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Account Development Skills
Account Development Skills (ADS) equips inside and field sales reps with the unique skills and processes to prospect for customers via the phone. The following is a detailed overview of each module and the competencies required to successfully expand opportunities within current accounts as well as initiate relationships within dormant or cold accounts/decision-makers.
Who it's For: Sales Reps & Managers
Seminar Length: 2 Days
 Download Printable Brochure
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Upcoming Dates
Dates have not yet been set for this seminar. Please call 770 690-9616 ext. 104 for more information.
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What participants are saying about the Account Development Skills Seminar...
“The training was top notch. I have been in sales a long time; this was awesome and directly applied to my everyday challenges.”
– HP
“This undoubtedly is the best training program I have ever experienced.”
– Getty Images
“Totally revolutionary and ground-breaking stuff. This is how the sales process should be.”
– Blue Cross Blue Shield |
Seminar Details
Module 1: The Foundation: Trust, Credibility & Rapport
Module 2: Outbound Sales Process
Module 3: Engage
Module 4: Discovery
Module 5: Build Value
Module 6: Gain Commitment
Reference Tools
Module 1: The Foundation: Trust, Credibility & Rapport
In this foundational module, participants learn that the customer buys the sales rep before they buy the product, based on three criteria – trust, credibility and rapport. If we successfully establish trust, credibility, and rapport, we gain a tremendous competitive advantage. Establishing this principle-based relationship creates a scenario where the customer is willing to communicate honest needs and consider alternative solutions.
Guiding Principle:
Relationship determines influence…and ultimately your success in sales.
Participants will learn to establish Trust, Credibility, & Rapport, over the phone by:
- Embracing their role as a trusted advisor. By fully understanding their role as a trusted advisor, reps will recognize that it is in everyone’s best interest and critical to their long-term success to put the customer’s needs first.
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Demonstrating thought leadership. Participants will learn to establish credibility by understanding the decision drivers, role-specific challenges, and key objectives of the decision-makers and key influencers.
- Meeting the customer's greatest emotional need and recognizing and appropriately adjusting to the four unique communication styles.
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Module 2: Outbound Sales Process
Participants will learn a proven selling process that increases the probability of their success – regardless of the rep’s level of expertise. Aslan’s Sales Process provides reps with a tangible step-by-step methodology to initiate relationships, uncover needs, persuasively position their solution, and reach agreement on the appropriate next step. This four-step process includes: Engage, Discovery, Build Value, and Gain Commitment.
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Module 3: Engage
The goal of the introduction is not to create interest, but to simply move the prospect from a non-receptive state to an open state. Once the prospect is receptive, it is the rep’s responsibility to lead the buying process.
Guiding Principle:
We will initially resist any outside pressure to think or act differently,
even if it is in our best interest, if we feel that we are being forced
and our right to choose is not respected.
(The Tug of War principle)
Participants will learn to Engage customers over the phone by:
- Understanding the Rules of Engagement. By understanding the dynamics of human emotions and behavior, sales reps learn to influence and resist the temptation to force the prospect to respond.
- Conducting pre-call planning and research. Reps will embrace the importance of strategically planning for a sales call and conducting the necessary research to obtain the information needed to pre-qualify a prospect and then optimally positioning their call and solution.
- Establishing an other-centered agenda. Sales reps will gain an understanding of the key components of an introduction that will disarm the prospect and ultimately gain a commitment to the next step in the selling process – the Discovery Meeting.
- Navigating to the decision-maker. Reps will develop the techniques to identifying barriers (e.g., “screens”, voice-mail) and connecting to influencers and key decision-makers.
- Gaining access through sponsorship. Reps will be enabled to utilize four sponsorship strategies that will give them greater access to more receptive decision-makers.
- Gaining access creatively. Additionally, reps will be provided creative strategies for gaining access to and engaging influencers and Level II and Level III decision-makers.
- Appropriately responding to objections. Reps will learn how to appropriately respond to the five most common“false” objections prospects employ to avoid sales reps.
