Development Blocks
Highly interactive workshops or panels with most sponsors on time management, building your personal brand, mindset, work/life integration, what's my pay (how to get there), etc.
Students complete a survey prior to the event to share their topic preferences. Sponsors share topic preferences when they commit to sponsorship.
Topics
Building Your Personal Brand
As a sales professional, you are always selling, including selling yourself and your
personal brand! Knowing who you are, your most valuable traits, and what makes you
unique all factor into your personal brand and how others see you. Our words and actions
send a message to the people and organizations we encounter and have the potential
to cultivate confidence and allies.
Students will reflect on their personal brand and learn about the actions they can take each day to build and reinforce their personal brand in a way that advances them personally and professionally.
Decision Makers and Who Influences Them
Understanding things from the customer’s point of view is the number one quality of
a highly successful salesperson. The customer’s point of view is shaped by their
personal beliefs, social style, role/job, degree of influence in their organization,
the organization’s buying mode, and channel and industry factors.
Students will learn about the different types of roles the buyer might have and how
this impacts what is important to them. The buying organization process, teams, and
channels of distribution will also be covered so students know how to gain access
to and leverage the decision makers and influencers.
Feedback: Receiving, Applying, and Giving
Feedback is an ongoing process between sales representatives, sales managers, customers,
and other colleagues. Feedback is critical to building and maintaining relationships
that are innovative, productive, and trustworthy.
Students will learn about the sources of feedback and how that information and insights are best communicated. From there, discussion will include how to receive feedback and then go about applying that feedback.
Mindset
Life is a mental sport, and a career in professional sales will regularly flex and
tone that mental muscle. Between customer’s not returning calls, losing deals to
status quo, balancing customer timeline with quota timeline, persuading people who
have more experience, and more, keeping your mind in a healthy place so you are focused
and motivated can be a challenge.
Students will learn strategies and techniques that can be used to help get out of
mental slumps, combat imposter syndrome, better learn from failure, navigate uncertainty,
and more. Insights into corporate resources will also be shared.
Overcoming Objections
Advancing the sale can be a challenge when the decision maker and their influencers
pose objections. Customer objections can take the form of saying no, longer delays
in responding and making decisions, blocking access to information and/or people,
and more. At the root is a basic issue that is making the customer feel like they
are losing. Overcoming objections can be accomplished using the Acknowledge – Respond
– Close (ARC) method.
Students will learn about some objections they may face in the real world and how to apply the ARC method by doing mini role plays.
Presentation Skills and Presenting Solutions
Presenting a solution requires knowing what to present and how to present. Tailoring
a presentation is customer dependent as different product/service features offer a
variety of benefits that are not all relevant or carry the same amount of weight with
each customer. The style, mode, and format of the presentation is also a consideration
based on the target audience.
Students will learn about the features, unique advantages, and benefits for a company’s select product/service and the various forms a presentation can take along with presentation skills. They will craft and deliver presentations on that product/service’s value proposition based on various customer profiles.
Selling on Value with Premium Products/Services
Premium products/services require a sales professional to be able to sell on value.
Value is in the eye of the beholder.
Students will learn about a premium product/service for a company and how it benefits various stakeholders. They will be presented with a case where they will have to identify who they will sell to, what qualifying questions they should ask, which element(s) of the value proposition they will focus on, and what objections to be prepared for.
Selling Without Face-to-Face Interaction – Inside Sales 101
All sales jobs have an inside component with using the phone, web meeting, email,
and/or social media. Some sales jobs are done entirely inside.
Students will learn about the types of sales jobs that are done inside, why they are
done that way, how to “move up”, and myths that might still persist about inside sales.
A discussion of the pros and cons of inside sales will also be included.
Social Styles and Emotional Intelligence
Social styles are a combination of a person’s responsiveness and assertiveness and
sheds light on motivations, values, communication style, and more. Emotional intelligence
is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions and to recognize,
understand, and influence the emotions of others.
Students will learn about the different types of social styles and how they present and consume information themselves so students will be able to properly identify a social style and know how to adapt to better connect. Emotional intelligence as it factors into different types of sales roles and corporate culture will also be discussed.
Storytelling
Between being the central point of communication between the selling and buying organizations
and teaching people how to buy, sales professionals use storytelling to bring people
and concepts together.
Students will learn what goes into storytelling and will write and practice their
own story on what makes them an excellent candidate for hire.
Time Management – Day in the Life of a Salesperson
Salespeople get to set their own work schedule in most cases. There is a shared trust
between them and their employer because salespeople have flexibility and a certain
level of control while achieving corporate goals. Salespeople perform a wide variety
of sales and non-sales related tasks as part of their job. Time management is a top
5 skill set of top performing salespeople.
Students will learn about what the day in the life of an early career salesperson looks like for a specific company and then work on creating an optimal daily plan for a salesperson by sequencing a list of tasks.
Using Numbers to your Advantage in Selling
Whether you are dealing with a customer who loves or needs numbers and/or have a compelling
story to tell, being well versed with quantitative reports, calculations, and financial
acumen is a necessity.
Students will learn about one or more of the following: market analysis, sales projections,
ROI calculations, break-even-analyses, etc. The purpose is to boost students’ self-efficacy
and abilities in quantitative skills and in the utilization of programs, such as Excel.
The discussion will include why quantitative skills are important to selling and specific
examples of the types of data and calculations that are used in a sales job.
What’s My Pay (and How do I Get There)
Performance based pay is one of the many advantages to a career in professional sales.
Forecasting pay when there is variable compensation can be tricky. Once an earning
goal is set, the next step is to determine the amount of activity (accounts, calls,
proposals, etc) that is needed to reach that earning goal.
Students will learn how to forecast pay and the amount of activity needed to reach
that annual earning. A conversation on other forms of financial and non-financial
compensation will also be included.
Work-Life Balance…or Integration
Sales professionals have long experienced remote work and work that occurs outside
of traditional business hours. Finding a way to balance or integrate work with one’s
personal life is an ongoing journey.
Students will learn about strategies, techniques, and corporate resources that can
be used to better balance or integrate their personal and professional life.
…have an idea that you did not see listed? Share your idea with us!
Notes
- Companies receive 1 or more 1-hour time block(s). The number of blocks for each company varies by sponsor level. When the number of development blocks cannot be evenly distributed within the same sponsor level, those who are dual ESSPS Corporate Partners and UTISC Sponsors will be given priority.
- Interaction and hands-on ideas – panel discussion (include Q&A), mini role plays, breakout group discussions, sequencing tasks in order of completion, matching value proposition to customer roles, etc
- Feedback ideas – score sheets, verbal discussion, in-block shout out, etc
- The Assignment Schedule will factor in the preferences of both the students and companies. Students complete a survey prior to the event to express their topic preferences. Companies express their topic preferences during registration. The Assignment Schedule is emailed 1-2 weeks before each event with companies receiving preliminary confirmation on their topic(s) weeks to months before the event depending on when they register.
- Blocks will be held in fully mediated classrooms in Savage Business (SB) or Stranahan Hall (ST) (see classroom pictures/info). It is recommended that presenters have their content accessible via an online drive or USB. Presenters may use their own laptop if their company does not have any online presenters/panelists and if they are bringing their own HDMI adapters if their laptop does not have a HDMI port.
- Online presenters/panelists are allowed via Teams as long as the company has at least one onsite person in the development block.