The Academy
Online Sales & Leadership courses
Helping Sales Professionals Advance their Skills
The Academy provides you with the right tools, strategy and techniques you need to be successful.
Learn how to shift limiting beliefs, build trust in yourself, your solution, and approach every interaction with confidence and certainty.
Be upskilled, inspired, and motivated.
Become the Trusted Advisor.
Take a sneak peek at what to expect inside the Academy
Including:
- Over 400 Expert-Led Videos
- Bite-sized lessons that can be applied immediately
- Practical frameworks, worksheets, scripts, and templates
- Develop the skills to influence with integrity
- Learn a solid framework on how to sell with integrity and authenticity
Key insights around selling
› Trusted Advisor
› Observing & Adapting
› The Customer is Not You
› What is Selling?
› Bringing the Sale Forward
› Questions
› Language
♦ Wow the client
♦ Sales 101
Outstanding customer experience
› Build rapport
› Trust
› Manage & exceed client expectations
› Listening
› Empathy
› Reading others
› Power of language
› Serving challenging customers
› Telephone skills
› Communication
› Engaging customers
› Beliefs
› Mindset
› Projection
› Accountability
› Educating & guiding
› Positive interactions
› Complaint handling
› Problem solving
› Emotional Intelligence
♦ Step into Sales with Confidence
The fundamentals of modern sales
› Communication
› Questions
› Phone techniques
› Commercial conversations
› Building
relationships
› Energy
› Mindset
› Listening
› Engaging customers
› Professional acumen
› Control the conversation
› Assertion
› How to sell
› Understanding the buyer
› Reading each situation
› Converting & closing
› Confidence & certainty
♦ Be the Authority
♦ Subject Matter Expert
Sophisticated selling techniques
› Trusted Advisor
› Mindset
› Be a business partner
› Commercially minded
› Beliefs
› Assumptions
› Exploration
› Questions
› Listening
› Objections
› Negotiation
› Business Development
› Account
› Development
› Presenting
› Upsell / Cross-sell
› Buyer behaviour
› Following up
› Converting & closing
♦ DISC Personality Types
♦ Speed read others
Understand Personality Styles styles to improve communication
Identify:
› Your own default style for increased self-awareness
Your colleagues’ & clients’ styles for better collaboration
Understand:
› Different ways people think, act, and communicate
› Speed-reading communication styles
› Adapting your approach for stronger impact and results (emails, meetings, presentations)
› Individual motivators (teams, clients)
♦ Creating Opportunities
♦ Driving Growth
Strategic Business Development for Account Growth & Acquisition
› Winning traits of successful business development professional
› Key steps for an actionable business development plan
› Prospecting & existing customer development
› Selling without ‘selling’
› Pre-suasion & influence: selling ‘ahead’
› Value propositions
› Qualifying prospects
› Follow up: purpose & timing
› Referrals: turning one into many
› Effective networking
› Building EI
› Linkedin optimisation
♦ Be a confident and successful negotiator
Skilfully handle ‘on-the-spot’, planned and complex negotiations
› How to plan a skilful negotiation
› Choosing the best strategy
› Using team strengths
› Spotting key tactics others use and practical counters that keep you in control
› Controlling the whole process to ensure you maintain a positive relationship
› Assertion
› 360 Negotiation immersion:
planning, openings, tactics, power shifts, persuasion, process, control, and relationship management skills
› Win Win
♦ Sales is helping
♦ Commercially minded
Be a specialist
› Exploration
› Questions
› Understanding
› Care factor
› Being the Trusted
Advisor
› Telephone skills
› Voice
› Certainty
› Customer Service
Excellence
› Commercially minded
› Listening
› Objections
› Educating
› Signing up
♦ Trusted Advisor
♦ Commercially minded
Educate your client
› Exploration
› Questions
› Understanding
› Care factor
› Being the Trusted
Advisor
› Telephone skills
› Voice
› Certainty
› Customer Service Excellence
› Commercially minded
› Listening
› Objections
› Educating
› Signing up
♦ Stand out
♦ Commercial smarts
♦ Read the customer
Wow your client
› Welcome your client
› Value
› Emotional
Purchase
› The vision
› Why your store?
