Engage Selling Solutions Inc. to transform your organization and to redesign your sales process and customer management practices by utilizing our proven consulting, educational, and teaching methodology.

The Opportunity

If you and your company are interested in improving your sales and cross-functional organization's performance, you have found the solution. Selling Solutions Inc. has helped many organizations and individuals achieve more success by managing customers, clients, and strategic accounts more effectively and efficiently.

Senior executives and sales managers are often perplexed as to why apparent sales improvement initiatives such as motivational speakers, training, customer relationship management software, and variable compensation plans sometimes fail to produce the desired results in spite of significant investments of time, money, and resources. The answer is that the ability to improve sales performance and business results depends upon four fundamental elements:

1. Establishing an effective sales process and methodology
2. Integrating the necessary customer management practices and turnkey tools
3. Reinforcing the new process, practices, and behaviors within the organization
4. Understanding and managing resistance to change

In addition, sales processes and practices should be scalable and flexible enough to accommodate various industries, the size of the organization, short and long selling cycles, future changes in technology, new markets, and other considerations. The sales process and system should be supported by tailored turnkey sales tools and aids, an annual commitment to teaching and education, sales management reinforcement systems and audits, automation, and integrated marketing activities.

However, simply introducing an effective sales process is not enough to achieve a significant and sustainable improvement in business results. We have discovered that the development of a high-performance sales culture requires a thorough commitment from the entire organization - it must be embraced first by senior management, followed by line management, and finally by selling professionals. Senior executives and sales managers must accept overall ownership and then must reinforce the adoption of the new customer management practices and behaviors that support the use of an effective sales process. Without this reinforcement, any sales process improvement initiative will only achieve lackluster results.

Many organizations fail in their quest for improved selling performance - not because they don't establish the right process - but because they don't commit to making the new process and practices work. The traditional approach has been to provide a "one-time" training program for frontline sales professionals only. Management then expects immediate results, only to be disappointed with the return-on-investment over the long term. Any immediate success derived from the initial program dissipates quickly due to lack of process reinforcement and support.

In summary, outstanding sales organizations differentiate themselves not only by "what" they sell but also by "how" they sell. The "how" is a result of establishing an executable sales process and customer management practices and ensuring their success through a systematic implementation where everyone on the sales and marketing team speaks the same language and uses the same tools to advance and support the organization's sales and marketing effort.

Since our founding, we have learned a great deal about successfully helping organizations develop a high-performance sales culture. We can help you by introducing Selling Solutions Inc.’s proprietary and proven Six Stages of the Perpetual Cycle of the Forensic Customer Management Process™ into your organization, and more importantly, by reinforcing and sustaining the new process and practices to improve organizational performance, business results, and profitability.

How Industries and Companies Can Benefit from Sales Process Redesign and Forensic Customer Management™ Transformation

Our expertise, experience, professional services, and educational programs can be successfully applied to many different industry sectors - from consumer packaged goods manufacturers to professional service firms. There are very few limitations affecting the opportunity to improve organizational performance, productivity, business results, and profitability.

Our services, educational programs, and turnkey Forensic Customer Management™ toolkit can be tailored for companies that have as few as 10 people in their sales and cross-functional organization. Selling Solutions Inc. has also worked with large Fortune 1,000 corporations that employ over 150 individuals who are involved in the sales and customer management process.

Challenges Within the Customer's Organization

• Your sales organization and cross-functional support staff must stand out from a host of competitors with apparently similar offerings.
  
• Salespeople may face complex and confusing buying center dynamics comprised of customer evaluation teams, committees, multiple buyers at multiple levels, decision makers, and influencers - all with different wants, needs, dominant buying motives, power bases, and points of view.
  
• They must understand that the selling process has become more complex and must correctly anticipate the customer's response.
  
• Salespeople must move beyond the traditional strengths of skill and charisma to incorporate a sophisticated appreciation of strategy, customer segmentation, buying behavior analysis, activity-based costing, and customer-specific profitability.
  

