
Selling Through Partnering Skills
The new approach to winning business
Overview
‘Partnering Intelligence’ can be described as a set of critical elements that form a validated system of behaviours that creates healthy, thriving relationships. These elements can be measured and developed. Combine these with defined processes for implementing and guiding your sales, and you have a repeatable formula for success.
Every executive, manager, and salesperson has a quantifiable ‘PQ’ or Partnering Quotient. Much like an IQ gives an indicator to some elements of intelligence, PQ gauges how smart someone really is when it comes partnering. People with a high PQ are good at building relationship as well as understanding the necessary organizational and cultural changes to make sales work smoothly. These are these skills that help translate bold promises into true value. As such it is something that is extremely useful in today’s world of professional sales.
What are the attributes of a high PQ?
- Ability to trust. Do you give people your trust, or do they have to earn it? This is probably the most important competency. Without this, most alliances are doomed to sub-perform or fail.
- Comfort with change. Are you comfortable changing not just the status quo, but your own status quo?
- Comfort with interdependence. Can you allow your partners to accomplish their assigned activities, even if they don’t do it the way you would?
- Self-disclosure and feedback. Can you easily disclose and articulate your needs, as well as express your appreciation or disappointment?
- Win-win orientation. Do you employ a problem-solving approach that creates wins for both partners?
- Future orientation. Do you look to the future rather than the past in evaluating your business relationships?
The VALUE Framework has been designed to create the link between partnering intelligence and the myriad of sales techniques already used by salespeople all over the world. It’s application provides the bridge to bringing the mindset and ethos of a PQ based approach to the use of tried and tested methods and models. It is about applying finesse to a sale. It is good to great.
Essentially, businesses don’t partner – people do. Companies that build effective partnering competencies in their salesforce will fare much better than their shoot-from-the-hip counterparts in achieving success from their business development activities. Rather than simply studying the numbers and potential benefits associated with a sale, they focus on the core competencies and processes to consistently build effective partnerships and their bottom line inevitably reflects this.
Objectives
At the end of this session participants will understand:
- The characteristics of a great salesperson
- The difference between IQ, EQ and PQ
- The 6 key elements of Partnering Intelligence
- Their own Partnering Quotient and it’s make up
- How selling has evolved
- Different types of selling and the associated levels of complexity and value
- The VALUE Framework
- Using PQ in ‘Classic’ Selling
- Using PQ in ‘Consultative’ Selling
- Using PQ in ‘Value Based’ Selling
- Using PQ in ‘Enterprise’ Selling
- How to use a partnering based approach in their own sales
- The application of an action plan to develop themselves to succeed in the modern sales arena