Plastics & Chemicals

Effective sales and product training will drive revenue from high-margin products and value-added services (especially digital). It will place greater emphasis on industry influencers/specifiers and non-price decision criteria. It will also help refocus from products to ecosystems, e.g. the circular economy or precision farming. All that will require a shift in sales behavior and the ability to sell through insight, influence, and trust.

Your sales team will learn advanced negotiation tactics to resist price pressure and maintain margins. Sales training will arm them with the commercial acumen to understand the financial impact of the decisions that they make. They will also build the proactivity and skill needed to move away from “Friendly Helper” status in order to maximize the share of the wallet.

You’ll be able to improve your sales team’s forecasting ability and yield management skills. Training your sales managers in pipeline management and forecasting will be necessary. That will help you make the most of flexibility in manufacturing capacity, including JVs and plants with modular capacity.

In situations of uncertainty, you will need the ability to transform product and service portfolios quickly in response to PESTEL factors and changing customer needs. Sales training will enable your salespeople to uncover and sell against a wide range of customer needs and have the business acumen to work outside their functional comfort zone.

Your sales team and sales leaders will be equipped with the skills to sell effectively to procurement. That will enable them to defend value against sophisticated techniques like “best of the best” models, while also understanding and “selling against” the specific needs of procurement executives.