Under the tab "Consultative Agri-Selling," we defined the two categories of selling skills as follows:

• Sales Strategy* - the planning and preparation that sales people carry out before meeting face to face with the customer.
• Sales Tactics - the skills and practices that are utilized when meeting and working directly with customers.

CRI's "Principles of Professional Selling" program provides a 12-module training course with primary focus on "tactical" selling techniques.

Two training options are available if you wish to utilize the PPS sales training program to upgrade the tactical selling skills of your people.

• First, CRI will provide a facilitator training workshop that will enable your company's sales managers or supervisory staff to conduct the training over a period of several weeks in prescheduled small group, face-to-face discussion meetings.
• Or, your staff can join sales personnel from other organizations around the country and complete the PPS program on their own time schedule, utilizing computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) over the Internet. The author of the Principles of Professional Selling training program will facilitate the web based learning process. (Click the sidebar to the left, labeled "E-Learning Resources" for more information on CMC.)

Here are some of the key benefits of the PPS sales training program:

The training is delivered in chewable chunks: Since the 12-modules are covered in one through two-hour segments spread over several weeks, participants can fully absorb the material and allow it to sink in.

Incorporates proven principles of adult learning: The experiential learning and discussion process permits new as well as tenured sales people to learn together, and have fun as they compare experiences and share ideas.

The format provides opportunity for application and practice: If new learning is not immediately applied back on the job... it will be lost. A series of relevant learning activities follow each module which helps make the learning last.

Refreshers available for monthly review: The Professional Selling letter pro-vides an ongoing series of monthly refreshers (each corresponding to one of the 12 modules) and enables sales teams to have regular opportunity revisit the PPS topics over the course of the year.