faq's

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Q. What is Sales Acumen methodology, what is the basis of your training? 

A. Our sales training enables participants to be successful in the real-world - no glib one-liners, no psycho-babble, no tricks. Sales acumen combines timeless sales  principals and latest knowledge of how people make buying decisions.  Participants gain a customer perspective - changing the focus from selling to buying, from making themselves successful to making their customers' successful. We eat our own cooking - every workshop  is customized to meet the exact needs of participants. Workshops are led by a facilitator who makes the workshop real - leveraging their successful sales and sales management careers. Salespeople want to be trained by people they respect - the best of the best.

Q. Is your training suited for my industry, company, products and services? Do your facilitators have knowledge of our industry? 

A. Sales acumen has expertise in industry verticals including technology, financial services, real estate, healthcare, retail, distribution, and manufacturing industries. 

Q. How do I determine what training is needed? 

A. By using a modular training curriculum and experienced  facilitators, we are able to customize the workshop materials to the exact needs of the participants. To determine the needs, we will conduct a conference call with sales management to identify the issues, desired results and value they expect to get from the achieving the results. We will also have a brief conversation with one or two of the participants to get their input and validate the information provided by the sales management. The benefit of this approach is that the training has maximum impact by working on the specific skills needed, the workshop time is shortened (less time away form selling) and the costs are lower. 

Q. What is the suggested sales training for new salespeople?

A. It depends on the needs and skill gap analysis of the individuals. Generally, we would recommend that the salespeople participate in a 3 day Solution Selling Workshop, followed by a 1 day Telephone Skills Workshop. We also recommend that management spend 1 day becoming skilled using the Sales Management System.

Q. We do internal training. What do you offer that we can't do ourselves?

A. There are several advantages to using an outside firm for development of the sales team:

• Salespeople learn better in an environment with less pressure. 

• Frequently in-house training is oriented to the companies products or services. Sales Acumen is focused on customers and their issues. Both are necessary. Few internal organizations can separate them adequately and end up providing mostly product training at the expense of building sales skills.

• Having a third party expert often provides the objective credibility, fresh ideas, a new approach that salespeople find rejuvenating.

• Outside trainers can provide the training at a lower cost. When you factor in the cost of preparation (materials, logistics, etc.) and lost productivity of the internal people that are doing the training (unless they re dedicated trainers) is usually higher than the cost of the trainers.

Q. We have a CRM system. How does the Sales Acumen training and Sales Management System work with it?

A. Both sales and sales management training programs are complimentary with CRM. In sales training, CRM is emphasized in collaboration and qualification development. In management training, the Sales Management System is integrated with your CRM system so there is no redundancy in reporting and forecasting.

Q. How does Sales Acumen impact PROFIT, common-knowledge is to keep salespeople focused on sales only.

A. We do train salespeople to be focused on sales, but we work on 2 important skills that have a dramatic impact on profit. Learning how to qualify an opportunity will increase productivity by decreasing the sales cycle and increasing the win rate, decreasing the cost of sales. Learning how to listen will enable salespeople to build a value proposition that will increase margins, and profits. 

Q. Is the management training needed if we train our salespeople?

A. The management training is a stand-alone course. If you do not have a sales management program in place, we highly encourage you to have your sales management trained. They will be better equipped to reinforce the new behaviors from the workshops. 

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If you would like to discuss your project or have any questions:

email: info@salesacumen.com

(714) 612-1511

Sales Acumen

1781 Capetown Circle

Costa Mesa, CA 92627