Custom Sales Training

Good News/Bad News for Larger Firms

First, the good news: If you manage a large team of seller-doers, your chance of success increases significantly with so many teammates engaged in business development.

The bad news is that if those seller-doers aren’t proficient at selling, don’t want to do it, don’t like to do it or are always “too busy with a project,” your chance of failure also increases significantly.

For those larger firms with a larger seller-doer sales team, Harpeth Marketing’s Sales Success Workshop™:

Teaches and enhances a wide variety of selling skills for the participants
Helps the participants – who are ‘afraid’ of selling or really don’t like to do it – to develop a level of comfort and confidence with the process
Provides the participants with an armful of tools and techniques to give them a foundation for success
Ensures that ‘management’ is prepared to provide effective sales leadership

Training that Addresses Your Team’s Specific Needs

The first step in this program – before we do any work with your sales team – is to customize the content of the workshop to address your teams existing skill set. This starts with all participants (and managers) completing a Selling Skills Assessment.

The insights gained from these assessments allows us to craft a workshop “game plan” that leverages your team’s existing strengths, while also providing some emphasis in the areas where they might need a little extra help.

Training that’s Specific to Your Products & Services

The activities employed during the workshop – workbook exercises, homework, etc. – integrate your products and services, so that the lessons are as “real” as possible, helping to cement the learning in the minds of the participants. Each participant also receives a program Workbook, a comprehensive resource for note-taking, completing the in-class exercises and for ‘homework.’

The core areas covered during the Workshop include:

Demystifying Sales – understanding the core principles and process of selling in our industry.
The Language of Sales – learning to communicate with buyers in a way the resonates with them and helps them to see the value in what you do.
Acquiring New Clients – covering everything from social selling, selling remotely, understanding buyer types, effective cold emails and much more.
Maintaining & Growing Existing Clients – including getting to know clients professionally and personally, managing key accounts, client touch-points, upselling & cross-selling and more.
The Framework of Sales Success – a step-by-step process that helps your seller-doers create a ‘plan’ (unique to each one of them) that will guide their sales activities to ensure they stay proactive in their efforts and that nothing falls through the cracks.

Depending on the number of participants and the training game plan, the Sales Success Workshop™ is typically delivered in four or five modules spread over several weeks (not including the scheduled follow-up sessions).

Training for Sales Managers, too

A high-achieving sales program requires two things… good salespeople and even better sales management. In fact, without effective sales management, there is no way for your seller-doers to be successful. It’s for that reason that we include a sales management module in this Workshop.

Once the sales team training ends, we work 1-on-1 with your sales management, ensuring they are prepared to not only implement the ideas discussed in the workshop, but we also coach them on a variety of sales management methods, tools and procedures that can include:

How to manage and coach
Effective sales meetings
Team structure
Account management
Working with marketing
Compensation plans
Creating sales plans
Measurement & reporting

The content for the Sales Management module is determined through an ‘audit’ completed by the sales manager(s). The engagement is typically delivered in two, ½-day increments.

Follow-up Sessions

For training to be truly impactful, the trainees’ behavior must change. And for that to happen, the new skills and activities must be continually reinforced – over time – until they become ‘habits.’ To ensure this happens, the final piece of the program is the delivery of a series of 1-hour follow-up sessions. These sessions have been used to:

Do “refresher training”… reviewing selected topics from the initial workshop
Focus on role playing specific skills
Have the trainees practice their capabilities presentations, by presenting to the group
Have a town-hall Q&A with Steve Henke
Or pretty much any other ideas you have in support of your seller-doer team.

To learn more about our Sales Success Workshop™, contact Steve Henke at Steve@HarpethMarketing.com or call 615.721.5330.

What Our Clients Are Saying…

“Harpeth Marketing led an outstanding sales training workshop for our team. We worked together in advance to make sure the content was well-suited to our organization and would address many of the learning opportunities for our team members. The session was just the right mix of classroom time, group activities, role-playing, and fun. We really appreciate Steve’s understanding of the unique needs of a firm in our space and his ability to boost every attendee’s confidence in his or her own abilities. Thank you, Steve, for a very impactful training experience!”

Felicia Rogers, Executive VP – Decision Analyst, Inc.

“Steve’s direct yet passionate approach to sales has had significant effects on how most roles at Gongos approach client relationships. Many of our staff immediately put the training into action that resulted in several new projects for Gongos! This momentum is exciting to the employees to experience immediate success. Steve’s wealth of knowledge and experience obviously shines through in his sales training – very detailed, proactive, objective and non-salesy. He takes a very holistic approach to teaching the sales process in a way that breaks down tactics in an easy to understand way for any level.”

Cheryl Halverson, Chief People Officer – Gongos, Inc.

“We recently asked Steve to develop & present a sales training workshop for our team of seller-doers. It turned out better than we could have imagined! He was able to deliver his deep level of expertise in sales & management in a clear, engaging way. Steve installed the overarching sales concepts & processes without making it heavy. Our mostly self-taught team easily grasped the new information & connected it to their own experiences. Then he armed the group with a slew of simple tips & techniques that we were able to put to work immediately! To say that Steve ‘transformed’ how we think about sales & our strategy going forward would be an understatement.”

Eric Hunter, VP Strategy – Russell Research

“Recently, we brought in Steve to participate in our strategy and new business development meeting. His training was on point, role playing was exactly what we needed and his style worked for everyone in the room. Without question, everyone left the meeting energized and armed with new ideas on how to approach new business development! Thanks, Steve! Job well done!”

Merrill Dubrow, CEO – M/A/R/C Research

“Steve Henke recently conducted a Sales Training Workshop for our Business Development team. The program was tailored specifically to our needs and the outcomes we defined. And because the sessions were practical and rooted in an understanding of our industry, we have already adopted a lot of what we covered. What was really valuable is that we now have a better structured process, have adopted tools and frameworks that are making us more efficient and effective. Further, the team’s motivation level is up! Thank you, Harpeth Marketing!”

Asha Ganesan Sen, Consulting Partner, Brandscapes Worldwide