› Customer experience
› Expertise and excellence
› The level of care
› Wow factor
› Customer profile
LUXURY RETAIL
› Extension of the brand
› Passion
› Elevate the brand
♦ Convert on each call
♦ Presell
Subject matter expert
› Being the Trusted Advisor
› Exploration
› Speed to enquiry
› What the client wants
› Understanding others
› Rapport
› What to say
› Qualifying
› Building
Relationships
› Pricing
› Call out fee
› Competition
♦ Getting the best out of your team
Know how people tick
› Motivating different personality styles
› Advanced people management – speed reading behaviours
› Leveraging and managing team dynamics: strengths and differences
› Easily grow and develop your team
› Adapting your communication style for better relationships and outcomes
♦ Put forward your centre as the centre of choice
Centre of Choice
› Tours that convert
› Trusted Advisor
› Observing & Adapting
› The Customer is not You
› Questions
› Language
› Transfering Rapport
› Director of First Impresssions
Simon McKenzie
National Sales Manager Burwell
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
We have just had two days with Charmaine, it was dynamic, motivational, and highly useful. She spent time with me and the other leaders...
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to find out how she can best tailor a program to suit our needs. The team of 18 were from across Australia and the training was to upskill as well as bring a universal methodology and common language. Many of the team had years and years of experience and they stepped forward to say it was the best training they had ever had.
She certainly brings a positive energy and makes it interesting, creating lots of mini workshop moments and group work as well as inserting material on NLP, Extended Disc and other modalities to do with how we think and build trust. Reading the room and changing it up – she kept our interest the whole time.
Overall, we see ourselves as Trusted Advisors so this approach aligned with our values - and importantly the team all emerged positive and confident with a clear plan and process. Thanks Charmaine!
Simon McKenzie, National Sales Manager, Burwell
Tom Pospieszny
National People & Culture Manager
Aidacare
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
At Aidacare we believe in our customers having quality products and receiving exceptional experiences with our team...
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With that we take nurturing and developing our team seriously. They are the coal face of our business. For over 6 years we have partnered with Charmaine from Smarter Selling who is a stand out trainer, facilitator and expert Sales, Leadership, Mindset and Communication expert.
Before the program: The thorough pre work (her team visiting our branches, engaging with our leaders about focus areas, outcomes and where to bring value) demonstrated the high care factor and attention to detail.
The program: she delivered 3 exceptional, productive, practical, relevant days across 3 states and 150 people.
Content: The carefully crafted tailored Aidacare program covered a range of key skills to our leaders, brand managers and teams.
Style: This was full participation! Over 50 team members in each state were full immersed, asking questions, getting into groups, work shopping and doing lots of fun role plays to put into practice the mornings lessons.
Charmaine’s obsession: is how people learn, she knows exactly how to get attention, keep it, get you open to a point, buy into it and then practice it. It was masterful.
Outcomes: you can tell by these things how the team react, they were keen to get ‘back into the room’ at the breaks, were lapping it all up, writing lots of notes, having fun and getting tons of value.
I would say it was outstanding.
And now we are on the Academy, which I saw 18 months ago and loved – a full suite of online tools, courses, podcasts, downloadable templates, interactive section – it’s a true masterpiece in enabling the leaders to extend on their learning and use it in their branches.
Overall, Charmaine and her team are kind down to earth people, very easy to deal with, always positive and looking for solutions, professional and certainly practice what they preach.
Tom Pospieszny
National Manager People & Culture
Aidacare
Adrienne Jerram
Director of Marketing and Customer Experience
SDN Children's Services
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
We've worked with Charmaine since 2017 to support our services, as her approach is around being...
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your authentic self and engaging with families with integrity. She has years of experience in training people to support families, how to communicate effectively and how to be a trusted advisor.
