Executive Sales Training

Companies spend millions of dollars on executive sales training each year. Businesses are getting better and better at studying market trends and are forever looking at nuances in the business they represent in order to gain a small advantage. As a consequence, competition is fierce. If the differences between products are very slight, which is true in many cases, then the edge in market share may come down to the importance corporations place on marketing education. Gaining the ear of the customer comes down in many circumstances to price, availability, quality and service. Given that those conditions are fairly even from vendor to vendor, a business transaction may be funneled down to the trust in the salesperson on the phone or the account sales person who walks through the office entrance.

Transition acquisition employees enjoy some of the highest income paid per capita of any career choice in America. There is a reason for this. Many individuals start out selling, but end up doing something else. Selling is hard work, and is not for the faint of heart. Thousands of books have been sold that attempt to boost the spirit of discouraged vending employees. Most sales managers have a stack of these books in their office, ready to pass out to the struggling account executive, who is one day from pulling the plug on his/her career because of hitting the resistance wall too many times. To keep staff turnover to a minimum, corporations have learned the value of providing superb corporate sales training, both in the initial stages of employment and as part of a continuing education plan throughout their sales forces' careers.

There are transition acquisition employees who sell products each day by traveling to different potential new customers or to reenlist established relationships in a continuing business relationship. These trading prospectors deal mostly with lower to middle management in corporations, sometimes dealing with department heads, and with franchisees in smaller business ventures or the owners of small factories, etc. These people are usually fairly easy to see, with sometimes a day's notice, or even no appointment at all. The downside for these sales persons is that the ease with which they can get in for an appointment is also the ease that their competition enjoys. In such a business atmosphere where a feeding frenzy can often be the norm, high quality and superior corporate business coaching can help make one salesman stand out over another.

Such training will emphasize different areas of salesmanship, although this discussion is certainly not exhaustive. Learning how to communicate to be heard is a very hot topic. Many educational programs use video communications to teach those tasked with acquiring new business how their communication is being perceived by focus groups. Another topic is knowing the structure of the presentation, from opening to closing and handling objections. A most important facet of corporate sales training would have to include identifying customer hot buttons before the meeting takes place, and having the ability to really listen to what the customer actually needs and not what the salesperson wants to sell, even if the product does not meet those needs.

But there is another beast of burden that corporations must grow and cultivate. This is the sales person tasked with selling to executives of large corporations. Executive sales training can be very different from the more standard corporate sales training because of one very important distinction. It can take months to get an appointment with a high level corporate executive who has the clout and the position to change the way the company does business. Selling a new copier to the mail department in the basement is very different from convincing a high company official to switch the entire corporation's copier brand or vendor to another. "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 6:24)

The topics for training to prepare for meeting with as well as persuading executives include a number of issues, some similar to standard corporate sales training. But a single fact is for certain: training must absolutely deal with how to get past the executive's personal assistant. This person is trained to guard the time and minimize interruptions for the important executive. Getting the attention and then the respect of a major mover and shaker on the corporate ladder can be an art form of its own. Executive sales training can give a novice important insight in how to make such meetings happen. This training can also major on the importance of the presentation itself and of knowing everything possible about the prospective company far ahead of a long sought after appointment.

Whether a company has a training department of its own, or hires an outside consultant to come and train from their perspective, businesses can all agree on one truth. Corporate sales training, which may also include executive sales training, is no option. Training account executives in the twenty-first century is all about teaching how to market and sell without sounding like one is selling. It is more about listening, truly understanding and giving the client a sense that the account sales person is more interested in serving the customer's need as opposed to making a quick sale. For some, this will be difficult to overcome because the lure of large commissions can be the camel with its nose in the tent: very difficult to ignore.

Add to: File Insurance Business article Teen Photo Images