The Value Ascent
 Printer Friendly Page

One of the keys to success in today's fast-paced sales arena is the ability to think like a businessperson, gain access, and effectively engage at all levels of an organization.

The Summit Group’s approach focuses on improving the overall business acumen of sales professionals through effectively building and executing sales penetration and relationship strategies with key decision makers within an account.

Participants are taught how to gain access to, and interact with, top decision makers, how to read business opportunities, and how to effectively position themselves with senior levels of management as a value-added resource. They learn how to develop and apply key customer business knowledge to advance the relationship and how to adjust their level of business dialogue for successful customer engagements at any level or within any functional area. They learn how to uncover key business issues, initiatives, and opportunities of the customer and translate them into solutions.

These skills are applied and developed through placing participants in sales simulation that requires them to manage all aspects of account penetration, executive access, and engagement strategies while determining the overall business potential of the account.  This simulation features a customized case from your actual customer base and actual product/service/solution sales opportunities from your company. This program concludes with an executive forum of senior executives participating in a panel discussion and in-depth Q&A directly with the sales people.

Content delivery focuses on the ability to:

• Learn to understand the requirements to gaining access to executives, and how to think like a businessperson versus a sales person.

• Learn and demonstrate the ability to understand the key issues of senior decision makers before going into the account, and how to leverage this knowledge to gain access to any level or any functional area within the account.

• Learn to be able to talk business issues at senior levels of the customer and shape your dialogue, questions, and overall discussion content to optimize data discovery and gain instant credibility.

• Learn to plan and execute complex sales contact and executive engagement strategies.

• Learn to read and effectively react to internal customer dynamics.

• Learn to identify key business initiatives of the customer and translate them into solutions you can provide.

• Learn from actual executives how they think, what they like and don't like, and their overall expectations of sales people and how to shape your approach for maximum success.

The Summit Group’s Value Ascent Philosophy

Value selling is as much a mindset, or way of thinking, as it is a skill or knowledge. In the most basic of terms, it means moving from the tactical selling of product to adopting an entrepreneurial and strategic involvement with the customer. It requires a sales person to:

• Focus on - and understand - the customer’s business initiatives and drivers.
• Proactively and creatively position value offers that directly affect the customer’s initiatives, business drivers, and concerns.
• Leverage their company’s entire value capability with major accounts.
• Articulate their company’s value in a compelling proposition that distinguishes them from their competitors.
• Build relationships within targeted accounts at higher levels, where value can be created - and is appreciated.

The Summit Group’s Unique Capabilities

Thought leadership

The Summit Group provides an adaptable and deceptively simple, yet highly effective approach to identifying, crafting, and positioning solid business offers.  TSG has a longstanding track record and reputation for working with diverse organizations to “turbocharge” their core sales approach to transform salespeople into applied business people.

Focus on results

Begin with distinct, yet integrated modules – all focused on offer development and customer relationships.  Supporting the close of new business builds rapid buy-in.  Winning customer deals drives excitement across the organization.

Domain expertise

The Summit Group is engaged with industry leaders crossing segments around the world, and delivers best practices from a range of highly successful sales organizations.

Adaptability

TSG has worked with organizations that have embraced a variety of core selling methods. The Summit Value Framework is a seamless, “graduate level” approach that fits well with any solid foundation of research, communication, presentation, and other skills. In addition, TSG’s core offerings are highly modular.

Cross-functional focus

Best practice sales organizations create effective links with marketing to create a cohesive approach between branding, marketing, sales, and execution. Creating value is therefore not solely the function of sales. The Summit Group engages the entire enterprise by providing skills for internal selling at executive and operational levels. TSG also actively equips these same cross-functional teams to engage directly with the customer to improve role-by-role alignment.

Customer engagement approach

In addition to engaging the organization on behalf of the customer, The Summit Group has been entrusted by its customers to engage with their customers. Creating Collaborative Value™, for example, provides an opportunity to cement customer relationships while engaging the customer as part of the sales assessment process.

Engagement Depth

The Summit Group’s depth and capability are illustrated by the following problem-solving engagement examples:

• Customer engagement:
• Create top-to-top meeting and engagement strategies to support strategic account team efforts.
• Collaborative value creation sessions with key customers and account teams to improve relationships, align resources, and prioritize efforts.
• Organizational buy-in
• Secure organizational support for value transformation.
• Executive strategy series to accelerate leadership adoption of the value-selling approach.
• Cross-functional value series to accelerate wide organizational adoption.
• Conduct offer enabler development sessions with marketing, engineering, and product management departments.
• Sales and marketing execution
• Build and navigate overall value transformation process.
• Close large revenue deals using The Summit Group’s value methodology.
• Build GTM sales and marketing plans.
• Develop solution bundles for target market segments.
• Craft value propositions for targeted vertical markets.
• Assess large customer relationships to marshal resources around highest value opportunities.

Our commitment is to engage with you in such a way that together we create infectious confidence – from our first engagement forward.

Learning Objectives

Our learning objectives include:

• Learn to understand the requirements to gain access to executives and how to think like a businessperson versus a sales person.

• Learn and demonstrate the ability to understand the key issues of senior decision makers before going into the account, and how to leverage this knowledge to gain access to any level or any functional area within the account.

• Learn to be able to talk business issues at senior levels of the customer and shape your dialogue, questions and overall discussion content to optimize data discovery and gain instant credibility.

• Learn to plan and execute complex sales contact and executive engagement strategies. Learn to read and effectively react to internal customer dynamics.

• Learn to identify key business initiatives of the customer and translate them into solutions you can provide.

• Learn from actual executives how they think, what they like and don't like, and their overall expectations of sales people and how to shape your approach for maximum success.

Our programs and practices are organized around a hierarchical framework of value creation.

Layer 1: Creating Personal Value
Layer 2: Creating Business Value
Layer 3: Creating Collaborative Value