CDA consulting - developing sales skills

Developing sales skills

How good are the salespeople in your organisation? Do your customers feel that you respond to their needs, or do they feel manipulated? Do your sales people have the behavioural skills that will maximise their sales performance?

Whether your business is selling a commodity or a service, we can help you to improve sales performance by:

Defining the skills and behaviours required for effective selling in your marketplace
Structuring interactions with customers’ in the most effective and appropriate way
Developing real skills in questioning and listening
Understanding the value propositions of your products and services and what they mean to the customer

Here at cda we can also help you to develop the strategic selling skills required by account managers and relationship managers, by developing techniques such as ‘web of influence’ and improving the relationship building and influencing skills of your senior sales people.

Case studies

Alpha Airport Shopping asked us to work with them to develop the sales performance of their duty free shops around the UK. We developed a tailored sales skills programme, which closely reflected the sales and customer service skills needed to deliver the Alpha customer experience. The training was designed in a flexible, modular format which could be adapted to accommodate different group sizes and working patterns. We worked with Alpha’s line managers to develop their training skills and provide support as they delivered the sales skills training to their teams.

In order to ready themselves for the new millennium Co-operative Bank Financial Advisers (CBFA) redefined their service vision. A long term relationship with the client became the key component of their new sales and service philosophy. We worked with them to develop a three-day sales programme that explored relationships and behaviours, incorporating IFA practices. This programme also included a one-day follow up event where the group shared learning and received further coaching. Shortly after this training, CBFA won a National Training Award – due in part to the impact of this training.

The ‘Retail Revolution’ programme for T Mobile UK aimed to deliver improved customer satisfaction and sales growth. We developed a two-day training programme focused on developing a range of key skills, mirroring the T Mobile ‘Brand Behaviours’. The training was built around a series of video clips, scripted and shot specifically for the programme, aimed at bringing the brand to life. It was rolled out to retail teams across the UK by T Mobile’s own training team, following ‘Train the Trainer’ workshops from cda to familiarise them with the material. The highly practical and flexible nature of the training material meant that it could be used on an ongoing basis by Store Managers and Trainers to train new recruits to the business.

Working with Toyota Retail Academy Europe (TRA) we developed training programmes in sales and customer service skills for Toyota’s customer-facing staff in 17 European countries. The programmes were designed to a translation-ready, culturally neutral format, which was also suitable for localisation by each country to recognise local culture and language. We launched the programmes via a series of ‘Train the Trainer’ programmes for trainers, who then delivered the translated material to retailer staff in their own country.