When we train with the Consultative Conversation eight-step framework, people often share how much they love it. Why? Because it provides them with a structure in asking their customers valuable questions, learn more about their customers’ businesses, and uncover additional sales opportunities.
Yet, no one can easily remember and recite all eight steps (except right after writing their CSP Designation!).
At Teneo, we did some creative brainstorming and came up with an acronym, PURPOSE, to easily remember the consultative framework when meeting with customers.
The PURPOSE acronym is easy to remember so you can focus on the customer conversation, not remembering the next step!
When you follow the PURPOSE formula, you’ll have a more productive and purposeful sales conversation each and every time.
Make fewer assumptions about your customers’ current state (U-Understand)
Build trusting relationships by communicating with individuals in their preferred manner (R-Rapport)
Identify the compelling reason you are meeting and state that reason at the start of the meeting (P-Purpose of the meeting)
Ask more questions, and better ones that get to the heart of the business reasons to buy (O-Open-ended Questions)
Summarize, prioritize and collaborate on possible solutions (S-Summarize & Solutions)
Ensure you have clear next steps with date and time (E-Execute)
PURPOSE Sales Conversation
The chart below outlines the simple “purpose” for each step in the consultative conversation.
The PURPOSE of each step
Questions to ask
P – Prepare For Your Meeting
Take 7-10 minutes to prep for your meeting by using the back-side of the PURPOSE template. It helps you be more strategic, proactive and brave!
What are my objectives for this meeting?
What do I hope to accomplish?
Is there any more information
that I need to be fully prepared?
U – Understanding Your Customer
Think like your customer – what’s most important to them in their role, personality style, generation, and decision-making process to make them and their business prosper.
What’s most important for them to accomplish in this meeting and their business?
R – Rapport With Personality Style
Identify their personality style and quickly adapt.
Begin to build trust and connect with them.
Personal or business question to establish a common bond.
Nice building, how long have you been here?
How’s business?
P – Purpose of Meeting
State the actual purpose of the meeting and agree on the agenda items.
Confirm the amount of time for the meeting, even if you scheduled a 30 minute meeting.
To make this meeting most effective, I would like to discuss…
Is there anything else you would like to get done to make this meeting worthwhile for you?
Do you still have 30 minutes?
O – Open EndedQuestions
Ask open, clarifying and expanding questions to find out their current situation, challenges, goals, and their decision-making process.
When you ask intelligent questions in a coach-like and consultative approach, your customer/prospect will realize it’s worth spending time with you.
I would like to begin with asking you a few questions about your business to better understand your situation.
What are your challenges with…?
What are your goals for the coming year? What would you like to accomplish?
What is your criteria for selecting …?
How would you measure success?
S – Summarize Their Needs, Goals and Collaborate on Solutions
Demonstrate you are listening to further develop trust.
Collaborate and co-create possible solutions based on their needs and business goals.
Typically, you may suggest a few solutions and schedule a second meeting to present your proposal with three options.
To recap, what I’m hearing you say is that…
Your priorities are…
I understand that you are ideally looking for…
To achieve your goals, have you considered…?
To give you the maximum ROI, could we…
What (time, productivity, increase in sales, output, save money) would this accomplish in your business?
E – Execute Next Steps
Set the next meeting or call with a specific date and time to present the proposal.
Shall we go ahead then?
Where do we go from here?
When will you be making a decision?
Let’s get together again on (day) and (time) to review the proposal and discuss next steps.
If you would like the PURPOSE template to help you prepare before, during and after your customer meeting, please email jasmine@teneoresults.com for your copy today.
Teneo Challenge: Request your own copy of the PURPOSE Conversation Framework template (email jasmine@teneoresults.com) and use it during your next customer meeting. Share your results by commenting on this blog, or by reaching out to us on LinkedIn @TeneoResults or @LisaLeitch.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
50% of today’s sales professionals are weak and only 6% are elite.
If that doesn’t scare you, these scary selling competencies will.
That’s right, we are going to delve into the underbelly of performance gaps in salespeople and look at the scary statistics that surround these competencies that can’t be covered up.
We have connected with our strategic partners at Objective Management Group(OMG) for these unnerving insights on the following five selling competencies and the frightening statistics and poor performance in each area.
Selling Competencies
% of Salespeople Who are Competent
Closure – A salesperson’s ability to get business closed on a timely basis.
1%
Consultative Seller – A salesperson’s ability to take a consultative approach to a sales opportunity and uncover the compelling reason to buy.
3%
Qualifier – A salesperson’s ability to properly qualify an opportunity.
7%
Mastery of Social Selling – A salesperson’s effective and consistent use of LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging.
10%
Selling Value – A salesperson’s ability to quantify the opportunity and focus on the value rather than sell on price.
OMG states “Selling Competencies play a huge part in the difficulties that salespeople have when attempting to sell value or use a consultative approach. This is the combination of strengths that support skills and when the strengths are actually weaknesses, salespeople are uncomfortable and unable to execute the process, strategies, tactics and achieve milestones.”