Challenges Within Your Organization

• Your salespeople must coordinate their efforts with marketing, finance, operations, manufacturing, customer support, senior management, and outside business partners to present a coherent and persuasive message to customers, clients, and key accounts.
  
• Often, your salespeople must combine disparate products and services into a unique solution or offering to create value for the customer on the customer's terms.
  
• Your salespeople must compete among themselves for access to shared resources within marketing, operations, finance, research and development, and manufacturing, etc.
  
• They must understand how to identify, allocate, and deploy finite resources to maximum advantage.
  
• Finally, your salespeople must be able to develop an accurate and comprehensive sales approach and business plan to effectively and efficiently manage the selling and decision-making process.

Selling Solutions Inc. offers a proven process, supportive teaching and educational resources, and Forensic Customer Management™ field audits and coaching to address these challenges and to bring a new level of sophistication, expertise, and confidence to your sales group - at a level of sophistication required to meet the demands of the challenging global marketplace.

Seeking Competitive Advantage

In today's business environment, traditional sources of competitive advantage - product superiority and differentiation, economies of scale, and low-cost production - are inadequate and indistinctive. Today's customers often take such advantages for granted and expect them to be complemented with value-added efficiencies in service, technology, information, and marketing - often at a constant or declining acquisition cost. Furthermore, as the sophistication of buyers and their organizations has dramatically increased, so has their expectation of suppliers and vendors.

The competence and quality of your sales organization, the capabilities of your cross-functional staff, and their involvement in the customer interface must become your company’s real competitive advantage. This is increasingly true as organizations compete in more complex sales processes, with longer sales cycles and complex decision-making criteria and dynamics - where the total business value your company may offer is often obscured by transactional focus on product and price.

Selling Solutions Inc. can help your organization develop a sustainable competitive advantage for today's changing, competitive, and complex marketplace.

Organizational Integration … Building a High-Performance Sales and Marketing Culture

Being competitive, successful, and profitable in today’s marketplace is an integrated organizational issue. The salesperson is rarely the sole interface between your company and the customer or client. Selling Solutions Inc. can integrate the Six Stages of the Perpetual Cycle of the Forensic Customer Management Process™ into your entire organization so that marketing, finance, operations, manufacturing, R&D, and customer service have a common understanding of customer management dynamics, the marketplace, and the impact their departments have on the process and outcomes.

Each member of your organization can then better understand how to contribute to acquiring, managing, maintaining, and growing profitable customers, strategic accounts, and clients - according to the corporate goals and objectives for the company.

Benefits for Senior Management

Selling Solutions Inc. requires a strong commitment and endorsement from senior management to ensure the support and active involvement of both frontline sales management and internal cross-functional staff. Through the effective integration and implementation of Selling Solutions Inc.’s sales process, customer management practices, and planning process - achieved through a contributive process - your entire sales team can improve financial forecasting, budget accuracy, and profit delivery and thus bring a more trusted sales platform forward for senior management evaluation. Salespeople, sales management, and cross-functional resources will feel more secure about the foundation of their decisions and about the effects of their financial recommendations. As well, senior management will be more confident that objectives, financial projections, strategies, and tactics are dependable and reliable.

The New Demands of Professional Selling and Territory/Account Management

Uncovering needs, positioning product and service features and benefits, handling objections, and closing the sale are only the foundation for tackling today's complex and competitive marketplace. The successful and professional salesperson must perform and balance three additional roles:

Consultant

When customers or clients are making buying decisions, they need more than your company's history, product, and service story. Your sales organization must be able to analyze the customer's buying center and decision-making criteria and then build solutions that provide legitimate mutual business value in the short term and sustainable competitive advantage for the long term.

Strategist

Your sales organization must be able to accurately assess the real sales situation, determine your competitors’ positions, anticipate their moves, and formulate winning strategies, tactics, and action steps. The successful sales organization is effective when aligning sales activities with the strategic growth objectives of the customer while pursuing the strategic and profit objectives of the company. Successful customer interaction is no longer merely based upon transactional management but has evolved to command the sophistication of Forensic Customer Management™ and strategic relationship management.

