Advanced Selling Skills for Complex Digital and Enterprise ICT Solutions

The enterprise selling landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years. Driven by changing industry dynamics, a need to be perceived as a “trusted advisor” to their customers and a reality check in terms of financial performance and KPIs. All major Telcos are now rapidly transforming their enterprise selling strategies and methods.  

To improve profitability and take advantage of opportunities such as Enterprise ICT solutions, Digital Services, the Internet of Things, Unified Communications, and Virtualisation, the transformation from an approach centred on traditional/transactional fulfilment to strategic consultative solution selling is paramount. In the future, sales professionals must gain their credibility not on their technical knowledge, but rather by their business acumen. This course strives to help them develop that acumen and then apply it to achieve a more customer-centric relevance and transformational sales performance.  

This advanced sales curriculum course rapidly builds the key competencies that enable sales professionals to develop a systematic approach to selling technical, digital, and ICT solutions, and excel at designing and finding solutions for customers’ complex business needs. Participants will learn practical methods to create a powerful business case that will motivate both technical and non-technical decision-makers. 

This course has been built to help mid-level to senior sales staff, future managers and specialists in telecommunications and associated industries create and employ business focus sales strategies that deliver tangible business value to potential clients, businesses, and other stakeholders.

• • Examine the Telecoms Business Environment including a detailed evaluation of the key trends in fixed, mobile and converged broadband markets.
  • Understand Customer Engagement within the Telecoms and CSP environment, including a detailed look at the role of customer engagement
  • Convert customers’ motivations into product characteristics and benefits
  • Understand customer motivations to deliver a solution-orientated product or service
  • Utilise value adds within your proposal and demonstrations
  • Learn to use effective questioning techniques to learn more about client needs
  • Conducting the initial sales meeting for identification of customer needs
  • How to conduct pre-sales visit
  • Understanding the customer value chain and finding out the improvement/automation area
  • Implement methods of up-selling and cross-selling your product/service
  • Increase cross-selling, upselling, and account penetration
  • Understand the difference between the traditional sales process and the consultative selling process
  • Improve sales skills—from generating leads and consultative selling to closing and growing accounts
  • Advancing the sales process – including learning skills like deal shaping and preparing the value proposition and sharing benefits rather features of the solutions
  • Explore different ways of handling objections and reservations during solutions design and the rest of the sales process
  • Learn about storytelling and delivering information to different levels such as operational and management levels

• • Effective onboarding of new employees through an advanced training programme
  • Individuals will be able to contribute more effectively to the wider organisation.
  • The flexible learning systems allows employees to fit their study around work.
  • Apply customer-focused selling for your complex technology solutions
  • Review competitors and develop a comprehensive strategy to combat
  • Implement a follow-up process to generate more repeat and referral business 
  • Unleash the sales potential across all sales teams
  • Uncover the hidden growth opportunities in your sales organization
  • Sales people will better manage the C Level (CTO, CFO,CEO etc) and showcase the solutions at their level: How to converse with them by showing them the big picture
  • Teams will be better able to prepare final deck presentations and sell using effective storytelling
  • Learn deal-closing techniques to help sell complex solutions and multi-faceted deals with complex pricing structures
  • Understand more about trading concessions and use them effectively to get the deal signed

Traditional Vs Customer-Centric Selling Skills

You will learn 

1. Understand the difference between traditional and customer-centric selling techniques
2.  Appreciate how our sales behaviours need to change and evolve in telecoms including the hybrid environment 
3. Features, advantages, and benefits in the complex technology environment 
4. Goal identification:  The 80/20 principle - where to concentrate your focus 
5. How we can influence the sales process by accommodating each individual stakeholder’s ‘Needs, Values & Motivations’
6. Understanding how to conduct a Pre-Sales Visit (Understanding Customer Value Chain, finding out the Improvement/Automation Area, and Questioning Techniques) including the benefit of the internet and linked-in research and preparation.