This assessment will give you insight into your team’s will to sell, how comfortable they are talking about money, and confirm if they are consultative in their approach with customers – plus more!
Teneo Challenge: Take the 21 Core Competency Sales Assessment with your current team members to understand their level of skills and strengths.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
What does it take to turn a discouraged sales force into an inspiring success story?
My career and my company have been built around empowering sales teams with the processes and tools to do exactly that. I can tell you the three critical areas in which there’s nearly always room for improvement:
Enhancing sales teams’ understanding and application of Professional Selling Concepts.
Losing the negativity and critical self-talk among team members.
Teaching smarter use of their CRMs to help them to serve customers more effectively.
That’s why it was so great to speak recently with Shannon Hall, VP of Sales for commercial cleaning products and equipment manufacturer Dustbane. Shannon was brought into the company just four years ago to bring process to their team, to amp up their drive and confidence, and to grow sales – and it’s worked. By year two, sales started to soar. By year three they’d experienced the highest percentage of growth the company had ever had.
The sales team she found when she came on board were all experienced, knowledgeable and great with customers, but what was missing was a solid understanding of the fundamentals of selling. Without that training and background, many of them were having a rough time adapting to the changing landscape of how sales are done today.
Shannon attributes her own success to continuing professional sales training over several years, and she wanted to be sure that her team got that same solid foundation.
She understood, too, that training alone wasn’t enough without continuing development – and that by creating a stronger sense of team cohesion, she could get everyone pulling in the same positive direction.
I was happy to come on board to help with some of that training. I started with pre-interviews with each of the team members to help me get an idea of each of their personality styles. That helped Shannon to tailor her own coaching, not just to the team but to the individuals. She does a lot of field time with team members, so she can see how well they’ve prepared. She also reviews the call with them afterwards, so that follow-up and looking for ways to improve is a continuing process that’s become second nature.
But it’s not all work.
Shannon also introduced karaoke and Nerf guns (to shoot down negativity) into the regular group meetings, to create a fun environment and bring everyone together. She told me, “Because of all the changes in the way sales were being done, I was hearing a lot of negativity around how people weren’t used to working in this way, or that our customers wouldn’t like it – and I really wanted to energize them, so they’d leave those meetings saying, ‘That was a great experience, and I can’t wait to go use what we talked about, or to share it with someone else.’”
Team building exercises and activities are a part of their routine now – and they serve as a way to introduce new selling concepts, whether that’s through role playing or doing a scavenger hunt together.
Shannon knew how important adopting a stronger CRM was, and wasn’t surprised when she encountered some resistance from the team. Was this just one way that Big Brother could look over their shoulder, or mine their contact information so their jobs could be outsourced? She did her best to reassure them, initially trying to incentivize them with compensation, but discovered that the secret sauce was actually changing team members’ territories. Now, they saw for themselves how critical it was that their peers had actually entered up-to-date information about customers because it was there for them when they needed it. It helped them see the value and provided a way to connect with customers to create lead generation.
But the best part?
Shannon told us, “We’ve become a team, versus individual contributors. People are focused on growth and on their metrics because they’re seeing that those metrics are actually driving their results. They’re hearing from not only their distribution partners but from the end user customers about how much more professional they are, from asking the right questions to being more intuitive about someone’s business. I think that’s changed everything in the way that we go to market and that experience across the board – and is really driving the results for the team.”
Teneo Challenge: Tell us how your sales team has worked to raise the bar of sales excellence for your customers. Post a comment below or tag us on LinkedIn @LisaLeitch, #SalesExcellence.
Let’s have a consultative conversation today about your sales challenges – I’m always happy to listen! T: 519-863-3975 or E: lisa@teneoresults.com
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
Teneo Results, a North America-based sales performance training company, is excited to announce that they have elevated their 10+ year relationship with the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) to an accredited partnership, emphasizing their common focus on raising the bar for sales professionalism and making sales a respected career of choice. Teneo now offers the CPSA-accredited sales training program “Purposeful Sales Strategies” (PSS), an engaging and robust training program delivered through a two-day in-person session featuring customizable micro-learning tools and scenario-based role play, six months of group coaching calls, a practicum with selling scenarios, and sales playbook. Graduates of the PSS program are prepared to complete the CSA Professional Designation exam from the CPSA.
Teneo is also developing a new advanced-level sales training program to meet the requirements for CSP Designation, which will be ready to launch later this year.
Lisa Leitch, Teneo President andChief Sales Officer, says, “We are very excited about this new level of partnership. The CPSA’s new sales professional competency framework with designation pathways for every level of a salesperson’s career, provide more opportunities for sales professionals and their leaders to excel at sales performance, and to create a stronger sales profession that is respected by customers. Many of the corporate sales teams we work with have already embraced the standards of sales designations and excellence, as they see the direct correlation between attainment of the professional designation and higher performing sales teams who are increasing their sales results.” These clients include Bosch, JELD-WEN Windows & Doors, Alexandria Moulding andCanWel Building Materials, who have all invested in training and a pathway to CPSA designation for their sales force.