Team Leader

Too often salespeople rely on individual skill, historical habits, and personality to carry the selling effort. In today's complex and changing business environment, it is risky to rely on these personal traditions. Your sales organization must be able to identify, justify, assemble, and manage teams of cross-functional resources and external supplier partners for ultimate success.

Selling Solutions Inc. focuses on defining and developing these critical roles for your sales and cross-functional team. Furthermore, we improve your competitive advantage by providing a sales process, forensic customer management practices, and turnkey tools that can be quickly learned, easily applied, and consistently replicated.

Selling Solutions Inc. … What We Do and How We Do It … Our Consulting, Teaching, and Educational Framework

Our Specialization

Selling Solutions Inc. specializes in Sales Process Redesign and Transformation Engagements, Forensic Customer Management™, Negotiating, and Organizational Development. The foundation of our consulting, teaching, and educational consulting practice is our unique and proprietary Six Stages of the Perpetual Cycle of the Forensic Customer Management Process™.

Selling Solutions Inc. provides a disciplined framework for teaching and educating your salespeople and cross-functional organization to develop and achieve an accurate and complete understanding of your customers' buying centers, decision-making dynamics, and criteria in order to achieve the cost-effective satisfaction of the profitable customer. We help organizations and individuals establish and maintain a proven "sales system."

Our Intention

• To assist our clients in aligning their frontline sales activities with the strategic goals of their company in a manner conducive to customer cooperation and consistent with customer expectations.
  
• To build client franchises through more effective integration of consumer and customer marketing and through more cohesive efforts involving internal resources and frontline sales actions.
  
• To provide consulting expertise, skills, and educational and organizational development to help our clients' sales organizations and cross-functional teams evolve from being product-focused and tactically driven to being customer-focused and strategically driven.

Our Distinction

• Selling Solutions Inc. provides customized attention, focus, and service to each individual client. We serve one client at a time to provide undistracted professional consultation, a customized process, and timely results. We are dedicated to the relevant, real needs of your business or organization. We take the time necessary during the initial situation assessment and gap analysis phase of each project to understand your business, your selling environment, and the key issues you face - rather than merely providing generic third-party instruction.
  
• We promote sales and marketing professionalism through the establishment of a sales process, customer management practices, business planning and analysis, customer understanding, the building of productive relationships, and the commitment to continuous process improvement.

You have specialized needs. Your sales and cross-functional staff are comprised of individuals. Your customers and strategic accounts are distinctive. Your products and services are particular and your challenges are specific. Standardized, off-the-shelf, consulting and training approaches will not provide solutions to unique problems … Selling Solutions Inc. will.

Fee-based Service Offerings

• Sales Process and Forensic Customer Management™ Practices Situation Assessment and Gap Analysis: We assess and benchmark your company’s current sales process, behaviors, and customer management practices.
  
• Forensic Customer Management™ Learning Workshop: The transformation starts with this powerful, in-house learning workshop. We establish and integrate the Six Stages of the Perpetual Cycle of the Forensic Customer Management Process™ into the culture of your organization:
  
  1. Forensic Customer Blueprinting Question Development
  2. Forensic Customer Profile Development
  3. Customer Value Chain Management
  4. Forensic Business and Competitive Intelligence - Understanding Your Competition
  
  
• Forensic Customer Management™ Toolkit: We provide members of your organization with the necessary customized turnkey tools to improve their sales productivity, performance, and business results. The toolkit includes everything from communication templates and business letters to a customer and territory organization and administration system.
  
• Territory and Strategic Account Business Planning and Analysis: This involves the evolution from budget, quotas, and sales projections. We provide members of your organization with a customized business plan template that is easy to use and understand. We also provide a one-day business-planning workshop to help your salespeople appreciate the importance of business planning and education pertaining to the effective completion of business plans. We also provide the necessary coaching and troubleshooting throughout the business-planning process.
  