The training covered key connection points, mindset, projection, assumptions, bias, language, intent, reading others and adapting to the families. Charmaine ensures that it’s all about the family and discusses how each touchpoint can wow and excite a family about the centre.
Charmaine’s superpower is bringing passion and excitement to the role we play, keeping everyone engaged, keeping it on point, practical, and relevant and weaving relevant stories. Within an hour you can see a shift in their attitude and intent.
Adrienne Jerram
Frequently Asked Questions
What level do I start at?
We recommend that beginners in sales (with 0 – 5 year’s experience) start at the Sales Essentials level.
More experienced people tend to start with the more advanced program, Sales Accelerator.
How is this online sales program different to other online courses?
Firstly, it’s been written by a sales director from the lens of someone who needs to sell. So, it’s short, easy to follow and practical.
The trainer has over 35 years of sales and leadership experience, and is an internationally acclaimed sales expert on panels and keynotes.
The material is modern, incorporating the latest and proven successful sales techniques .
The delivery is upbeat and lively, with bite–sized videos, and activities to keep you engaged.
What’s your philosophy?
Our sales mantra is that “sales is helping”. Stop trying to sell AT people. Instead, distinguish yourself and establish yourself as The Trusted Advisor and bring value to your clients.
What type of businesses does this training suit?
Our programs suit all businesses. We have a full range of diverse industry sectors training their teams with The Academy.
(i.e financial, medical, healthcare, construction, Aged Care, NDIS, small business/sole traders, large corporates, consultants, engineers, architects, retails, manufacturing, and more.)
Is this online program for individuals or corporations?
Our online programs are perfectly suitable for either individual or team training.
If you’d like to book a large team in to our training, please reach out on the contact us page to discuss the details.
Is it easy to follow?
It’s extremely easy to do the program. It has been structured in such a way that is easy and intuitive to follow.
The program design and set up is based on the most effective learning methods: suggestion would be to listen to each video (around 3 minutes, succinct and memorable), then ponder on the content. Then adapt and translate the tips into plotting how you would apply this to your role – jotting your answers into the online notebook and templates.
The content is designed in such a way you can progress at your own pace.
How do I save my answers?
You can save your answers in two ways:
1/ you can order a hardcopy, spiral bound, Smarter Selling workbook to write your answers into, or
2/ you can type your answers directly into your online academy portal notebook, which you can print out at any time
How long is the course?
That depends on the program and your study approach.
The online courses range in ‘duration’, from the material and number of video tutorials (240 to over 450 hours) as relevant to the corresponding one or two-day workshop plus all the related downloads, eBooks, guides, podcasts and more.
Some people get instantly hooked on the inspirational program style and complete the course in just a few days, while others like to pace it out over a month or two, or three.
Either way, the online structure is flexible to your timing and routine.
What is the difference between your face to face programs and the online course?
The online and face-to-face course topics are identical.
The difference lies in the delivery and learning method.
The face-to-face, in person training is a dynamic group workshop, where participants network and engage in fun and practical scenarios with other sales professionals – learning best techniques in real time with the trainer.
The online programs are cleverly designed where each topic is presented in bite-size video lessons, that you can listen to, ponder, and write down notes to review later on.
The online programs includes a few bonus lessons.
Do people do both online and face-to-face?
Yes, people commonly combine the online and face-to-face programs, in either order.
Some like to start the online course, at their own pace get familiar with the skills and techniques, before joining a live workshop. This enables them to practice and evolve those skills amongst other sales professionals and the trainer in an interactive setting.
Or, by doing the face-to-face workshop first, the online courses are typically embraced as a valuable resource to build on, ‘refresh’, and ‘reinforce’ the lessons learnt to develop best practice.
Is it best to do the course over a few days or over time in bite-sized chunks?
Whatever works for you. In our experience, creating and sticking to a regular, scheduled study time is key, that learning consistency always generates successful results.
Is there a mapped structure to complete the course?
Each course is laid out in a logical sequence and series of modules and lessons which you can tick off as you complete them, enabling you to keep track of your progress.