As an ERP solutions provider in Newtown Square seeking to empower your consulting team to close more deals and deliver immense value, specialized sales training is critical for setting your firm apart in a crowded market. Let’s explore proven techniques I’ve honed as FocalPoint business coach to help your consultants master the art and science of consultative selling.
Deeply Understand Customer Needs
Top performing consultants view robust needs discovery as the core of closing deals. They refrain from launching into product pitches before fully grasping pains, goals, and motivations. Sales training must ingrain listening intently, asking thoughtful questions, and identifying implicit needs. Fulfilling articulated and unspoken needs is key.
Quantify Your Value
Savvy ERP consultants quantify potential ROI, cost savings, efficiency gains, revenue expansion, and other bottom line benefits at each stage of the sales process. They tangibly convey your solution’s monetary value and transformative impact. Training should provide frameworks to calculate value specific to each customer’s unique objectives.
Master Your ERP System
Expertise builds credibility. Consultants should complete extensive training on your ERP platform to fluently discuss technical capabilities, configuration options, integrations, use cases, workflows, analytics, and roadmaps. They must hold their own with tech leaders during demos. Mastery shines through.
Address Concerns Directly
Attempting to distract rather than directly addressing concerns damages trust. Roleplaying workshops build confidence responding to price objections, security worries, reluctance to change, integration challenges, and other reservations with empathy and reassurance. Never wing responses to concerns.
Earn Executive Buy-In
Gaining C-suite sponsorship is essential for large implementations. Workshops should refine pitching skills and executive presence for securing executive buy-in. Identify mutual interests. Speak the language of strategic growth and competitive advantage. Display maturity fitting boardroom conversations.
Build Perceived Value
Perception drives decisions. Training must provide proven tactics for subtly positioning your solution as the most advanced option for ambitious firms despite premium pricing. Use ingredients like bold branding, ample proof points, luxury sales materials, and speaking to transformation versus transactions. Premium perception unlocks deals.
Leverage References
Proof is persuasive. Enable consultants to strategically tap raving reference customers from similar industries at each sales stage. Coordinate calls between prospects and satisfied customers of various sizes to establish credibility and provide reassurance. Readily accessible evidence accelerates sales.
Conduct Orientations
Early education triggers urgency. Conduct executive orientations to introduce prospects to ERP best practices and showcase potential. Frame your system as the catalyst for unlocking enterprise-wide efficiencies, insights, and growth. Orientations open minds to new possibilities.
Overcome Price Resistance
Acing objection handling related to pricing is an art. Sharpen responses to show the multitude of direct and indirect benefits that far outweigh costs. Shift focus to lifetime value versus upfront price. Employ tactics like tiered solutions, financing options, pilot programs, scaled implementations, and post-deployment ROI tracking tools. With the right skills, any budget objection is surmountable.
Tailor Your Playbook
Resist a rigid, one-size-fits-all sales methodology. Train consultants to assess each customer’s size, industry, culture, business model, goals, pain points, and decision-making processes to dynamically adapt sales sequencing and strategies. Customization converts.
Polish Presentation Skills
Confident presentations captivate customers. Invest ample time rehearsing demos, perfecting slide decks, and refining speaking skills. Videotape and critique live pitches. Emphasize conveying authentic enthusiasm and avoiding consultant jargon. The most engaging presenters win deals.
Mind Internal Selling Too
Before externally selling, consultants must skillfully sell your solutions internally to gain resourcing and executive backing. Roleplay pitching and negotiating with Product, Finance, Legal, and IT leaders. Internal selling success enables external sales.
In our solutions-saturated world, closing sales requires extraordinary skills. Equipping your Newtown Square ERP consulting team with the strategies above will empower them to connect authentically, convey value confidently, overcome concerns, present compellingly, and in turn, differentiate your firm in the market. When your consultants sell smart, your customers win big. As your FocalPoint business coach, I will help your consultants master the art and science of consultative selling.