Networking and Regional focus

Regional Guest Speakers on Strategy 

You will learn 

1. Fireside chat - Local market outlooks - Nordic or Asian Focus 
2. Presentation - Regional tech trends and market opportunities 
3. Discussion: Business enabling applications and technologies popular in the region
4. Discuss challenges unique to your region and develop ways to overcome challenges you might face in your respective region.
5. Harnessing the power of LinkedIn in for complex enterprise sales deals 

Activity: Speed networking event – focus on cross-border sales opportunities Back up if needed - hide

Activity: Group brainstorming with exercises and SWOT analysis to overcome regional challenges with a focus on sharing knowledge and best practice 

Understanding and profiling the modern enterprise customer and communication skills– Key Player Calls and qualifying a champion

You will learn 

1. Understand the keys to communication and building rapport 
2. Communication in a hybrid environment
3. Using the simple Hermann Brain Profile, understanding different personality types, how to recognize them, and learning what motivates them. 
4. Using Mural, learn the importance of stakeholder mapping with supporters, blockers, and neutral parties with a strategy to manage these to your advantage.
5. Learn to customize your presentations according to the profile types 
6. Effective communication and questioning techniques
7. An in-depth look at the different questioning techniques and when each type is used
8. Meta-questions – Strategic areas of questioning and their purpose 
9. Opportunity Qualification - Conducting a client needs analysis interview 
10. Overcoming challenges and blocks to communication

Activity: In teams build a first interview sheet with best practice questions on personal KPIs and focus, Company goals and Focus, Existing solutions, Desired Solutions, Budget, and Timing 

Activity: Learn to conduct a simple Hermann Brain Profile assessment and how to assess stakeholders. Map and evaluate your chosen key account using a stakeholder map 

Casework: Case Study: Start planning a client needs-focused solutions selling presentation with a specific focus on including each CXOs area of interest

Selling in the modern telco environment

You will learn 

1. The Telecoms B2B Market Questions and Answers and Honing Your Client Focus 

• LAN, MAN, and WAN
• IP telephony and IP Contact Centre 
• Unified Communications and Collaboration 
• Managed (network) services

1. 80/20 coaching and guidance on individual focus of key accounts - all opportunities are not born equally  
2. Question and Answer on Industry Verticals and practically identifying further opportunities in your market:

• Healthcare 
• Manufacturing
• Transportation and logistics
• Smart cities
• Others (various)

1. Coaching - are you focused on the most valuable opportunities?

Casework: Case Study Prepare and practice a 15-minute client needs-focused solutions selling presentation

Selling in the modern telco environment: a focus on 5G

You will learn 

1. The Telecoms B2B Market Questions and Answers and Honing Your Client Focus 

• Value chains and business models
• Platform businesses
• The telecoms operator as a platform

1. 80/20 coaching and guidance on the individual focus of key accounts - all opportunities are not born equally  
2. Question and Answer on 5G and practically identifying further opportunities in your market:

• Network slicing
• 5G SA capabilities
• Fixed wireless access
• Private mobile networks

1. Partnering and ecosystems
2. 5G use cases and impact on customer value chain 

• Identifying key partners
• Partnering with hyperscalers
• Systems Integrators
• Other partners (e.g., OT firms)

1. Coaching - are you focused on the most valuable opportunities?

Activities:

Casework: Case Study Prepare and practice a 15-minute client needs-focused solutions selling presentation

Advanced client interview techniques to support Solutions Design and Development and Opportunity Control

You will learn 

1. Managing virtual client interactions and building a hybrid selling skill set
2. How important is body language in sales – body language in a hybrid or virtual environment
3. Developing and honing your listening skills to listen effectively in meetings  
4. Review client interview questions and work to improve and elevate your questions 
5. Guided tour of the opportunities to use Mural for first client meetings, needs analysis, and solutions design. 
6. Test drive some mural templates for client engagement and solutions design
7. Solution selling with Partners – How to get the best deal for your client and still make good sales that keep them coming back for more
8. Deal Closing Techniques (Complex Solutions Selling/ Multi Faced Deal with Complex Pricing Structure)
9. Appreciate where to use Trading Concessions and how to progress to sign the deal

Activity: Create and refine a set of closing questions for managing objections and roleplay this with another team to test it out

Homework: Choose, refine, or create a solutions design process in Mural for meeting a new client and roleplay this with another team to test it out.

Activity: In your team’s role play effective client interviews including advanced techniques. Update your client interview sheet and discuss what improvements you notice using the new techniques.  

