Core Selling Skills
3DCSS™
Core Selling Skills
The essential skills for customer-centric selling.
For relatively new salespeople, or those transitioning to a sales role, success depends on engaging customers, building trust and rapport, uncovering their story and guiding them to a successful outcome, sometimes even within a single conversation.
3D Core Selling Skills (3DCSS) is a definitive programme designed to help build confidence and skills across the whole customer conversation. It will empower your sales teams to connect with more customers, uncover more opportunities, guide customers through their buying journey, and leave them with a lasting positive impression that will drive long-term loyalty, renewal and repurchase.
This modular course is based on more than 20 years of quantitative, qualitative and field-based sales research. It forms part of Imparta’s 3D Sales Curriculum, which helps sales professionals to create, differentiate, protect, capture, deliver and expand value around the whole customer Buying Cycle. It also includes optional, in-depth modules on time & territory management, communication styles and mastering virtual presence.
This highly interactive programme develops lasting skills and sales techniques through a comprehensive set of simulated activities, application and real-life exercises, tools and reinforcement techniques within Imparta’s continuous improvement ecosystem.
Course Overview
Key training topics include:
- Understanding why and how customers buy.
- The elements of Imparta’s Customer Conversation Model.
- Guiding customers through the Buying Cycle, applying the 3D Advantage to the whole sales process.
- Handling inbound sales enquiries in an effective and efficient way.
- Engaging customers when selling outbound, including through sales calls, videos, emails, and social media.
- Understanding the customer by building rapport and trust, framing and signposting questions, and asking the five key types of questions.
- Guiding the customer through their Buying Cycle, including creating urgency and momentum, recommending the best-fit solution, handling objections, and gaining commitment.
- Making it easy for the customer by reducing customer effort, anticipating any issues, and creating a memorable, positive ending.
- Where appropriate, asking for referrals.
Optional modules:
- Communication Styles.
- Time & Territory Management for effective sales.
- Mastering Virtual Presence.
Impact
The 3D Core Selling Skills training programme will help to accelerate onboarding in more transactional roles and give existing teams a genuine competitive advantage.
It has been shown to increase key metrics that include:
- Success rates with outbound engagement.
- Opportunity generation.
- Conversion and win rates.
- Average deal size.
- Quota attainment.
Secondary benefits include:
- More effective selling time and better prioritization of opportunities within a territory.
- Shorten sales cycles thanks to increased customer advocacy.
- An increased number of referrals.
Customer Conversation Model™
Core Selling Skills is structured around Imparta’s Customer Conversation Model™, which was developed from our research into thousands of customer sales and service interactions. It links to the customer Buying Cycle, and covers four clear stages that salespeople can work through to create an effective, reliable and engaging buying experience.
Who is it For?
The Core Selling Skills programme is suitable for those new to sales or sales-through-service, as well as those needing a refresher. It is also effective as part of sales onboarding.
The course works with service and product sales and is designed for both inbound and outbound sales roles, especially in a more transactional context. Modules from this programme can also be used to refine core sales skills at any level of tenure.
Formats and Duration
The programme is part of Imparta’s modular curriculum.
It is available as:
- eLearning (full modules, plus individual assets that can be embedded into playbooks).
- A 2-day instructor-led face-to-face workshop.
- 4 four-hour virtual instructor-led sessions.
- Flipped learning is where the classroom is used to focus on application.
- Modules that can be combined with other courses.
The programme also includes competency definitions, application tools, measurement, and reinforcement tools including nudge questions and manager coaching guides to make the new skills stick.
Application Tools
Application tools (Canvases) are available in print, editable PDF and Excel versions. They are also available as native Salesforce tools and standalone tools within our platform.
The Canvases help attendees to embed their new skills, and to apply them to winning business and improving account profitability.
Explore the modules
Why and How
Customers Buy
Impact: All
Recognise the fundamentals of why customers decide to buy (the Value Equation) and how they buy (the Buying Cycle). Use the Customer Conversation Model™ as an organising framework when interacting with customers.
Engage Me: Inbound
Impact: Number of Leads, Conversion rate
Establish genuine connections with inbound prospects, reducing tension, building trust, and setting the scene for effective business relationships.
Engage Me: Outbound
Impact: Number of Leads, Conversion rate
Leverage a range of social media techniques to connect effectively with potential customers. Us Insight, Influence and Trust to engage with customers and get them to agree to a longer conversation.
Understand Me
Impact: Conversion Rate; Average Deal Size
Use a wide range of question types to uncover a customer’s story, their needs and the criteria on which a selection will be made. Signpost and frame those questions to reduce customer resistance and create trust.
Guide Me
Impact: Average Deal Size; Win Rate
Guide and influence customers through each stage of the Buying Cycle up to the Commit stage. Lead them towards an appropriate decision and manage objections in an effective and ethical way.
Make it Easy for Me
Impact: Win rate, Share of Wallet
Make sure that the buying process is as simple and straight-forward for the customer as possible. Take proactive steps to reduce customer effort and create a strong and positive final impression before following through to ensure satisfaction.
Time and Territory Management
Impact: All
Maximise your effective selling time by identifying and reducing non-sales activities. Decide where to focus your energy, understand if you are allowing enough time for lead generation, and be inspired to do the right things with the right customers.
Communication Styles
Impact: All
Be aware of different communication styles, understand yours and learn to adapt your style and approach to your customers’ preferred communication style.
Mastering Virtual Presence
Impact: All
Understand the technology, science and psychology behind effective virtual engagement. Inspire performance and captivate clients and customers in a virtual setting, delivering value to them and to your own business.
The CSS training was a smash hit, well presented with great materials. We’ve seen an immediate impact in the performance and confidence of our salespeople.
Sales Manager, Financial Services
Working with us also means
An annual fee per user gives you access to the whole curriculum, as needed, for around the cost of a single course each year. Even trainer days can be bought on subscription, allowing you to budget ahead and respond quickly as your markets change.
We work with companies across the globe, drawing on over 100 facilitators around the world and our in-house translation team.
Imparta’s i-Coach® platform is an award-winning LMS/LXP that powers each of the 5C use-cases for front-line capability building. Or you can deploy the entire 3D Advantage® Curriculum using your own platform.
