presence
both make us work harder than we ordinarily might.
The Importance of Sales Goals
Setting SMART Goals
Page 12
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered
mind, what is the significance of a clean
desk?
Laurence J. Peter
Module Ten: Managing Your Data
Salespeople collect an enormous amount of information during the
course of a day: names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses,
employers, interests, and more. Managing your data will help you
work more efficiently and make it easier to keep track of your clients.
The developments in information technology over the past decade or
so have made this kind of record keeping so easy that it is now simply
not worth not doing it. Most ready-to-go software packages on
personal and business computers will come with an easy-to-use
spreadsheet and database package, which will allow you to collate all
information that you need. By doing this you will be able to search for any information you need.
The more information you can keep on customers, the more effective your record-keeping will be and
the more synergistic your customer services can be. By having contact information and personal details
about customers, you will be able to alert them to deals which may be beneficial to them.
As computer software becomes more and more innovative and intuitive, we are able to set up
reminders that will alert us to something which may be beneficial from a selling point of view. It is not
just a case of record-keeping, but more of information management. Not only do you want to make sure
you have the information, you also want to ensure you are using it correctly.
Choosing a System That Works for You
Using Computerized Systems
Using Manual Systems
Page 13
Plan your work for today and every day.
Then
workwork
yourfor
plan.
Plan your
today and every day.
Then workNorman
your plan.
Vincent Peale
Module Eleven: Using a Prospect Board
A prospect board is a powerful tool that can help you track
prospects and manage your time. It is basically a way of
showing where each prospect is in the sales process at any
given point in time. It allows the salesperson to see where
more work is needed, where a sale is near to completion, and
how many sales are currently on the agenda.
By using a prospect board it is easy to monitor at a glance
where work is needed and how you can best utilize your time
in the sales field.
Setting up a prospect board is not dissimilar to having a stats board in the office detailing every
salespersons performance. From a glance at the board it is possible to not only read the current state of
play but also to gain some sense of motivation from seeing the work that needs done.
If you can see that one deal is near to being closed, then it can be an encouraging document of how
much has already been done and a reminder that there is only a small amount remaining to be done
an encouragement to get that work done today. If there is quite a lot of work still to do to get a sale, it
can encourage the salesperson to ensure that that work gets done as soon as possible.
The Layout of a Prospect Board
How to Use Your Prospect Board
A Day in the Life of Your Board
Page 14
I know of no more encouraging fact than
the unquestioned ability of a man to
elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau
Module Twelve: Wrapping Up
Although this workshop is coming to a close, we hope that your
journey to improve your sales skills is just beginning. Please take a
moment to review and update your action plan. This will be a key
tool to guide your progress in the days, weeks, months, and years to
come. We wish you the best of luck on the rest of your travels!
Words from the Wise
Page 15