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Module 4: Discovery
Initiating a Discovery Meeting with a new prospect is probably the most critical step to successfully growing your account base. This module is designed to ensure that participants develop the capabilities to initiate and engage a manager or executive level decision-maker in a Discovery Meeting to the degree that both perceived and unconscious needs are revealed.
Guiding Principle:
Until we demonstrate that we understand the customer’s needs,
they will not be receptive to our recommended solution.
Participants wil learn to uncover perceived and unconscious needs over the phone by:
- Initiating Discovery. Establishing value for the discovery process in the initial stages of the call
- Gaining alignment. Seeing the opportunity from the prospect’s point of view and understanding their primary buying motive, and utilizing the keys to uncovering the prospect’s perceived needs
- Utilizing a customized Discovery Matrix that provides the essential components to discovering the prospect’s perceived and unconscious needs, decision drivers, and their strategic fit (i.e., “Can you win?” and “Is it worth winning?”)
- Identifying the political structure in the organization to determine the key influencers and decision-makers
- Recognizing the different forms of value (e.g., financial, emotional) in the mind of the decision-maker and identifying their personal and corporate decision drivers
- Expanding the “comfort zone”. The importance of creating an environment where honest needs are revealed by developing LEADership skills (Listening, Empathetically Acknowledging, and “Dropping the Rope”)
- Using effective questioning strategies. How and when to ask opening, informational, attitudinal, and clarifying questions to ensure obtaining the most accurate information, as well as learning how to position questions in a way that ensures that the customer is motivated to answer
- Formulating GAP2 (Get At Problem and Payoff) Questions to expose the hidden needs and determine “what’s at stake” – through self-discovery
- Regaining a leadership position when the customer changes the direction of the Discovery Meeting (e.g., initiates price discussion, asks questions about product/solution)
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Module 5: Build Value
Once you have built a foundation of trust, credibility, and rapport, understood the prospect’s needs, and defined the “value gap,” it is time to build value in your solution and in “you” as the solution provider.
Guiding Principle:
Communicating benefits that are not connected to a customer’s needs
erodes the foundation of Trust, Credibility & Rapport.
Participants will learn to Build Value in their solution over the phone by:
- Communicating your solution as an other-centered benefit by demonstrating the relevancy and payoff of your recommendation
- Delivering your presentation persuasively – with passion, authority, professionalism, and appropriate voice inflections
- Ensuring that customers emotionally experience the benefit through: examples/word pictures that allow the customer to visualize the benefits and be emotionally engaged; and strong statements to further build credibility and better position your product/service as “best of class”
- Isolating the customer’s key concerns and removing barriers to commitment
- Analyzing competitive pressures and assessing your opportunity to win
- Utilizing four strategies that validate your recommendation, establish the value of your solution (over the phone, face-to-face, and in writing), and gain a competitive advantage
- Responding to honest objections/questions by learning to distinguish between and appropriately handle the three types of objections by adopting Aslan’s recommended five-step objection-response methodology
- Transitioning the prospect from focusing on price alone to focusing them on the overall payoff
- Understanding the keys to negotiate a win/win solution
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Module 6: Gain Committment
Often sales reps are either intimidated by the closing process or they place undue emphasis on using a “close technique” to “close the deal.” In reality, this phase of the sales process is simply reaching agreement on the appropriate next step – a step that aligns with where the customer is in their decision-making process and ensures your solution is perceived as best and unique.
Guiding principle:
It is much easier to sell your process than your solution.
Participants will learn to Gain Committment to the appropriate next step, over the phone by:
- Developing a pre-determined objective of the call
- Developing and presenting the offer that minimizes risk and moves the prospect to the next logical event in their buying process
- Understanding the prospect’s buying process and how to link the appropriate advance strategy with the prospect’s commitment level
- Creating an Opportunity Development Process that ensures the decision-making team experiences the value of your recommendation and sees your solution as best and unique
- Creating an Account Management Strategy, once the prospect becomes a customer.
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Reference Tools
- Pre-qualifying matrix
- Strategies to approach decision-makers
- Discovery Matrix
- Discovery questions (e.g., to expose hidden needs, determine decision-makers & influencers)
- Opportunity/Account assessment tool
- Responses to the 5 false objections
- Account development strategies
- Self-Assessment tool
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