From the sales conversation to company leadership. Tailored development for teams and managers. Experience since 2001, multinational clients and a specialisation in pharmaceutical companies.
Sales skills in practice
Sales Team Development
A sales team meeting ends with an agreement: everyone will hold more customer meetings. A month later, activity is up, but proposals are still awaiting a decision. You need to understand where deals are stalling and what the team can change. Sales team development at ED Development links sales skills to real customer situations, with support from sales managers.
Turning sales goals into action
What sales team development involves
Sales team development connects sales skills with everyday work. It starts with your sales objectives, the situations your team faces with customers and the support managers provide.
We design business management programmes for sales teams and their managers, working with HR, sales managers and marketing managers. We tailor the content to your products, customers and leadership expectations.
Elena Demeková has experience in developing sales teams and their managers, alongside projects focused on feedback as a leadership tool. When designing a programme, we therefore define how managers will support salespeople in putting new approaches into practice and what they will base their feedback on.
Our work together
The skills we develop in your sales team
We choose the content based on situations where your team needs a different approach. We address shared priorities alongside the needs of individual salespeople.
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Sales opportunities
Managing sales opportunities
We develop salespeople’s ability to confirm customer requirements, identify decision-makers and agree next steps. We also identify gaps in the information they have. Sales Call Model implementation helps establish a shared approach to these conversations.
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Communicating value
Making the case and handling objections
Salespeople connect the value of their offer with what the customer needs to achieve. When handling objections, they explore what lies behind the concern and prepare a response backed by relevant information.
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Negotiation
Negotiating in a competitive market
We help salespeople prepare by defining their objectives, limits and conditions for an agreement. They distinguish between decisions they can make independently and those that require internal agreement. They assess concessions in the context of the overall client relationship.
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Feedback
Helping managers give useful feedback
Managers learn to give feedback on specific behaviour, explain its impact and identify the next step for improvement. They also develop ways to support salespeople in working independently with customers. Management coaching can build on this work.
Common sales team challenges
When sales team development becomes a priority
The need often arises from a gap between the sales plan and how the team handles opportunities, proposals and follow-up conversations.
- The team holds more customer meetings, but sales opportunities are not progressing.
- Proposals are sent before the salesperson confirms the customer’s requirements and decision criteria.
- A conversation about the solution’s value quickly turns into a negotiation over a discount.
- Salespeople respond to objections by restating their case instead of clarifying the customer’s concerns.
- Performance depends on experienced individuals, but their approaches are not shared across the team.
- During joint customer visits, the manager takes over the conversation while the salesperson remains an observer.
- There is no specific follow-up task or feedback after development activities.
- New sales priorities are not reflected in the team’s day-to-day planning.
How we work
How your sales team development programme works
Together with sales leadership and HR or L&D, we agree priorities, managers’ roles and how to assess changes in the team’s work.
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Training needs analysis
A training needs analysis combines your commercial brief with observation of day-to-day work. Depending on your needs, we use interviews with managers, joint customer visits or observation of salespeople at work. We can also design a Development Centre if required.
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Designing your tailored programme
We select the skills and situations to focus on. We agree team and individual objectives and prepare assignments based on your products and customers.
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Putting new approaches into practice
Participants have 3 to 5 weeks between modules to work on their own sales opportunities. We support them through coaching or mentoring and review their experiences of applying the approaches.
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Certification and evaluation
We conclude the programme with certification and an assessment of the agreed skills. Together with managers, we evaluate how the new approaches are being used and identify where the team needs further support.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- since1993Management experience
- 25+Years of business development
- 60+Multinational clients
Didn’t find your answer?Elena Demeková, CEO and Senior Consultant
What does a sales team development programme cover?
Depending on the team’s needs, the programme covers planning the approach to sales opportunities, clarifying customer requirements, communicating value, handling objections and negotiating. It may also include feedback and support from managers. We select the content based on where salespeople need to change their approach and what the business and its customers expect of them.
How can we identify why our sales team is missing its targets?
Review results alongside specific deals and the team’s working practices. Check whether the cause is a skills gap, unclear priorities or the conditions in which the team sells. The CIPD approach to training needs analysis starts with business requirements and people’s current capabilities. At ED Development, we explore these factors before selecting the programme content.
Can experienced salespeople benefit from development?
Yes, when it addresses situations that are relevant to them now. These might include more demanding negotiations, changes to their offering or conversations involving several decision-makers. We build on their experience and work with their own deals. We select both foundational and advanced topics based on the initial analysis.
How are sales managers involved in the programme?
They help set priorities, provide context for specific sales situations and follow up with feedback between modules. They agree with each salesperson which approach to use and the situation in which they will review it together. We tailor their involvement to the brief and the way they currently lead the team.
How do we evaluate the impact of sales team development?
Agree the criteria before the programme begins. Look at behaviours such as confirming customer requirements, preparing for negotiations or agreeing a specific next step. Assessing how skills are applied at work distinguishes behaviour change from participant satisfaction. We assess sales results in the context of the market, your customer portfolio and conditions beyond the programme’s control.
How long does a sales team development programme take?
The overall duration depends on your objectives, the number of modules and each team’s needs. There are 3 to 5 weeks between modules for participants to apply the approaches with customers. We plan the schedule after the needs analysis so participants can try out new skills and bring specific examples from their work to the next session.
