WHAT WE DO

Coaching  Sales Professionals To the Next Level 

 Most sales teams have a similar profile of performance.
The top 10% -15% (the “superstars”) bring in 60%-80% of the business; the bottom 10%  (new hires, learners and some people who aren’t going to make it)

 Typically, the rest, the majority of the team, are average performers.

 What’s stopping this group from raising their game? What would it do to the bottom line if they could improve their selling effectiveness to narrow the gap with the superstars?

gfa sales Improvement works with you to help you get the average performers doing better.  We help create a culture of sales coaching that gets results.

Sales Training With A Difference

Having said publicly that sales training doesn’t work, we have to admit that we do provide classroom based training. But it’s far from the “drive by”, traditional sales training that is soon forgotten and which therefore produces little improvement in sales behaviours. And it’s backed by coaching, internal and externally provided to help you sustain the desired behaviour changes.

Sales/Product Messaging – Faster ‘Ramp Up’ of New Sales People and New Products

Advertising delivers the same message, one that has been thought about and is at least consistent. But what  b2b sales people say and do in sales calls varies within the same company - from excellent to awful. As part of our coaching we can help you develop ‘sales prompters’ or ‘story books’ with sharper product messaging. These help the average and new salesperson to conduct calls like the superstars do and helps everyone ramp up faster with a new product introduction.

Sales Process Improvement  - Better Pipeline management and Forecasting Accuracy

Managing the sales process is a critical task for sales managers. For many companies the sales process -  and management attention - only focuses on sales opportunities that have been forecast thus missing out the (hopefully) larger number of opportunities that are actively being worked on.

Too frequently, we see pipelines that are “black holes” to the sales manager, the sales VP and to the board. We provide tools to help clients tune their sales process so that they gain clearer insights into what’s going on in the dark sale pipeline. This helps improve forecasting accuracy.

Sales Management Coaching (Coach the Coach)

Many companies tend to promote their best salesperson to sales manager without giving them training for the new job. It’s a bit like showing someone a plane and telling them to fly it – without any instruction!  As a result, too often the company exchanges a great salesperson for a very poor sales manager with a consequent drag on productivity. It needn’t be like that.

gfa Sales Improvement provide workshops and on the job coaching for newly appointed (and existing) sales managers giving them insights into what behaviours they need to succeed in their new role.

Negotiation Skills Training

What’s the difference between selling and negotiating? For new business sales executives and account managers, negotiating deals is a key part of the job. Yet, how many have been trained to understand negotiating?  When does it begin? What happens when purchasing wants to get a better discount after you thought you had agreed price, terms and conditions in principle? Many sales people and their managers feel at a disadvantage when they have to deal with corporate procurement executives. Result? Less than optimal deals for their company.

 Coaching For Improved Competitive Positioning

How much do you know about how your competitors sell? How are your sales teams perceived vis a vis those of your main competitors? Do you really know why you lost that “sweetspot” deal you should have won? Why are so many deals stalled or apparently moribund?

Knowing more about how you and your key competitors go about selling and positioning their offerings and, more importantly, how your company and your people are perceived  by the people you are selling to gives you the ability to adjust the way you sell based on facts rather than opinions.  We provide some tools to help you make better decisions about the way you sell.