Sales Impact with VIP
Map and master strategic and complex sales to shorten the cycle
- Our services:
- Sales organization assessment,
- sales leadership consulting,
- sales training,
- sales coaching,
- sales professional development
Our sales training produces a higher return on your investment through faster skill adoption and more effective leadership
We offer professional development and consulting services that help organizations immediately put into practice the essential skills and activities that produce more sales, more quickly.
Our Value Impact Process (VIP) focuses on dissecting active opportunities to enhance strategic selling skills and increase win rates. It also prepares leadership to ensure successful implementation of the VIP practices.
Created in partnership with veteran sales performance consultant and Player Map creator, Scott Leland, our Sales Impact with VIP methodology:
- Incorporates more than 30 years of sales training implementation and skill adaptation
- Has been successfully utilized by global enterprises
- Helps increase win rates by up to 50%
- Keeps salespeople actively selling
Sales Impact with VIP offers:
VIP Leaders
Prepares sales management to more effectively guide their team to higher win rates through individual assessment, performance coaching, and more effective messaging.
VIP Sellers
Uses active projects so salespeople practice and implement techniques in real time. It features a hybrid approach that combines in-person sessions and video conferencing to maintain momentum and skill adoption.
How is Sales Impact with VIP different?
There are hundreds of sales training and planning programs out there, and they all look pretty much alike. From a distance they may appear different, but on closer inspection, most are actually minor variations on the same theme.
And that’s part of the problem.
To form a level of distinction, these look-alike programs create variations that end up being more complex, from the practices they promote to the unwieldy tools they sell you.
As a result, you get a lot of stuff that salespeople can’t really use. Such as tools that are so cumbersome, they rob salespeople of valuable selling time.
Our approach emphasizes simplicity
Sales Impact with VIP refines 30 years of sales skill application and evolution, narrowing it to the best practices that are proven in the field. And our training sessions are short, mostly virtual, and geared toward immediate skill utilization that fosters rapid adoption.
At the center of Sales Impact with VIP is Player Map, an easy-to-use mapping tool that helps salespeople identify the “players” (i.e. the decision-makers and influencers) in their target accounts. It was purpose-built to reduce the time necessary to input valuable data, and its visual depiction of the connections between players greatly simplifies message and communication planning.
Read more about Sales Impact with VIP or Talk with us today.
Addressing the elephant in this room: Why does a marketing agency offer sales training?
When sales and marketing teams are in unison, everyone wins.
Synchronized efforts create efficiency in the delivery of the value proposition, clarity in the message, and a sense of common mission. Blanketing customers with a consistent and relevant value proposition will shorten the effort to build champions in customer organizations.
Our marketing experiences show that sales teams that contribute to and champion marketing programs realize better results.
Messaging continuity is key to winning deals
Too often the disconnect between a marketing team and sales force is most evident by the disparate messaging and value propositions delivered to prospects. The communications used to create engagement with a prospect must continue throughout the sales cycle. To ensure that, sales and marketing teams have to be on the same page.
The sales training we offer aligns to what we believe are the fundamentals of successful lead generation and engagement, such as:
- Competitive analysis that allows the seller to box out competition
- Relevant messaging tailored to prospects
- Account-based marketing tactics to target strategic decision-makers and influencers
Increase win rates with Sales Impact with VIP programs:
Leaders and Sellers
VIP Leaders
Managing sales is important, but the traditional approach to supervising salespeople is not enough for strong business growth. Through VIP Leaders, we show managers, directors, and executives how to more effectively guide a team to higher win rates and larger margins.
This one- to two-day, hands-on program is essential for any organization conducting our VIP Sellers training. It prepares your leaders to foster VIP practices so you maximize your investment in training, while realizing stronger sales results from the approach.
Together, with your leadership team, we address key performance indicators for individuals, effective coaching techniques, alignment with marketing, and how to help salespeople apply VIP.
Here’s what to expect from VIP Leaders workshops and supplemental consulting:
Sales management role and behaviors
- Why leadership by example is more successful than management by charts and stats
- How to successfully coach salespeople to more wins
Sales team assessment
- How to more accurately grade sales performance and draft performance plans
- How to nurture the qualities of top performing sales professionals and sales teams
Marketing alignment
- Why utilize marketing tools and programs in sync with the sales process
- How to develop marketing deliverables to boost VIP (e.g. competitive comparisons and value propositions)
Long-term planning
- How to use Player Map to develop more effective communication and selling strategies in target accounts
- How to create implementation plans for marketing efforts
VIP Sellers
This five-session program is conducted weekly via live webinars, and uses an active opportunity selected by the salesperson to deliver the curriculum.
