What is Sales Mindset Training?
"Success is not an accident, success is a choice" Stephen Curry
What is Sales Mindset Training?
Conventional sales training is fine for teaching new skills to use in the selling environment. But the training of sales skills won’t address those psychological barriers that stop sales people falling short of their potential.
Most sales people receive plenty of sales skills training…so they usually know exactly what they should be doing. Yet even when sales people know what to do, most of them still don’t do it.
And that’s down to what’s going on in their head…their sales mindset.
An example...meet 'Simon'…our under-performing sales person
‘Simon’ is our fictitious and yet very real sales person, who continues to underperform despite attending many conventional sales training courses in previous years. We’ve met – and helped thousands of Simons since The Sales Consultancy was formed in 1995.
Simon has been in sales a long time. As a result of the training he has received he knows what he should be doing and, most months, he just about meets or gets close to his targets – and usually has good reasons and excuses to hand if he falls short!.
What stops Simon being a great sales person?
Let’s delve a little deeper into Simon’s personality and how this plays out in his sales role…
- He generally works hard but just doesn’t produce the results hoped of him
- He’s reluctant to try new things, he’s pretty sure he already knows his clients and their needs
- This means that, deep down, he doesn’t believe he can achieve more than he already is
- He tends to blame any dips in performance on external factors, his ‘limiting’ territory, the aggressive competition, lack of leads to work with, his clients’ lengthy decision making processes and so on
- He avoids certain sales activities
- Has a fear of failure
- He has a tendency to let personal issues and emotions affect his performance
- He’s not brilliant at collaborating with his colleagues
Ring any bells? Here’s the crux of the issue….
None of these eight issues are anything to do with sales capabilities…
They are all mindset issues!
And left unaddressed these issues will continue to negatively impact on Simon’s sales performance.
The Sales Mindset Revolution
In a nutshell, resolving Simon’s deep seated, habitual and mostly unconscious psychological barriers is the essence of Sales Mindset Training.
Here’s how a sales mindset improvement journey usually rolls out
- Identify – identifying the stuff that stops your team performing at their best
- Explore – dig down to the root of the barriers to sales and personal success
- Remove – work through the removal of those beliefs, habits, doubts and uncertainties that stifle a sales growth mindset
- Replace – add and embed new mindset strategies to leave your sales people and sales leaders able to perform at their absolute best and excel in their roles
And the result?…
The Transformation
Taking Simon’s challenges before sales mindset training, what improvements should you expect with your team?
Before Sales Mindset Training
- They work hard but aren’t producing the results hoped for
- A reluctance to try new things, they know the clients well enough already
- They don’t believe they can achieve more than they already do
- Performance dips are always blamed on external factors, never themselves
- They avoid certain sales activities
- They fear failure
- There’s a tendency to let personal issues and emotions affect their performance
- Not brilliant at collaborating as a team
After Sales Mindset Training
- Consistent success and ongoing growth in performance
- Embrace stepping out of their comfort zone to test new approaches
- Embody new empowering beliefs that ensure unbeatable levels of resilience and confidence
- Taking full responsibility for their results and having a recovery plan quickly in place when setbacks occur
- Having the skills, mindset and confidence for all sales activities
- They use any setbacks as a springboard to improvement
- Consistently demonstrate the ability to separate personal challenges from work performance
- Team colleagues understand each other better than ever before ensuring a strengthened team bond
How wonderful would it be if the right-hand column described your sales people and sales leaders?
It’s more straightforward than you might think.
And, because sales mindset training enables your team to easily identify the psychological patterns of your prospects and clients, they can connect at a much deeper level…meaning they can qualify more effectively, connect your offering to what’s really important to the buyer and ultimately close more sales.
Happiness is key when it comes to sales success
And another, crucial thing…the benefits of Sales Mindset Training don’t end when they leave work…it creates much more success in other areas of their life too. They become happier generally…and it’s official, happier people generate 37% more sales! Harvard Business Review
Some brands we've worked with
You can book a call by clicking any of the ‘Let’s Chat’ buttons and choosing a call slot at a time to suit you. If you would rather message us then leave your details here along with a short message and we’ll respond quickly
The Sales Consultancy
results@sales-consultancy.com
Leigh Ashton
07932 164873
leigh@sales-consultancy.com
Jonathan Mills
07970 753664
jonathan@sales-consultancy.com
What our clients say
Instead of us continually telling you this and promising you that, much better we share the thoughts of our valued clients and partners…
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Ready to talk?
In two minds? Why not book an ‘Explore’ call? You can ask questions, tell us your challenges and explore the possibilities. You’ll then be in a much better place to plot your next move.
FAQs
The Sales Consultancy is a training company that believes that (conventional) sales training doesn’t work! Strange? We’d better explain…conventional sales training doesn’t work because it tends to solely be based around skills, behaviour and process training and instruction. There’s a missing link – mindset. How a sales person or sales leader thinks will ultimately dictate whether they will succeed or fail, no matter how much knowledge they possess.
So, at The Sales Consultancy our programmes are based on giving sales people and sales leaders winning growth mindsets! Be reassured…our programmes are not full of woo woo stuff! Just many powerful sales mindset improving strategies which enable sales people and leaders to shine in their everyday practical working environments.
Most sales people know WHAT to do – and HOW they should be doing it. So why is it many just don’t do those actions that will ‘guarantee’ them success? It’s because their MINDSET is not up to succeed in a demanding selling environment. Most sales people have deep seated and long-lasting psychological barriers, centred around a lack of self-belief, low confidence levels and low resilience, preventing them from consistently achieving their targets.
