Sales skills development in Sydney

In the previous posts on personal skills development, we discussed communication and leadership / management skills development. We explored the courses, institutes and avenues available to enhance these skills at various levels, whether the reader is a new immigrant trying to adjust in a new country or an established professional, looking for that extra edge.

Sales and negotiating skills are not only required for sales and business development executives but for anyone who needs to pursue and convince their colleagues, customers and prospects to buy their idea or service. In other words, everyone needs this skill (unless one is living in the central part of Antarctica for a long time). Many people believe that one either has a knack for sales or does not have that aptitude. But many others believe that sales, negotiating and relationship building aptitude can be developed and can definitely be enhanced with proper training.

Sales and account management professionals in Australia are highly valued and get the best opportunities to grow and reach the top. If you are a sales professional, then it is worth learning new techniques and trying out new approaches to enhance your sales performance.

Options

Let’s have a look at a few of the courses available to develop your selling skills.

Marketing Nous’ Stuart Ayling is a well-known sales trainer who conducts “Selling with Confidence” courses in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. His two days course covers all sales essentials and should set up a business off to a flying start. His training is especially focused on service business owners and professionals. Check out his or details as well as for free articles and tips on sales. A downloadable self-study package is also available at the same author’s MySalesTutor.

Salesmasters International (http://www.salesmasters.com.au) offers several programmes for sales and development. Their two days “Boot Camp” workshop teaches the art of selling – from the fundamentals of selling, “recognise the necessity to stretch outside the comfort zone and become more competent in overcoming the most common objections experienced in the marketplace” to “implement, internalize and personalize more advanced skills”.

Sales Performance International specialises in solution selling and has a 3 days public workshop. SalesOne has public sales training workshops – Workshops on principles of selling and business to business selling are both one day each and reasonably priced.

Huthwaite specializes in SPIN Selling. Based on extensive research, analysing more than 35,000 sales calls, Huthwaite founder Neil Rackham put to rest a variety of traditional myths about closing sales. He then developed a strategy that has achieved acceptance among large-sales professionals across all industries. Huthwaite conducts a range of workshops on SPIN selling, negotiating, coaching for sales managers, prospecting for buyers, telephone selling skills and winning against the competition.

Telesales Training Jenny Cartwright offers a one Day telesales workshop that gives participants the skills to make sales and appointments by phone consistently and confidently without the fear of rejection. She offers several variants of telesales courses in workshops, books, e-books and e-learning.

Negotiation skills are the specialization of The Negotiation Academy that offers a few public workshops besides its corporate training offerings.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is much in vogue as a set of techniques that can help one become a more effective salesperson and negotiator. NLP Australia may be a source of more information.

A few relevant books on sales, negotiation and NLP are:

• SPIN Selling
• The Only Negotiating Guide You’ll Ever Need: 101 Ways to Win Every Time in Any Situation
• NLP: The New Technology of Achievement by NLP Comprehensive, Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner

This article as well as the previous two in this series have focused on inter-personal skills such as communication and presentation skills more than personal skills such as time management, goal and priority setting, and working alone with personal productivity tools such as computer desktop tools. While the former are essential for sales and client focused jobs and businesses, the latter are equally essential for back office people. We would discuss enhancing these skills in the next article in this series.