We found that using a real-world project helps the learners gain the most from each session and increases the skill adoption rate. By utilizing the Player Map tool with an active account, learners maintain momentum with that opportunity instead of trying to balance time required for training with time needed to nurture deals.
Sessions are limited to 12 attendees to ensure focused attention for each learner. The goal of VIP is more than simply explaining a better way to sell, it’s to put the techniques into practice right away. Our intent is that by the end of the sessions, learners have made appreciable progress within their target account and project.
Here’s an overview of what to expect at each webinar session
While most customers embrace the virtual training format, VIP Sellers training is also available via in-person workshops.
Session 1: Performance and Qualification
- Recognize the qualities of top performing sales professionals and sales teams
- Qualify a project to help maximize your resource investment and win rate
- Identify the client buying process to effectively align with your sales process
Session 2: Players and Bridges
- Identify the client players and organizational politics that are impacting a project
- Manage champions and competitors in an account using Player Map
- Develop Player Plans to ensure you secure the key players’ commitment
Session 3: Value and Strategy
- Understand what client players value
- Design and quantify your Value Package so players clearly see your edge
- Master strategies to help position client value and offset your competitors
Session 4: Dialogue and Meetings
- Develop a communication process using our Listen/Look/Level/Learn/Lead approach
- Employ high-gain questions, handle objections, and fine-tune writing skills
- Serve as a conductor to effectively lead presentations in person and virtually
Session 5: Negotiate Process and Playbook
- Utilize a process that focuses on the key components: Project, Players, Package, Playbook, Present
- Master the playbook covering client players, focusing on Why/Wait/Walk Plays and Position
- Learn how to effectively present your position to ensure positive results
How Player Map helps you sell more sooner
The Player Map app prepares your team to maximize wins on strategic projects. It features a proven mapping process that promotes differentiated value at every step of the sale by aligning messages to what client players value professionally and personally.
By identifying the roles of the influencers and the connections between them, you can better focus your efforts using the most relevant and persuasive messages possible. The time to deal close becomes shorter by eliminating the thrashing many salespeople suffer trying to figure out how to communicate their value-add to prospects.
Provided and explained during the second session of VIP Sellers, you can access the full-featured, user-friendly Player Map X-Ray (PMX) app online.
How to get started
A call is all it takes to put things in motion. We’ll answer your questions about Sales Impact with VIP and share what you can expect from the two programs.
Our first step should you choose to engage is a two-hour preliminary assessment of your sales organization structure, from the people in the field to the leaders guiding the way. This assessment allows us to tailor VIP to best address professional skill needs and your business goals.
Working with a small, internal stakeholder team selected by you, we’ll examine:
- General profile of management and salespeople
- Gap assessment for managers and salespeople
- Markets you sell to, including the typical scope of projects and average deal size
- Your selling cycle and duration
- Previous sales trainings: what worked, what didn’t
- Operational activities such as account reporting
- Incentive programs
Following the assessment, we’ll create an initial plan, budget, and timeline. Once we work out the details and secure approval, we’ll schedule the first session and provide a short document to help your team prepare.
Meet the VIP coaches
Dan Overly
Dan started working as an engineer for ABB 33 years ago, spending 30 of it on the front lines in various operational, sales, marketing, and product leadership roles. He joined Sudden Impact Marketing in 2019 to lead our clients through their transformation to a higher-performing, more competitive, strategic selling organization. His philosophy is that salespeople are sometimes born, but most times developed. Leadership by example and coaching from the top down in any organization inspires people to be more sales savvy and client-centric.
Scott Leland
Scott mastered enterprise selling with Hewlett Packard and IBM, then based on his success, moved into sales performance consulting. He is the founder of Player Map, and has been training sales organizations for 30 plus years in more than 70 countries, specializing in custom-cut sales processes culminating in VIP—an approach that has helped clients double their win rate and profit margin. Scott believes that marketing and sales teams need to work hand-in-glove to optimize sales success, and has partnered with Sudden Impact Marketing in order to help clients achieve that vision.