Supply Chain Services of Stillwater, Minn., sells barcode equipment and services to companies in the manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution industries. After adoptingsales training programs and sales coaching based on the Action Selling ® system, SCS boosted revenue by a whopping 50 percent (in a down economy, no less) while maintaining margins and increasing the size of its average sale.
How did it happen? Predictably, the sales force became much more effective after mastering the surprisingly few sales skills that are genuinely critical to outstanding performance. But it wasn’t only that. The impact of the sales training courses was supercharged when SCS extended the training beyond the sales force to include the entire company, says chief operating officer Dave Green.
“Because it’s a complete sales system, Action Selling ® provided the language, the concepts, and the sales culture we needed to plan and execute a very ambitious growth strategy,” Green says. “Everyone in our company now sees and understands how truly professional selling really works. Our technical staff has a better idea of what we can do to satisfy a customer’s needs. Our salespeople sell with far more confidence. Management understands what’s going on in the field. We’re very close to the customer because of how well we communicate with our sales force on every deal.”
A common language
If you are using sales training courses based on a complete sales system, such as Action Selling ®, then you may know that miracles can happen when salespeople learn and master sales skills that are genuinely critical and genuinely teachable. You also may have discovered what a huge advantage it is to be able to conduct sales training and sales coaching in a common language designed precisely to describe the sales process.
But what happens to that precise communication when the sales force needs to coordinate with other units in your organization? If your company is like most, the answer isn’t pretty.
How much more effective and successful could your company be if everyone—technicians, customer service people, and all levels of management—spoke the same language as the one used in sales coaching sessions? After all, if you want to play as a team, shouldn’t everybody be reading out of the same playbook?
Or, to change metaphors, imagine your company as a computer. When sales training programs are based on a thoroughly validated sales system, and the basics of those programs are provided to everyone in the company, then sales training can function not just like a new software package for the sales force but like a whole new operating system—a better, faster, and far more robust operating system.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask anyone at Supply Chain Services Inc.
For information about how to improve sales skills and make sales training pay huge dividends, contact Action Selling ® at (800) 232-3485.