The Counselor Salesperson (Two Day)

Going to market with unique, high-quality products and services is no longer a guarantee that sales will be made and accounts will be retained. Remaining viable in today's business environment requires salespeople who can respond to customers' business needs, priorities, and interests better than the competition. Salespeople must be able to quickly discover and understand the business issues related to strategy execution. It all begins with a consultative selling approach—working closely with customers to solve real business problems.

The Counselor Salesperson (CSP) uses a four-step consultative selling process that helps salespeople transition from simply making transactions to solving real business problems. CSP focuses on adopting a Counselor Mindset—a mindset that builds profitable, long-term customer relationships.

Program Outcomes

The Counselor Salesperson (CSP) establishes a basic philosophy of selling with a common and easily understood approach. CSP provides a win-win approach to selling that emphasizes problem solving from the customer's point of view.

Implemented as a flexible and integrated Human Performance Improvement (HPI) solution, it enables a consistent customer experience from the salesforce, effective coaching and performance management with a variety of tools, and overall increased sales.

Approach

Wilson Learning believes that learning must be transferred to day-to-day work practices. To achieve this, The Counselor Salesperson (CSP) includes components and activities that enhance:

Participant Readiness: Prepares salespeople and managers for the overall learning experience

• Pre-workshop communication sets the context for learning.

Learning Design: Embeds practice and use of new skills in the learning design. The learning can be flexibly delivered as a:

• Three-day face-to-face application-oriented workshop (two-day option available)
• Series of instructor-led interactive webcast workshops delivered over time. The webcast design drives a constant stream of engaging learning activities—whiteboards, breakout rooms, polling, group work, video, real-time work, and more.
• E-learning program with 23 eCSP mini-mods to provide an interactive online learning solution
• Blended solution (with e-learning content followed by an optional application day)

All can be delivered in modular format over non-consecutive days to allow application between sessions. CSP, as a workshop component, can be taught by a Wilson Learning facilitator or by an organization's own leader-trained in-house professional.

Organizational Alignment: Ensures the organization supports the use of the new skills

• Post-learning reinforcement activities (optional) for both the manager and salesperson support both skill application and implementation.

As a result, CSP becomes part of your organization's selling practices, benefitting customers and increasing productivity.

Enabling Improved Performance

The Counselor Salesperson (CSP) features various performance application, reinforcement, and support tools. These additional learning components—application exercises, job aid cards, implementation guides, electronic reinforcement tools, performance checklists—ensure that salespeople can hone newly acquired skills and behaviors upon returning to work. Involving sales managers early on, and training them to coach for improved performance, is also fundamental to a successful CSP implementation.

To discover how we ensure learning is reinforced and applied for improved performance, see our Learning Transfer Approach.

Measurement

Organizations that implement The Counselor Salesperson have access to measurement and evaluation tools. Beyond tracking sales efforts with the planners and performance checklists, the Win-Loss Review helps sales managers and their salespeople track the actual impact of counselor selling skills on real sales performance.

Wilson Learning's (optional) Customer Relationship Inventory (CRI) assessment instrument uncovers what customers really think about an organization's salesforce. This concrete, real-world feedback motivates salespeople to perform and acts as a blueprint for creating individual, group, and organizational development plans.

Evaluation

In most implementations, Wilson Learning will partner with your organization to measure the initial behavioral changes and business results. Our common interest is to make sure that The Counselor Salesperson delivers the results you seek. We are committed to helping you succeed. We will work with you to set up measurement systems to help move desired change forward and sustain the momentum of your implementation.

To learn more about measuring the impact of learning, visit Measurement and Evaluation Services.

This offering, like all others from Wilson Learning, can be customized to reflect your sales environment and business priorities and can be integrated with your sales process.