• Creating Persuasive Business Proposals: We provide members of your organization with an easy-to-use methodology, education, and customized templates to help them construct persuasive business proposals - proposals that customers will say “yes” to.

Why We Are Your Selling Solution

We believe that in this fast-paced business world, one is either part of the problem or is part of the solution … and we are selling solutions that achieve results!

Tailored Process

We customize the process and educational programs to your industry and competitive situation to help address, reinforce, or modify your company's strategy and thinking toward a sales process and customer management practices. We avoid using generic examples, instead helping your salespeople make the real and practicable connection to what they do in the field. We incorporate your sales situations to make the consulting project and educational process more relevant in order to increase retention and improve success of application.

Actual Experience

We believe that salespeople learn best by working on their own accounts. We avoid improbable case studies, artificial role plays, predictable simulations, and generic situations.

In our consulting and educational process, your sales organization works on actual current sales situations and opportunities, thus promoting viable learning and creating immediate, measurable results.

Lasting Change

While the traditional approach to sales training may create short-term commitment to improvement, generate awareness of new skills, and bolster morale, the changes are often fleeting, the results short-lived, and the long-term impact negligible. Selling Solutions Inc. helps to create lasting change by focusing on real-world applications, excellence in implementation, and bottom-line results.

Tangible Results

Our programs are grounded in proven ideas and concepts based on the way individuals and organizations really work. We don't flog trendy business theories or old sales bromides. Each consulting project and educational program provides practical tools that your salespeople and cross-functional teams can immediately use in the field - from which they will recognize immediate results and on which they can build future plans for improved profitability.

Experienced Consultants and Change Agents

Our consultants are experienced, successful senior sales and marketing professionals who can respond to tough questions with real-world answers and advice. Our consultants have been there, have seen it, and have done it. We eagerly apply our experience and expertise to help make an immediate and long-term impact on your business.

The Bottom Line … What’s In It for You and Your Company?

Selling Solutions Inc. can help senior management address the need to upgrade the caliber of sales and marketing people who deal with your most valued customers and clients. We can keep you informed and involved in the consulting engagement and process - where it counts - without requiring a large time commitment on your part. We can work with senior management to conduct and execute a process with your staff that brings the following benefits to your organization, while having a substantial impact on the effectiveness of your overall sales and marketing efforts and activities:

• A challenged, revitalized, and motivated sales and cross-functional team
  
• Enhanced, in-depth understanding of your customers and clients
  
• Efficient, productive resource allocation, alignment, and investment
  
• Increased internal accountability through effective forensic customer management? practices and documented business plans
  
• Increased confidence in volume, sales revenue, and profit projections

Getting Started … Where Do You Go From Here?

First, you need to recognize and understand that your organization has sales process and customer management challenges. Second, you must realize and accept that the problems with your sales organization and cross-functional team are not going to go away on their own. Hiring a motivational speaker to pump up your sales team will have little or no sustainable impact on actual behavior or business results. Sending members of your sales team to public seminars and workshops - hoping they bring back valuable information that the organization will be able to implement - is usually a waste of money, time, and resources.

You need a tailored, in-house solution to address these challenges - thus improving productivity, business results, and profits. Your company will need to invest the necessary financial resources to teach and educate your organization about a new approach to managing customers and clients.

Contact Selling Solutions Inc. and schedule your initial Forensic Sales Process Assessment and Gap Analysis - the first step to building a high-performance sales and marketing organization.

Schedule Your Initial Forensic Sales Process and Customer Management Practices Assessment Now … Before Your Competitors Do!

Our consulting and teaching schedule fills quickly, so don’t delay. Contact Michael E. Sloopka, Practice Director, at Selling Solutions Inc. for your initial telephone consultation.

Contact: Mr. Michael E. Sloopka
Telephone: 519.836.6105
E-mail Address: michael@sloopka.com

• Full Company Contact Information
  

Learn More About Selling Solutions Inc.'s Management Consulting Services and Sales Process Redesign Expertise:

• Offering Real Value to the Customer
• The Demands of Professional Selling