Science of Selling
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Science of Selling is provided by Ms. Chen Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
Personal Profile
Ms. Chen is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) with Appleton-Greene and has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She has earned degrees in both electrical engineering and computer science, and an MBA with a concentration in Marketing and Technology Management. Over the course of her career, Ms. Chen has been a software engineer, a product manager, and a product marketer, giving her a broad and unique perspective on new products and how complex products are built, marketed, and sold to business customers.
Through her experiences, Ms. Chen has contributed to the successful IPOs of two high-profile technology companies as a proponent and evangelist of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model through the early 2000s. She has utilized her unique ability to take complex concepts or products and create simple, clear descriptions and marketing content to communicate value to users and buyers across multiple business functions and industries, including Accounting/Finance, Business Intelligence/Reporting (BI), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources (HRMS), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Marketing Tools, Customer Service Management (CSM), Business Expense Management, Open Data solutions, and more. She has worked with engineering, marketing, and sales teams across the entire United States, as well as India, Australia, and Europe.
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Executive summary
Science of Selling
The act of selling is part art and part science. Top salespeople are true artists in their craft, using their innate talents to cultivate relationships and drive their leads to a closed deal. Underlying that talent is the science of selling – the sound reasons and motivators that can be captured and leveraged to equip our sales teams with the information and confidence they need to promote and advocate for our products. Product positioning is the tool we use to codify and refine the science of why people should purchase and use our products.
Complex products, including those that evolve continuously, often pose a unique challenge. Because of their complexity, many prospective customers simply do not have the time or interest to understand all the different facets and potential value the product may provide them. It is therefore up to the marketers and salespeople to be able to communicate the most important things to those prospects in the most compelling and efficient way to influence and close the sale.
A dedicated positioning effort is the most thorough and efficient way for a company to understand what its product does, the value it provides, and how it can best compete within the market it is in. Once compiled, a positioning foundation can provide marketing, sales, and product teams with a comprehensive resource that can be referenced for future marketing plans, sales strategies, and product directional guidance.
Ultimately, positioning that is well done will align the entire company around the products it sells with a consistent message and understanding of its value and the role it plays in the broader market. It can speed up sales training times, shorten sales cycles, and increase perceived product value, i.e. price.
Many people confuse or conflate the concepts of positioning and messaging in their marketing efforts. In this course, the concept of positioning focuses on the foundational data, resources, and proof points that build a solid case for how and why a given product or service delivers value better than the competition. Messaging, on the other hand, is what is developed for specific campaigns and initiatives. Campaign messaging can and should be drawn easily from the core positioning completed for a given product to ensure alignment, thoroughness, and legitimacy throughout the entire sales process, from awareness to close of sale.
A complete positioning effort will cover 4 primary areas: the product itself, the stakeholders in the purchasing decision, the broader market within which the product competes, and external validation to give credibility to the promises being made by the product.
Product: Perhaps unsurprisingly, complex products are sometimes difficult for even salespeople to fully grasp or articulate. The goal of defining the product is to make it as simple to describe and understand as possible. Once that is done, its value to the customer can be made clearer more easily. The differentiating features of the product are a critical way to emphasize the uniqueness of the offering and how it can deliver that value in a way that the competition cannot.
Stakeholders: In business-to-business sales, the buyers of a product are often different from the users of that product. A purchase decision is typically made by committee, with representation from multiple departments. Each stakeholder plays a different role in the decision process; some may be influencers, some may be gatekeepers, and some may hold the pursestrings. A savvy salesperson will be equipped with an understanding of the different roles represented in the room, what their different needs and goals are, what role they play in the ultimate purchase decision, and how to address each of those perspectives effectively.
Market: A product on the market is rarely a unique offering with no viable competition. Every good idea will have copycats and alternatives looking to take market share. Even “do nothing” or “maybe later” can be stiff competition for a product when the economy is struggling. Understanding the market and competitors is a critical aspect of developing the right strategies for growth and stability.
Validation: Depending on the risk aversion of a potential customer, third-party validation will be an important component of any pitch. Building a strong foundation of supporting content will require a strategy in itself, but can come in many forms. From market analysts to customer case studies to simple attributable quotes, it is one of the most important parts of any positioning foundation.
This 12-month course will take participants through a structured and thorough process of discussing, researching, and compiling this data into a cohesive, referenceable resource that can be repackaged into multiple forms: sales playbooks, marketing plans, content strategies, etc. Once compiled, core positioning only needs to be revisited and refreshed annually to make adjustments for product and market changes. After the core positioning is compiled, we will also workshop how to use this reference and repackage it for various internal audiences, as well as how it can be used to develop go-to-market strategies.
Curriculum
Science of Selling – Part 1- Year 1
- Part 1 Month 1 Problem and Solution
- Part 1 Month 2 Market Landscape
- Part 1 Month 3 Product Differentiation
- Part 1 Month 4 Targets and Stakeholders
- Part 1 Month 5 Value and Benefits
- Part 1 Month 6 Competitive Deep Dive
- Part 1 Month 7 Third-party Validation
- Part 1 Month 8 Ideal Customer Profile
- Part 1 Month 9 Positioning Core
- Part 1 Month 10 Internal Audiences
- Part 1 Month 11 Sales Stages
- Part 1 Month 12 Campaign and GMT Planning
Program Objectives
The following list represents the Key Program Objectiv