This is where Sales Mindset Training comes in…to help everyone identify those specific, often unconscious barriers that hold them back, and replace them with a sales growth mindset that properly prepares them to go on to achieve success in sales – and love it too!
Specifically, you can expect the very results that you agree with us after you’ve called us in to tell us the challenges you are experiencing. So, though these challenges will be unique to each of our clients, we generally say you can expect a 20% increase in sales, as a result of your team being much happier, more productive and displaying much more confidence, self-belief and resilience.
We’ll travel to wherever we need to to ensure your sales teams and leaders get the training and support agreed. Bear in mind too that we can deliver training live over Zoom, Teams etc via eLearning. Indeed several of our clients are now preferring a blended approach, with in-the-room sessions being complemented by live virtual and elearning content. All our programmes are designed to be interchangeable across the potential delivery formats.
The concept of a Growth Mindset was originally developed by psychologist Carol Dweck and popularized in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. A sales growth mindset focusses in on the Key Principles or traits that the most successful sales people and leaders consistently demonstrate, for example ongoing curiosity, situational awareness, team focus, taking ownership.
Check out or leadership programmes for more detail. To be clear, develop a sales growth mindset and you will achieve much more personally and professionally.
Each method of training delivery has its pros – and the odd challenge. When choosing, things we would talk through are the nature of your business, the sales and leadership challenges you are currently experiencing and want to resolve, the location of those likely to attend and so on. For a quick introduction to the characteristics of each delivery format, check out our ‘pros and considerations’ table on the Live in person, Live virtual and eLearning pages on this website.
Bear in mind too that our programmes are designed to be interchangeable across each of the potential delivery formats, and several clients are now opting for a blended approach, making for a varied programme tailored to the learning styles of their teams.
We’ll need a minimum of ten sales people for a ‘live in person’ session. If the group is made up of leaders only, then we can drop the minimum to six. Regarding numbers, and how the group size can change for live virtual sessions and eLearning courses, it’s really better to contact us and let’s talk it through!
Not at all! The programmes you’ll see throughout these websites tend to be our core ‘flagship’ programmes that are perfect for many clients (the content is based on Leigh’s 30+ years in sales and leadership. Bear in mind we tailor the delivery specifically to the client’s needs we’ve identified well before we start delivering.
Our guiding principle is flexibility… and other clients choose shorter programmes, often as an introduction, and follow on with additional programmes over time. And if you’ve identified challenges in your sales teams or leaders that aren’t addressed in any of our programmes, we’ll create one for you.
Yes. Our programmes are designed on a modular basis and, post-covid are becoming increasingly ‘blended’ anyway. Several of our clients now tend to begin a programme with a live in person session, receive the middle sections of the programme by Live Virtual or eLearning means, before rounding off the programme with a final in-person session.
To specifically answer your question, if you initially decided on an ‘in the room’ programme and then decided to switch to live virtual or eLearning half way through, this can be done (it happened during lock down and worked really well!)
First, we would never get to the end of the training programme before establishing it doesn’t work. That’s because of our pre-programme preparation, and our ongoing liaising with all stakeholders throughout the programmes, meaning that we can tweak and focus the content to ensure that it always does work. Then, after the training programme has been completed we will continue until the mission has been accomplished and everyone has got what they need from the programme.
To back this up we provide a guarantee for the effectiveness of our programmes, based on achieving the objectives we jointly agree at the start.
Leigh Ashton leads all live training sessions whether in person or virtual. All of our on line courses feature Leigh too. In certain circumstances Leigh may invite guests to appear at live or virtual sessions as part of a training day. Finally, and depending on our clients’ training needs, we may ask one of our specialist associates to contribute on selected modules.
Anywhere! Your place. Our place. A neutral venue. We discuss this with you. The main things being we have certain requirements of a training environment and as long as those are met, we’re good to go.
It’s different of course with remote learning whether live or pre-recorded eLearning modules. Often delegates tune in from their homes or work locations anywhere in the world. All they would require is a decent internet connection and a peaceful learning environment!
Most of our eLearning courses will take no longer than 15-20 minutes to complete. These bite sized chunks of learning are ideal to learn a concept or technique and be ready to use it in their role.
We believe strongly in an action orientated fully supported personal development environment, and so most of our courses require those on the programme to choose the actions they will take to bring the learning to life – and take them. And be supported throughout by their manager.
Typically…first an exploratory chat to drill down on the challenges your experiencing and what your solution to these challenges would look like. With your agreement we draw up a thorough training proposal indicating how we suggest your objectives can be met, and what level of investment would be required on your part.
Upon the go-ahead from you we then create the agreed training programme and tweak as necessary. With your final sign off we’ll agree dates, groups, locations…and then deliver! Throughout the roll out process we’ll continue to monitor feedback, engagement and performance of each attendee and discuss with you any changes required. Once the main programmes are completed we’ll report back in full, and conduct any one-off sessions required to ensure objectives are met.
Yes is the short answer! Let’s expand though… we will travel anywhere in the world to deliver face to face training. Secondly your sales people and leaders could tune in to our live virtual sessions from wherever they are in the world – all they would need is a decent internet connection. Finally, our eLearning courses can be accessed from anywhere in the world, and of course at any time, according to the needs of those attending.
