Empower Your Sales Success
Expert Consultative Selling Strategies for Remarkable Results!Sales teams often fall into five categories based on expertise and strategy – Product Peddlers, Relationship Sellers, Account Sales, Consultative Selling, and Challenger Sales.
While each level serves a purpose, mastering Consultative Selling is the game-changer for your business success. With excellent questioning skills, it reveals critical issues and uncovers key buying motives, empowering you to forge deeper connections and drive exceptional results.
The Secret Missing Sales
If you have large organization with many branch offices, with large disparities in performance, you need to watch this video. Learn how conventional thinking limits organizational growth.
Learn about levelUP’s disruptive approach and processes that takes advantages of existing assets, technologies, people and market opportunities to grow at 30% and above yearly.
To become a trusted advisor for our clients, a well-thought-out strategy is essential. It positions us to showcase our value and expertise, transforming the way clients perceive us. Our sales strategy marks the initial step in differentiating ourselves from competitors and solidifying our role as long-term, value-added partners.
- Determine unique ways to add value and stand out in the market
- Cultivate relationships beyond our current interactions with clients
Identify promising market opportunities - Develop an authentic and compelling value-add approach
- Craft a comprehensive enterprise selling plan
Phase 2
To shatter preconceptions and build new connections, we need impactful Agenda Statements that revamp existing relationships and drive urgency in discussions. Our consultative approach begins with these statements, establishing credibility and positioning us as indispensable partners.
- Reimagine our role and reposition existing relationships
- Create compelling reasons and urgency to advance discussions
- Initiate the consultative approach through well-crafted Agenda Statements
Phase 3
Understand your clients and prospects on a deeper level by categorizing key players within the buying team. Tailor your approach to cater to their unique needs and aspirations.
In this phase, we utilize a proven questioning model that guides clients and prospects to reveal their true needs and motives.
In this phase, we will:
- Categorize key clients and prospects based on the buying team
- Implement a strategic questioning model to unveil real needs and motives
- Create genuine interest in hearing our valuable recommendations
Phase 4
Prospects and clients are aware of potential bias when we present our products and services. To win their trust, we must leave no room for doubt that our recommendations stand on their own merits. By providing credible, logical, and easy-to-understand solutions, we facilitate the buying process, making it easier for them to say, "Yes, let's move forward."
In this phase, we will:
- Link solid evidence to prospects' and clients' communicated and unstated needs
- Showcase our capability with targeted and compelling evidence
- Address prospects' and clients' logical needs and internal motives for buying
- Demonstrate our attentive listening and deep understanding of their unique needs
Phase 5
Objections and concerns from prospects and clients are a natural part of the buying process. Our ability to understand and adeptly resolve these objections adds immense value to the entire journey. We'll proactively identify the most common objections and establish professional best practices for addressing them. This approach earns us additional trust and respect from our prospects and clients, solidifying our reputation as skilled and trustworthy advisors.
In this phase, we will:
- Identify points of agreement to minimize resistance
- Skillfully uncover unstated objections
- Develop best practice responses to handle common objections
Phase 6
After presenting a compelling recommendation based on our in-depth understanding of their genuine needs, helping prospects and clients make timely decisions becomes crucial. The decision-making phase can be stressful, often representing significant change for them or their organization. It is our responsibility to guide them through this pivotal moment, easing their stress, and highlighting the remarkable benefits of choosing our services.
In this phase, we will:
- Review prospects' and clients' perspectives to facilitate the decision-making process
- Align their buying motives with actionable steps
- Implement tactics to secure commitment
Phase 1
To become a trusted advisor for our clients, a well-thought-out strategy is essential. It positions us to showcase our value and expertise, transforming the way clients perceive us. Our sales strategy marks the initial step in differentiating ourselves from competitors and solidifying our role as long-term, value-added partners.
Phase 2
To shatter preconceptions and build new connections, we need impactful Agenda Statements that revamp existing relationships and drive urgency in discussions. Our consultative approach begins with these statements, establishing credibility and positioning us as indispensable partners.
Phase 3
Understand your clients and prospects on a deeper level by categorizing key players within the buying team. Tailor your approach to cater to their unique needs and aspirations.
In this phase, we utilize a proven questioning model that guides clients and prospects to reveal their true needs and motives.
