The Psychology of Sales
Psychology is a big part of Sales - from influencing people to understanding how people make purchasing decisions. Many sales people have a great thirst to understand what makes customers tick and how to influence them most effectively. We can help with:
Sales Effectiveness Audit: we will analyse the behaviour of your sales team through observation, interviews, surveys, focus groups etc. and provide comprehensive feedback on their performance.
Assessment for Selection: we will carry out assessments to select the most promising candidates for sales roles. We can also audit your selection process or develop bespoke assessments. We cover all roles from high level corporate sales to those working in retail or call-centre environments.
Sales Skills Development: we will carry out in-depth assessment of individual sales people and provide coaching and support, design in-house coaching programmes or run Sales Skills workshops.
We will work with you to identify the best blend of approaches for your organisation, for example drawing on question asking, challenging, relationship building, information broker and other models.
We appreciate that although there are core aspects to Sales which are common across all domains, there is a wide range of types of sale (e.g. retail, inbound and outbound call-centre, field sales, enterprise sales, sales of professional services, online sales etc.), each requiring different skills and emphasis. We tailor our offering to what works best in your environment.
Our work is always based on research and hard evidence about what actually works in practice.
The Psychology of Sales
There are many important aspects of Psychology which are important in Sales, including:
- The importance of understanding how the customer's motivations, personality and decision making processes affect their purchasing behaviour.
- As a sales person, the importance of understanding your own motivations, personality, resilience and social skills.
- As a sales manager, the importance of understanding the motivations and personalities of your sales team in order to get the best from them.
We offer analysis of how effective your sales people are, support in selecting sales people and development of sales peoples' skills.
Sales Effectiveness Audit
This process evaluates your sales staff to provide a picture of their effectiveness, highlighting areas of strength and potential improvement. It entails observation, interviews and questionnaires. Areas covered include:
- Social and Influencing Skills - how well the sales person can build rapport, have the empathy to sense what the customer is thinking and feeling and respond effectively in order to influence them positively.
- Cognitive ability - the ability to quickly size up a situation, respond to the customer and make the right decisions to produce a successful outcome.
- Product knowledge - of your products and those of competitors.
- Financial skills - it is important to know how far you can go in negotiation.
- Time-management - this is critical to make the best use of time spent with the customers most likely customers to purchase.
Assessment for Selecting Sales and Customer Service People
This entails:
- designing an assessment framework.
- designing a strengths or competency-based interview format, intended to produce accurate ratings of key candidate attributes.
- training managers to use the process accurately and consistently.
- assessment centre design
- use of psychometric tests and personality questionnaires.
- design of bespoke tests.
In-depth Sales Coaching
This builds on the assessment dimensions and methods described above - focussed on an individual, with the goal of enabling them to reach the next level of performance.
The Psychology of Negotiation
Psychology is a big part of Negotiation - from influencing styles and power relationships to empathy and decision-making processes.
We offer:
Workshops on general Negotiation Skills.
Workshops on more specific topics e.g. dealing with difficult people.
The Psychology of Negotiation
Image credit: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pixabay
We offer the following workshops, either in-house or as open sessions:
Negotiation Skills Essentials
This workshop covers:
- Key negotiating techniques
- BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement)
- Power Games
- Game Theory
- Mediation and conflict resolution
- Dealing with Pressure
- Closing the Deal
More specific aspects of Negotiation:
- Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Self-regulation and Social Skills.
- International Negotiation and Cultural barriers.
- Negotiation for Women.
- Sales Negotiation.
- Dealing with Difficult People.
- Industrial Relations Negotiation.
Each workshop makes use of real-world case studies and provides plenty of opportunities to practice the techniques covered.