ABP Consulting SuisseGeneva

Sales

The keys to selling and commercial negotiation

Two days to sell by asking better questions rather than reciting better arguments. The programme works on discovery, real qualification of a deal, and reading the person across the table.

Four sales advisers in suits examine leather samples together at a boutique counter

What you will be able to do

  • Run a discovery conversation that makes the buyer think instead of putting them on the defensive
  • Qualify a deal against three verifiable criteria, and walk away early when they are missing
  • Map a buying committee: who uses, who pays, who recommends, who can block
  • Adapt your pitch to the other person's profile rather than to your own comfort
  • Build a proposal that uses the client's words, not the catalogue's

Programme

  1. Discovery

    • The questions that make people think and the ones that close the conversation down
    • Getting the client to state the cost of the current situation rather than stating it yourself
    • Workshop: each participant reworks the discovery phase of a live deal

  2. Qualifying

    • Telling a real pipeline from a declared one
    • The three criteria that truly qualify an opportunity
    • Walking away from a deal without losing the client: wording and timing

  3. The buying committee

    • The single decision-maker no longer exists: mapping the real roles
    • Who to talk to, in what order, and what to say to each
    • The internal sponsor: recognising them, equipping them, not overloading them

  4. The proposal

    • Using the client's words in the document they will circulate
    • What goes in writing and what is said face to face
    • Preparing the presentation: three messages, not fifteen slides

Questions about this course

Is this training in a named sales method?

No. Proprietary four-letter methods can be read in an evening and do not change a discovery conversation. The programme works on precise moves — the question asked, the reformulation, the order of meetings — and borrows from existing methods where they help, without selling any one of them.

Our sales cycles last nine months. Is this suitable?

That is the programme's typical case. Long cycles with several stakeholders are precisely where the quality of discovery and the mapping of the buying committee make the difference, far more than closing technique.

Can we work on our own deals?

Yes, and it is recommended, especially in-company. The role-plays are then built from your real objections and your competitors. A generic case does not train anyone to answer the objection they will hear the next day.

Is DISC covered?

In a short form applied to selling, in the module on reading the other person. Teams who want to work on it in its own right take the two-day “DISC and Driving Forces” course, where everyone receives their own profile.