“Teams must improve their processes and their results in order to achieve success within this competitive environment. ”

Summary of the Experience

Sales managers and their teams need to transition from pitching products to becoming value-added partners in supporting their clients’ outcomes. Intellectually understanding this is one thing; but doing it and doing it effectively to build sales is another. The Phoenix Sales Simulator is one of the most challenging and realistic outcome selling simulations available today.

COMPETE IN AN INTENSE OUTCOME SELLING WORLD

Three Omni Companies within The Phoenix Sales Simulator make up the customer companies of the sales teams. Each of these customer companies are made up of eight to 15 people and are created with a population that spreads up and down a hierarchy and across multiple divisions. The sales people need to understand the complexity of these customers and their relationships in order to penetrate the account and gradually begin to sell to increasingly influential segments of the company.

The customers purchase products and services from, and ultimately partner with, one or more of the competing sales companies to find solutions. The pressure is not only on the sales teams, but also on the Omni Companies (customers), who have their own internal challenges and complex external customer and stakeholder demands. Each customer company and each role within it has its own motivations, challenges, influencing ability, needs and budgets, creating an intense and complex customer world for the account executives to navigate.

Each of the sales companies compete to be chosen as the most trusted and valued partner and are tasked with working their way “up the value chain” and hierarchy of the company. The account executives and teams that do this most effectively will win long-term revenue sales based on resolving problems and discovering new opportunities. The learning comes from the experience of participating in and exploring the behaviors that shift one’s mindset from a strategic to a more transformational sales partnership. The account executives develop new strategic selling skills and learn and practice in a new language that will help them to be seen as a business ally to the customer.

EXPERIENCE THE CUSTOMER’S REALITY

Equally transformative is the opportunity for account executives to “sit in the customer’s seat.” The customers “own” their role and its pressures and, after understanding how their goals support the goals of the larger enterprise, engage with other senior members of their “organization” who may have competing agendas. As they try to identify which vendors can help them address their functional and organizational challenges, customers will experience “being the buyer” and assess the various approaches vendors are taking to win their business. The learning is extraordinary, as they witness in real time what some sellers do that sabotage the sale and what others do to drive success.

THE DEPTH OF RESEARCH BUILT INTO THE SIMULATION’S REALITY

The computer model behind the program exerts extreme pressure on both the sales team and the customer. In each “simulated” year, the landscape will dramatically shift in ways that cannot be completely planned. The teams need to anticipate the changes, but also react to the specifics of those changes, while migrating from a product-based sales approach to a strategic, service based partnership that adds real value to the customer.

REAL TIME FEEDBACK DURING THE SIMULATION

The participants can see, on large screens and in real time, customer reviews of how their sales organization is being rated across key behavioral variables that are customized to the client’s key selling points around outcomes sales.

Debrief

Debriefs throughout The Phoenix Sales Simulator experience highlight and leverage the significant parallels to the participants’ organizational realities and set the stage for executive sales leadership development. The discussions are deep, and the application is immediate to the specific challenges your team is facing as they look to penetrate accounts and move up the value chain to higher margin outcome sales.