Your sales professionals need to add value and be seen as strategic advisors to engage today’s buyers.
We decided to help sales leaders equip their sellers effectively for this environment. The Sales Performance Research Center measured the abilities of hundreds of sales professionals before and after sales training. Our new report, The Value-Driven Seller: Essential Skills for Consultative Sales, reveals the skill gaps and areas sellers are weakest before training, their improvement after training, and specific skills to target.
More importantly, the report also shows some selling skills have greater influence than others for improving sales performance.
Get your free copy: The Value-Driven Seller: Essential Skills for Consultative Sales
Sales Training Improves Consultative Sales Skills
The Brooks Group Sales Performance Research Center compared pre- and post-training scores on the IMPACT Selling Skills Index® taken by sales professionals from B2B organizations in multiple industries.
Sellers took the IMPACT Selling Skills Index as a pre-training assessment, followed by training in either The Brooks Group IMPACT Selling® program and/or Strategic Account Management program. Sellers then retook the skills assessment 9-12 months after training.
The IMPACT Selling Skills Index is a hard skills assessment that measures a sales professional’s knowledge of selling competencies within the context of the IMPACT Selling sales process.
The IMPACT process has six steps: Investigate, Meet, Probe, Apply, Convince, and Tie-It-Up. Sellers’ scores represent their effectiveness at each step of the process. This sequence guides sales professionals through strategic milestones while providing tactical techniques to navigate each buyer interaction with confidence. Here are three of our findings:
Finding 1. Before Training, Sellers Push Product Instead of Selling Value
Before training, sellers’ skills are strongest when presenting their product or service and validating sales claims by conducting demos, providing samples, testimonials, etc.
Finding 2. Before Training, Sellers Score Lowest on Closing and Discovery Skills
Before training, sellers score lowest on effective deal closing and discovery skills. Sellers are more focused on presenting a solution and conducting demos of their product than on understanding what the customer wants and needs.
Finding 3. After Sales Training, Scores Improve Over 20%
After training, sellers show improved scores in every skill at each step of the sales process and greater proficiency across the board. Sellers after training were more able to identify the best approach for each step in the sales process.
Sellers showed the strongest growth in closing skills, indicating improvement in asking for the sale and gaining agreement to move forward. These results show that, when sellers improve in the early stage of the process, they’re able to establish themselves as strategic advisors, present their solution in a way that builds value, and close business more effectively.
5 Recommendations to Improve Sales Performance
1. Use a Consultative Sales Approach
Consultative selling is a needs-based selling approach that focuses on building a relationship with a customer or prospect, understanding their problems, and developing solutions to their challenges.
Instead of focusing on transactions, make sure your sales professionals can build long-term relationships beyond the initial sale and maintain their standing as trusted business partners. Train them on the primary skills of a consultative sales approach: asking open-ended questions and practicing active listening.
2. Unlock Sales Team Potential with Skills Training
Consultative selling skills are crucial for long-term success and revenue growth. Training your sellers on these core skills will not only help them meet prospects and customers where they are in the buying process; it will also help them build credibility, improve the predictability of your sales funnel, and engage in meaningful dialogue that progresses the sale.
3. Diagnose Skills Gaps to Target Improvement
Regardless of which sales approach you use, a sales assessment can help you diagnose whether your sales professionals have the skills they need to get results. Assessments such as the IMPACT Selling Skills Index are objective measures of the fundamental selling skills needed to perform in a challenging environment.
Use these tools to identify a seller’s top personal competencies and how well developed they are so you can onboard, coach, and train every seller appropriately.
4. Focus Training on Early-Stage Selling Skills
Before training, sellers naturally tend to skip ahead in the sales process: to presenting solutions and conducting demos of their product or service rather than trying to understand what the customer wants and needs. This focus on product or service instead of on the customer leads to difficulty in closing.
Based on our research, sellers are typically weakest at positioning, prospecting, pre-call planning, and questioning. Without these essential skills, they’ll have difficulty asking for the business or overcoming late-stage stalls and objections.
5. Consider IMPACT Selling Sales Training from The Brooks Group
Sales skills training takes the guesswork out of sales and lets your team control the sales process from start to finish. Whether you have a team of seasoned pros or new talent in need of guidance, IMPACT Selling provides the foundation for consultative selling and gives your team the ability to engage customers where they are today.
It’s a proven methodology that ensures long-term improvement and consistent performance across your entire sales organization. Get in touch to learn more.
Learn which consultative sales skills are essential and how targeted training can help your sales professionals become strategic advisors and achieve long-term revenue gains.
Download your free copy of The Value-Driven Seller: Essential Skills for Consultative Sales to learn how to transform your sellers into strategic advisors.
