Business Issue
Company leadership understood that as players in many different fiercely competitive markets in the biotechnology space, it needed a dramatic point of differentiation with its salesforce.
The company’s highly scientific sales professionals had extensive technical expertise, but they lacked a consultative selling approach.
Solution
In collaboration with the company’s internal performance consultants, Wilson Learning integrated three of its core sales training programs as the foundation, incorporating case studies and reinforcement tactics to help learners apply new skills to workplace realities.
Managers completed a coaching workshop and were also active participants alongside their sales teams in the sales training. This level of involvement ensured managers had the skills and knowledge to help their sales teams implement and master their new skills within their accounts.
The learning solution included:
The Counselor Salesperson™
Participants learned a consultative selling process that enabled them to transition from simply making transactions to solving real business problems.
Post-training, an Extended Learning System sent reinforcement messages to participants and related coaching tips to managers, including simulations, videos, quizzes, application planners, and reminders of key skills.
A monthly sales manager conference served as a helpful forum for sharing and resolving coaching challenges and discussing coaching tips and best practices.
Turning Information into Sales™
Advanced sales discovery skills were explored, including how to ask a broad and deep range of questions about the customer’s business across seven categories. Real-time skill practices allowed participants to apply new skills within the context of actual sales opportunities. By the end of the session, they developed the right questions to ask to uncover a broad range of business problems and expand the size of the solution.
Coaching the Counselor Salesperson™
Sales managers learned how to reinforce and coach the skills their salespeople had learned.
Outcome
Success outcomes speak loudly:
- “We more than doubled the size of the sale. This type of result is total vindication of our recent investment in this training.”
- “This new way to sell allowed our team to recapture a once-lost account and then double the size of the original product-focused sale.”
- “By using the relating and discovery skills, we were able to re-enter an account in which an opportunity was lost, win the client’s trust, and uncover and win an even larger opportunity than the original stated need.”
- “Using The Counselor Salesperson skills, we increased the deal size from $120K to $520K and beat our competitors by providing additional business consulting value.”
Additionally, a common sales language and sales process used across divisions and territory sales teams has created a collaborative sales culture, where salespeople learn from one another by sharing discovery, industry knowledge and insights, and sales best practices.