Going to market with unique, high-quality products and services is no longer a guarantee that sales will be made and accounts will be retained. Remaining viable in today’s business environment requires salespeople who can respond to customers’ business needs, priorities, and interests better than the competition. It all begins with a Counselor Mindset and the commitment to add value with every interaction with the customer or prospect—working closely with customers to solve real business problems.
The Counselor Salesperson™ (CSP) uses an approach that helps salespeople transition from simply making transactions to solving real business problems.
Program Outcomes
The Counselor Salesperson establishes a basic philosophy of selling with a common and easily understood approach. The program provides a win-win approach to selling that emphasizes adding value, from the customer’s point of view, at each stage of the sales process.
The Counselor Salesperson ensures that the salesperson’s approach is integrated with the buying process in a way that is truly collaborative.
From Learning to Performance
To ensure improved performance, Wilson Learning believes that your salespeople must gain new perspectives on their role, along with acquiring new skills and tools in order to take responsibility for driving improved results.
New Perspectives: The WHY
Learning is as much about acquiring new attitudes, or mindsets, about your job as it is about skills. For example, a salesperson can learn new questioning skills, but until they believe differently about who they are as a salesperson, what they are trying to accomplish, and why that requires them to change, there will be limits to their perception of the value of these skills.
New Skills: The WHAT
It is not enough to just convince salespeople that they need to think and act differently; they need to learn specific skills, behaviors, and have a process to turn it into reality. If you want real change in job performance, both new perspectives and new skills are required.
New Tools: The HOW
New skills will not be applied on the job without tools and procedures to support their use. We believe it is critical to support every new skill with tools, job aids, and reinforcement to help people apply these skills.
The Performance Improvement Journey
Effective individual development does not occur from isolated training events. We believe that a series of structured activities that build upon one another is essential in order to develop new skills and ensure they are actually applied.
- Participant Readiness prepares salespeople and managers for the overall learning experience.
- Application and Practice are embedded into the design to ensure the new skills get used and are fully integrated into the salesperson’s repertoire.
- Organizational Alignment maximizes organizational support and reinforcement for the use of the new skills.
As a result of this integrated approach, The Counselor Salesperson becomes part of your organization’s selling practices and dramatically improves your customers’ buying experience.
To discover how we ensure learning is reinforced and applied for improved performance, read more about our Learning Journeys.
Measurement
Organizations that implement The Counselor Salesperson have access to many measurement and support tools, including planners to track sales efforts and win-loss reviews to track the actual impact of Counselor Selling skills on real sales performance.
Wilson Learning will partner with your organization to measure the initial behavioral changes and business results. We will work with you to set up evaluation systems that help improve outcomes and sustain the momentum of your implementation.
To learn more about measuring the impact of learning, visit Measurement.
Additional Support Resources
Wilson Learning’s optional Customer Relationship InventoryTM (CRI) assessment instrument uncovers what customers really think about an organization’s salesforce.
To view our current public workshops for this program, visit Workshops.
