Sales training boosts performance at Finning
Sales training boosts performance at Finning
How can companies gain real and lasting competitive advantage when competition follows every successful product or service development? The answer,at Finning UK, has been to use a sales-training programme to focus on existing customer relationships, which are difficult to copy.
Finning, the distributor for Caterpillar in the UK, has run the advanced sales programme for its regional sales managers, field sales team and national account-management team.
Stuart Chapman, Finning training and development manager, said that the company's market share of retail orders rose from 6.7 per cent to 10 per cent following the initiative.
The programme was devised by specialist sales consultancy STC, whose consultant, Huw Powell, explained that a key foundation of the training had been helping participants to build their consultancy skills.
"The customer-based conversation needs precise skills," he said."This is not just a standard list of questions, but persuasive questioning techniques that engage the imagination; not just passive listening, but advanced skills of evaluative listening; not just analysing the information given, but being 100 per cent attentive to the process. This is a totally different way of being with a customer and the opposite of working from a set script. It is about asking questions that you would want answered if you were the customer, and is an approach guaranteed to build trust as well as qualify a sale."
The training, which has been run for bothFinning's materials-handling and power-systems divisions, was supported by best-practice sales-manager training which, as well as ensuring consistency in sales approach, taught managers how to get the best from their people. This included looking at the practical ways to manage remote teams, developing proven coaching tools and techniques and learning how to motivate and develop staff by making every individual interaction with team members count.
As for the training delivered to the national account-management team, Keith Spence, Finning's national sales manager, said: "The programme helped our people to look at how to win and manage bigger accounts. The training was intended to give people the opportunity to reassess their approach, build on their existing skills of relationship management and provide hands-on coaching and feedback. It has encouraged people to look again at what they do and see what they can improve, and that was exactly what we were after."