Phase 4
Prospects and clients are aware of potential bias when we present our products and services. To win their trust, we must leave no room for doubt that our recommendations stand on their own merits. By providing credible, logical, and easy-to-understand solutions, we facilitate the buying process, making it easier for them to say, "Yes, let's move forward."
Phase 5
Objections and concerns from prospects and clients are a natural part of the buying process. Our ability to understand and adeptly resolve these objections adds immense value to the entire journey. We'll proactively identify the most common objections and establish professional best practices for addressing them. This approach earns us additional trust and respect from our prospects and clients, solidifying our reputation as skilled and trustworthy advisors.
Phase 6
After presenting a compelling recommendation based on our in-depth understanding of their genuine needs, helping prospects and clients make timely decisions becomes crucial. The decision-making phase can be stressful, often representing significant change for them or their organization. It is our responsibility to guide them through this pivotal moment, easing their stress, and highlighting the remarkable benefits of choosing our services.
The answer is already inside your company – It’s LevelUP.
The answer is already inside your company – It’s LevelUP.
Case Study | "The Growth Project"
Bayada Home Health Care is a large, privately held home health agency headquartered in Moorestown, NJ with more than 23,000 employees working in 291 service offices in 21 states.
Since starting the company 40 years ago, the Founder and CEO, Mark Baiada, continues to be the steward for consistent, sustainable growth. “We believe it is our responsibility to strengthen the organizations financial foundation and to support its growth”. He retained The levelUP Group to assist with their “Growth Project” to increase revenue and profits with their underperforming offices.
The company is organized by: practice area, region, division, and individual office. Each office is responsible for serving a defined geographic area and is led by a Director who is ultimately responsible for the financial success of that office. Directors are encouraged to function in an entrepreneurial manner and implement their own marketing, outreach, and recruitment programs as needed
Shannon McCarson, Regional Director, who is responsible for three divisions, each with several frontline offices, described the current state before levelUp this way: “As I look across my region, the level of experience in my office Directors varies from very tenured to some relatively new. The level of strengths and opportunities for continued growth and education varied greatly based on things like their ability to develop and navigate a strategic business development plan.”
PHASES I & II
The levelUp program began with educational meetings for all Regional and Division Directors to explain the program, understand their concerns about the directors offices, and identify top performers on their teams. These top performers were not just excelling according to the metrics, but had built models for sustainable future growth.
PHASE III
The next step was working one-on-one with underperformers to help them visualize the desired state for their office in one year.
What was the revenue goal? How many employees would be required? What type of marketing would be needed? How would they recruit new employees?
In this decentralized, national company, levelingUP required individualizing goals for each specific location, basing those goals on geography, payer mix, state regulations, referral base, and competition.
For instance, the Director of a home health office located in a low-income neighborhood had far different challenges than one located in a rural environment, even though both were part of the same service division.
The former needed to identify opportunities to reduce its dependence on low-paying Medicaid patients; the latter to find ways to recruit employees who may not have access to reliable transportation.
After Directors articulated their desired future state for their office, they conducted both SWOT and gap analyses on their own capabilities and that of their staffs. This honest assessment helped them build individual growth plans for themselves and their team members to close the gaps in their performance and “levelUP”.
An early evaluation session with the company’s Regional and Division Directors identified two challenges with their frontline Directors: a lack of discipline in planning and implementing goals and poor time management.
After the gap analysis and goal setting, managers took their annual goals and broke them into quarterly, monthly, and even weekly goals. “Putting it on paper was key,” said one Division Director, Andrea Langone, who participated in the project. “You can have all these great ideas in your head, but if you don’t follow through, it does nothing for you. The timeline of small, attainable goals helped me work up to a large goal.”
PHASE IV
After goal setting, Directors had biweekly coaching calls with the levelUP staff to assess progress. Initially, some Directors tried to cancel those meetings because they had not completed their assignments, due to their demanding daily responsibilities.
Fortunately, the levelUP consultants were able to convince these Directors to take a closer look at how they were managing their time and priorities. With coaching, they identified days on which they were least burdened with “putting out fires” and could in fact devote time to working on their Growth Plans.
The levelUP staff also taught them to work in blocks of two hours; not 15 minutes. Soon, they learned to close their doors and turn off their phones for a couple of hours a week.
From the Trenches: Overcoming Mediocrity
Lucas had been with Bayada for 10 years. He was bright, understood the business, and ran his frontline office well. However, his office was stuck within a weekly revenue range that never seemed to change.
