‘How to inspire a best seller’ - Learning & Development magazineAs people become more difficult to sell to, Barrie Charles looks at the skills sales and marketing people need to convince canny consumers.
TACK, The Royal Bank of Scotland (a client of TACK), and the heads of ISMM and the CIM share views on the changing emphasis of sales skills for building successful relationships with today’s customers. Technology is also playing a major part in blended learning and development trends.
A level of sales skills is required for many of RBS’s employees in branch networks, call centres and elsewhere in their retail division. Margaret Middlemiss, training and development consultant at RBS says “What we are looking at is how we engage the learners and make the learning ‘sticky’ ”.
RBS make extensive use of blended learning which they design and deliver internally and with external specialist suppliers. They utilise e-learning modules to support stand-alone training, a sales coaching team and are currently piloting the use MP3 players and mobiles to deliver small chunks of learning.
Nick Washington-Jones, head of operations and training at TACK, says that the change in demand of skills in sales training comes from salespeople moving up the chain of expertise with more value driven selling.
‘TACK Tips’ are TACK’s innovative approach to blended learning and recently launched on all of TACK’s open sales courses. Text messaging tips are sent out twice a week to salespeople following their courses, to re-enforce learning points and to get positive behavioural changes.
Carol Pillinger of ISMM, the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management makes the observation that it is the account management and relationship building skills in the long-term consultancy side that their members are most interested in. She also makes the observation that “In outbound sales a lot of firms are moving away from script selling to building relationships with their customers”.
Of interest to all sales and marketing managers and HR directors who need to be up with the latest thinking on sales practices and techniques for effective delivery for sales development.
