Acumen Sales Certification Development Programs

In highly competitive markets, the company's sales professionals must fully understand multi-level sales skills, product / service offerings, industry expertise, client industry knowledge, all competitive market offerings and personal career development skills. Our fully developed certification program is designed to begin with an entry-level salesperson and continually progress them through to an experienced professional.

Acumen Management Group brings you the expertise, technology and capability to develop and launch a corporate-wide program.

The benefits in creating a certification program can be enormous: lower turnover, better customer relationships, industry recognition and the ability to recruit more effectively. Today, end-users are saying that they want resources, people who are trusted and consultative in nature, with a new approach. Unfortunately, most sales organizations are focused only on selling their products / services and the achievement of sales quotas.

In a study of the Top 10 Sales Organizations in the United States the following attributes were identified:

• The best sales practices are consistent from industry to industry
• Structured sales process is key to success
• Sales effectiveness is essential
• Team sales prevail
• Business strategies come first
• Sales is a corporate priority
• Training and recruitment are critically important
• Corporate image and branding is important to sales
• Sales compensation is linked to corporate objectives
• Corporate culture is deep & consistent
• Sales is a highly valued career

Certification Programs help to insure that everything in your organization is linked, tested, verified, and delivered.

The concept of ensuring success is not only having the fundamentals in place, but a program designed to build belief in your company, your service / product, and verify that your representatives know what they need to know. Certification programs will separate your organization from the competitors and create an atmosphere of high performance.

The certified salesperson must master each area within the company and annually continue to enhance their level of skill and knowledge. The level of the salesperson's expertise, their experience and overall responsibility will dictate to what levels of depth each category demands.

The base line sections of a Sales Certification program must cover the following components:

Company Mission, Vision, Message, Value Proposition

This builds belief in the Company

Company Internal Process and Operations

How and Why we do what we do

Understanding Your Organizations Industry

Know the Trends / Issues

Understanding the Clients Business

Financial and Strategy Elements

Understanding the Clients Industry

What are the various components, issues, trends etc?

Sales Skills

Resolution Process / Presentation Skills / Account & Territory Strategy & Tactics / Sales Skills Forecasting / Sales Tools & Technology

Each section is designed with:

• Self-study materials, case studies, role-playing and peer review
• Realistic course material
• A thorough evaluation process to ensure that the salesperson has mastered the information.
• A scoring system to set the level of performance expectation

During each 6-month period the salesperson would submit, both to management and a peer group, a plan to improve their skill level, personal development, Industry knowledge and product / service information. These may include: in-house course material, outside seminars, classroom work and self-study.

With the advent of e-business, multi-channel issues, and international competition, the need for a more cost-effective delivery approach becomes critical. With the increase in commodity of offerings and lack of product / service differentiation, today's alert organizations are coming back to the real difference in most organizations- our people. We must commit to making them our real company differentiators. We can achieve this through building a sales certification program.

Back to Top