Why You Should Attend This Course:

Many organisations have restructured to have cross-departmental teams. Engineers must now interact and support sales executives in the area of marketing & sales, from pricing and promotion to distribution and customer satisfaction.

By acquiring the basic skills in sales & marketing, engineers will become more proficient at innovation and acquire a better understanding of needs and demands in the marketplace to improve the process of design and innovation.

This course has been designed to help engineers integrate their technical role with a sales and marketing role. They will be able to converse and support the marketing & sales executives during clients' discussions and generate leads resulting in sales.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the fundamentals of marketing strategies & matrix
• Simplify technical strategy to match to sales & marketing processes
• Identify new marketing imperatives – intelligence, interfaces & integration
• Gain a clear understanding of their role in supporting the sales and marketing of company's products and services
• Use the sales processes of identifying, developing and managing accounts
• Structure a sales call and use all available skills to give a professional image and improve success
• Recognise and improve their handling of difficult customer situations
• Overcome objections and close successful sales
• Develop a close business relationship with clients

Course Outline:

Day 1

Role of Engineers in Sales & Marketing

• Icebreaker: The Impact of Integrating Technical role with Sales & Marketing role
• Sales & Marketing Opportunities for an Engineer
• Service Situation
• Sales Presentation with a New Prospect

Understanding the Fundamentals of Marketing

• Differentiating marketing from sales
• The Basics of Marketing
• Marketing Planning – 3Cs and 4Ps
• Marketing Services and Intangibles – special considerations
• Group Exercise: Who Markets and How
• BCG Growth-Share Matrix: Mapping your Product Life Cycle
• Ansoff Business Unit Strategy Model
• Managing Product Life Cycle
• Hard vs. soft products and services
• Bowman Strategic Pricing Clock
• Group work: Mapping out our marketing strategy from a technical perspective

The World of Selling

• The Sales Cycle & Process: Perspective, Territory Management, Sales Calling & Closing
• Characteristics of an effective technical sales person
• Different models of selling: product vs. solution selling

Having a Positive Selling Attitude

• The Importance of PMA in selling
• What makes you negative
• How to develop a positive attitude

Prospecting Effectively During a Service Situation to Generate New Business

• The right prospecting approach during a service situation
• Value proposition vs. preventive measures
• Group work: Existing Customer Profile – creating strategy for suggesting an upgrade or cross-selling

Day 2

Developing Effective Sales Communication

• Opening of Sales Conversation
• Questioning strategies & purpose to identify needs
• How to gain leverage and build confidence
• Talk about benefits not features
• Keeping the interest alive
• Finding a purpose to call back

Social Styles Influences Buying Behaviour

• Role of an Engineer during a New Account Sales Presentation
• Slide Presentation: Body Language (30mins)
• Understand the buying behaviour of your customer
• Understand different behaviours & expectation
• Listening for opportunities to support sales executives with technical solutions & information

Objections are Good

• How to minimise objections and propose creative technical solutions
• How to handle objections
• Workshop: Video Role-play with playback critic session

Sales Negotiation & Tactics

• What are your key decision criteria?
• Process of Making Decision/Decision-maker
• The negotiation process
• Pressure Tactics
• Tactics used in negotiation

Closing: When and How

• The Buying Milestones
• How to identify closing signals
• 7 powerful closing techniques that work
• Key Learning Points & Post-workshop Account Project

Trainer's Profile:

Tina McDowell has been a trainer and consultant for the past 23 years. She has helped hundreds of people realise their potential as employees for their organisations. By making her courses highly participative, she instils a certain flavour of excitement in participants to improve at their jobs. In 1997, she inspired a group of people in Union Carbide to win the Chairman’s award for winning behaviours, productivity and costs saving.

Her experience includes conducting presentation skills, selling skills, sales & negotiations for sales executives & procurement executives. She has worked with sales executives and engineers in Nokia, Schlumberger & Texas Instrument Philippines to analyse their sales strategies to enhance partnership and engagement with the customers.

She has also done consulting work in many of the Asean countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, China, and Philippines.