Casework: Case Study Prepare and practice a 15-minute client needs-focused solutions selling presentation with a specific focus on including each CXO’s area of interest

Selling in the modern telco environment: a focus on the IoT, cloud, and security opportunities

You will learn 

1. The Telecoms B2B Market Questions and Answers and Honing Your Client Focus 

• IoT deep dive
  • Network technologies
  • IoT service/application components / the technology stack
  • Where telecom operators fit in / what IoT services they provide.
  • Solution selling with Partners – How to get the best deal for your client and still make good sales that keep them coming back for more

1. Question and Answer and practically identify further opportunities in your market:

• Cloud services (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, XaaS, CaaS, NaaS)
• Fixed networks in Security and fixed networks including Sdx
• Edge and MEC services
• End2End services

1. Coaching - are you focused on the most valuable opportunities?

Casework: Update your case study and work on a short elevator pitch  to practice – present the elevator pitch and obtain feedback 

Session 7

Selling at a CXO level – Key Player Calls

You will learn 

1. Discussing the corporate business decision process and procurement process and seeing the C-level involvement 
2. Understanding the CxO level dynamics and what each CxO cares about 
3. Tips for presenting to the C-Suite fun exercise ??? consulting and trust
4. What not to do in a CXO presentation
5. How to create a CXO stakeholder map with supporters and detractors 

Activity: In teams create a CXO stakeholder map for a chosen client and detail what each CXO is focused on and how to present proposals best and win over each role. 

Session 8

Story Telling for Enterprise Sales

You will learn 

1. How to make the client and their needs the focus of your presentation
2. The formula of great presentations using the “Hero’s Journey”
3. The parts and functions of the storytelling process
4. Guided sprint session to create your team's presentation outline and content
5. Tips for pitching, improving, and refining your presentation with a CXO focus.

Activity: Each team will have a chance to sell us a pen after which feedback will be given on their sales technique and if they could better employ a solutions-selling and more client need-based approach. Teams will be given 5 minutes to plan a 3-minute pitch.

Session 9

Negotiation Part 1 - Managing the sales process, uncovering, and overcoming objections

You will learn 

1. Recap – consultative vs traditional selling and moving to trusted advisor status 
2. Recap on solution selling with Partners – How to get the best deal for you and still add value to the client to fulfil their needs
3. Understanding and uncovering the customer’s buying process and motivators
4. Refining features to benefits and testing the effectiveness and desirability of benefits 
5. Use reliable tools and methods for managing objections and develop tactics for getting agreement and approval from diverse stakeholders  

Activity: Group discussion about what situations are hard to negotiate with clients, report back with results 

Session 10

Negotiation Part 2 - Managing the sales process, uncovering, and overcoming objections

You will learn 

1. Use what we learned in the previous session to role-play different scenarios in the main room to get feedback on how you handled different negotiation challenges
2. In group breakout rooms, roleplay a list of different scenarios and discuss in groups how you did and what you could do better
3. Report back to the group and fireside chat about different scenarios in the main room to improve your negotiation knowledge and skills
4. Refining your negotiation skills and nailing the sale

Activity: Case Study Pitch practice session 2 – Present a 5-minute client needs-focused solutions selling presentation and obtain feedback from facilitators and colleagues 

Session 13

A brief discussion on the way forward with the pitch and case Study Preparation and Practice

You will learn 

1. Consolidate all learning from the training – Question and answer about sales skills throughout the course
2. Apply learning to the business-related case study 
3. Craft a CXO-focused presentation harnessing the power of storytelling 
4. Demonstrate Solutions Selling techniques and trusted advisor status
5. Practice the “Dragons Den Pitch” Every team member must present part of the presentation

Activity: Prepare a 5-minute presentation on a previous solution and success story you had implemented using the “Hero's Journey” storytelling formula

Casework: Prepare and practice a 15-minute client needs-focused solutions selling presentation

Session 14

Implementing Customer-Centric Selling - Final Dragons Den Presentations

Using all the knowledge and skills that they have learned during the course; the participants will be required to present a 15-minute “Dragons Den” type slideshow and pitch presentation to the group and the leadership team demonstrating a solution-selling approach and showing how leveraging their trusted advisor status can create a more effective sales approach. The session will end with the participants being provided with feedback on the decisions they made and approaches used by the facilitators and panel of judges.