Lucas himself was trapped in mediocrity; he simply did not have the vision or confidence to move to the next level. In short, he was playing “not to lose,” rather than playing to win.
Disrupting this state required that Lucas first envision the possibilities—not the possibilities if his office continued operating in its current state; but the possibilities if it were operating in a perfect world, with the strongest manager possible.
The levelUP staff reminded Lucas of the early beginnings of the US space program when President Kennedy set the nation on fire with his promise to send a man to the moon and return him home safely.
Even though this goal was well beyond the abilities of the scientists at NASA at that time, Kennedy’s vision and his belief in them was so compelling that they were inspired to find a way.
The story fired Lucas’s imagination. He set a goal of growing the office’s revenues by 15 percent in a year. Then he broke that down into specific steps: How many employees would he need? How would he recruit and train them?
How would he improve his marketing to bring in clients? Then he broke those goals into quarterly, monthly, and weekly steps.
Lucas was extremely proud when he had the chance to present to his peers how he was able to systematically recreate growth. To date, he is maintaining a steady 16% growth rate from when he started.
The Challenges Of Being A New Director
The Queens, NY Bayada office was just nine months old when Angela Melillo took over as Director. It was her first time running an office, and she knew she had her work cut out for her.
Although the office had done well in the first and second quarter of 2014, it lost two major clients in the latter part of the year. “Losing those clients really hit us hard,” she said, impacting not just the bottom line, but employee morale, as well.
The office faced special challenges because it was located in a low-income area with a large Medicaid population.
Yet, the office did not accept Medicaid patients because of the extremely low reimbursement rate. In addition, the office specialized in pediatric care, which eliminated any Medicare reimbursement and limited commercial insurer opportunities. “I felt like the levelUp Project was what we needed to keep our momentum up,” Angela said.
She had never developed specific financial goals for the office, so completing the goal sheet that forms the cornerstone of the levelUp Project was eye opening. At the time, the office had revenues of about $25,000 a week. Encouraged by her mentor, Angela decided to push the envelope and set a goal of $50,000 a week by the end of the one-year project.
“It was fun to put it on paper and look at it and think about the clients I want to have and the billing I want to see,” she said. “It was like daydreaming.” Only in her case, the dream would become a reality. Within nine months, the office was billing nearly $60,000 a week.
The levelUp Project also helped Angela meet her second goal: team building. “We organized a half-day team- building exercise,” she said. “It really helped us get to know each other better.” The approach “was a huge, huge positive and really helped the office succeed.”
The levelUp Project “kept the whole team focused,” she said. Through weekly updates on the progress the office was making toward it goals, “They could all see that they were a part of it, and that made them want to do a good job.”
PHASE V
After the “Early Adopters” achieved revenue increases that far exceeded the objectives of The Growth Project, the levelUP staff was able to turn its attention to monthly calls with the Division Managers. Here the focus was on turning the lessons learned from The Growth Project into daily disciplines for continued revenue growth.
As one senior Director said: “We’ve been given tools, but if we’re not hardwired to use them and measure the results, we could go back to where we were before, just putting out fires.”
CONCLUSION
To date, 15 divisions with a total of 85 offices of this one billion dollar home health corporation have completed the levelUp Project. A majority of the divisions saw their revenues grow an average of 30+%, far exceeding the company-wide goal of 15%. Revenues in one division grew 31% in year one, and 42% in the following year.
Most participating divisions realized a return-on-investment between 85 to 270 %.
The sustainability of these results can be gauged by the comments of two members of The Growth Project Team. First Linda Siessel, COO at Bayada: “The levelUp Project helped our Directors really ‘dive in’ and see what they could do to make an impact,”
“It helped them become more thoughtful and strategic about making sure we assess our markets and resources carefully enough to plan accordingly.”
As the project progressed, “I saw a common thread of people thinking more deeply about their businesses and presenting and communicating those goals in a way that was very, very clear and realistic,” she said. She also noted that she was struck by the teamwork and support that developed among the office Directors.
Siessel concluded, “levelUp clearly made a very important contribution to the success of our Growth Project by keeping our directors focused and disciplined.
In addition, we have observed that the first divisions to adopt the levelUP improvements continue to use them today and appear to be hardwired for future growth.
Consultative Selling
Tap into the 75+ years of experience when working with the levelUP team. We learn your business to determine if it is a match. If it is, we bring your team(s) a proven model and process to change behavior that impacts the sales growth for your organization.
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