According to Peter Irwin, President and CEO of CPSA, “We’re pleased to be strengthening our relationship with Teneo Results and their team of expert trainers and coaches. Teneo gets into the trenches with sales professionals – customizing programs to make them applicable to their specific needs. Participants walk away being able to connect the dots between the sales skills they’ve learned and their customers’ success the very next day. Our independent stamp of approval is assurance that the PSS program provides a strong pathway to essential sales skills and professional competency.”
About Teneo Results
Established in 2003, Teneo Results has trained thousands of corporate B2B sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. Teneo Results works with sales teams and their leaders from three months to 3+ years, to sell with purpose, get results, and earn professional sales designations.
Teneo is the Latin word meaning to know, to understand and to master. Teneo will train you to knowthe sales strategies, skills and competencies. You’ll then understand and integrate the tools and sales processes by connecting the dots of practical application to serving your customers as a high-performing professional. You’ll reach the triumphant moment when you have mastered the professional sales competencies by completing your Professional Sales Designation.
Teneo works with a wide range of industries, delivering training to all customer-facing departments across an organization. These industries include transportation, dental, financial, home building & building materials, agriculture, and manufacturing that sell through direct & distribution sales channels.
For more information on Teneo and their Purposeful Sales Strategies program visit: www.teneoresults.com
About the Canadian Professional Sales Association
For sales professionals, team leaders and organizations across the country, Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) is your partner in building knowledge and skills to improve sales performance.
As the advocate for excellence in sales, we invest resources in programming, curriculum development and professional designations to help individuals and companies become more successful through more effective sales.
Our 20,000+ members benefit from learning resources, community building events and exclusive benefits. Professional sales training and Canada’s standards-based designation program provide the development and recognition opportunities employees desire and employers demand at every career stage.
We connect employers with employees, business with academia and the private sector with government to advance the sales profession and improve Canadian competitiveness.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
Most salespeople don’t do this – Strategy Conversation – they just don’t make the time!
I challenge you to look at your calendar – pick a date and then pick a great location other than your office or a hotel meeting room. We have done this for many years and find a quaint boutique hotel with a great suite outside of the city or near a winery to think differently about our business. Some years, we just head to our cottage to allow the lake to revitalize our strategy. We are amazed at how we think more creatively in a different setting.
This time of the year is the ideal time to have the Strategy Conversation to plan for your next sales year and more important to create your sales plan for the next three years! In speaking with many sales and business leaders, their goals are to double their sales in the next three years – that requires a work-smart strategy to accomplish that goal!
What’s your long-term sales strategy?
Without it, you’re failing to prepare –and we all know how that ends! Without a strategy, you’re stuck in a reactive mode. You’re less productive because you’re trying to cover too many bases at once. You’re working too hard because you’re not properly prioritizing your customers according to their value. And you’re less likely to hit your goals because you’re not controlling the customer conversations, you’re just responding to them.
Getting strategic lets you take control – of your calendar, your sales, and your career.
It puts you back in the driver’s seat and it makes you better at your job as a sales professional because now you’re serving your customers more proactively, anticipating their needs and solving their problems.
First, decide where do you want to be in three years. Starting at that point, begin to reverse-engineer the goals you need to hit to get there. What must you accomplish at the end of the third year, to set you up for success in this next year?
Thinking strategically helps you bring better value to your customers.
What’s most important to them? What bottlenecks or other issues are keeping them from being as productive as they’d like? What keeps them up at night? Ask – take careful note of their answers and come up with a strategy that lets you be their problem solver.
Strategy starts with a plan. Have a plan for every day, every week, each quarter and every year; work it, tweak it, and stick with it.
Here are the key elements to map out your Strategic Sales Plan:
• Better understand your company goals to effectively align and manage your territory, and allow each customer call to be more purposeful.
• Apply the concept of ROTI – Return on Time Invested – to analyze the number of hours you spend on each customer vs. the revenue/gross margin they generate.
• Map out your three year, one year and 90 days in alignment with your company goals in the different categories of sales, professional and personal goals, and then plan how you will celebrate your goal success.
• Update your SWOT analysis for your company, your competitor and your industry to identify the opportunities to grow your business and achieve your goals.
• Identify your customer’s perspective – what’s most important when they make buying decisions?
• Understand your Ideal Profitable Clients and their personas. Don’t try to sell to everyone. Get focused on your ideal customers and how to attract more of them!
• Create a Key Account Plan for your Top growing accounts to double their sales in the next three years.
Teneo Challenge: Take the time to realize what your goal is by the end of three years and then strategize the steps you need to take to reach that goal.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
