Building Business Acumen® for Sales
Outperform everyone.
You need your sales team to deliver profitable results. Yet most buyers are fed up, tired of reps who don't understand what's driving their business. Building Business Acumen training (BBA) helps sales teams understand how all the moving parts of a company work together to optimize profitable results for your company and customers.
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Accelerate sales cycles
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Achieve alignment
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Increase margins
Did you know…
Only 20% of salespeople are successful in reaching executives' expectations and creating value.
And if that's not bad enough...
Go do some homework. Studies show that 64% of reps don't understand your industry, 76% don't understand your business, and 78% don't know how to help you. Uh, that's pretty bad!
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Your solution awaits...
Building Business Acumen
Your customized Building Business Acumen sales course will establish your team as essential partners to your customers. They'll learn what to listen for, which questions to ask, and how to decipher tricky financial information and ever-changing strategies to win business.
Understand key business drivers and financial statements
Understand how to iterate ideas to improve the return of investment
Achieve alignment with key stakeholders
Package ideas and their financial outcomes into well-structured business cases
In the end, your team will leverage their business acumen and be revered for their growth ideas and their ability to help customers succeed.
Develop business savvy representatives…
As easy as 1, 2, boom!
A great strength of Acumen Learning is that we customize our content to every individual client and to each audience. That means, at a minimum, we use your financial statements, and your customers', to teach strategy, finance, and business acumen in your company's voice, and we use the exercises that you choose to ensure direct application of the concepts in each participant’s role. And it's a process that can be measured in weeks, not months. Boom!
Part I
The 5 Business Drivers
Your customers are making business decisions, driving toward their goals, and measuring financial results using 5 business drivers. Leveraging these drivers will speed up your sales cycle.
Part II
Navigating Numbers
The 5 Business Drivers are present in any company’s financial statements. This gives them real-world applicability, so that you can quickly move from the “What?” to the “So What?” to the “Now What?”
Part III
Acumen in Action
You'll get tools, activities, and follow-up resources to help you leverage company and industry data, take the lead on opportunities, and apply your new skills... not just once... but throughout your sales career.
Hear from participants...
Forward-thinking sales teams across every industry rely on Acumen Learning to transform their people into out-performers.
Enterprise Account Executive
Kevin and team did an outstanding job with us for the Business Acumen training. Very insightful and at a good pace. We did it virtually and it went off without a hitch. Highly recommended and thanks to Kevin again!
Adam MacVay • 2nd
Vice President of Business Development
Was thoroughly impressed with the content of this program. Grateful Ben Cook's delivery was different from several of my college professors. As a result, the group had fun learning and was absolutely engaged. Topics that many would consider intimidating were spelled out in simple terms. Solid course for anyone seeking additional professional development.
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We know your customers…
Our consultants have worked directly with over 200 different companies and have conducted research on all of their top competitors. This gives them an unparalleled perspective into a wide range of industries. What are the main strategies for driving growth in retail? How are hospitals navigating new industry regulations? Who’s leading in the energy sector? We know the answers to these questions and more, and we’ll give your sales teams the tools they need to become similarly sophisticated.
Traditional sales training = traditional selling
When clients start to open up and share information, it’s usually information about their business. Too frequently, key metrics and strategic challenges sound more like Latin to salespeople than English. So to avoid looking like the only person in the room who’s not tracking, salespeople with low business acumen turn the conversation to something that’s more comfortable to talk about: their solution’s features and benefits, or worse: golf. And when the sale is lost, you’re left wondering why your investment in sales training can’t seem to break free of industrial-era tactics.
Too often companies emphasize soft skills, like negotiation and
resolving objections — skills that focus on how to talk to customers — but neglect developing business acumen. Say it ain't so! Unfortunately, it's true.
Business acumen is the ultimate skill. Reps who speak the language of business outperform their peers, they instinctively know when to talk to customers, why to talk to customers, and what to talk to customers about.
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Customers want a partner, not a pitch…
Today’s customers want to do business with people who are more consultative and savvier when it comes to business. Someone who can help them see the path forward. A partner who brings actionable, data-driven recommendations to the table. In other words, your best customers don't want to talk with salespeople, they want to talk to business people who just so happen to be in sales.
As such, your training will have a particular focus on customer and industry analysis. Participants will be taught how to quickly analyze a customer from a strategic and financial perspective and size up a business opportunity to make sure it's profitable for both. They’ll see, likely for the first time, how your company's success is intertwined with your customers' success which will help them develop account strategies based on insights, trends, and priorities.
Further, representatives will learn how to look at their deals through the lens of decision-makers in different functional roles and advise them on the impact their purchases will have on their own KPIs and strategic priorities.
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