Get the skills and knowledge you need to build a successful and high-performing sales team! Learn sales training techniques and more.
January 3, 2023
With a high-performing sales team, the sky is the limit for your company’s growth potential.
A well-oiled sales machine lets you focus on serving your clients while the clients roll in like clockwork.
This article will cover sales training techniques and how to build an effective sales team training program, no matter your budget.
There are five overall methods for training a sales team, and we’ll look at each below.
In-person or online sales courses are the first go-to resources for many business owners looking to build their sales team's skills. Programs like Action Selling, SPIN Selling, Sandler Training, and RAIN Selling: Foundations of Consultative Selling are some of the classics.
There are various formats, from pre-recorded video courses to webinars, interactive formats, and one-on-one mentorship from experts. In addition, you can choose programs with quizzes and check-ins along the way to measure your team's progress through the training.
A sales consultant will save you time on "reinventing the wheel" and bring their years of experience to your challenges. They'll bring an outside perspective, zero in on your team's weaknesses, and train them for success.
Additionally, because a sales consultant works with many different companies, they'll be able to see where your company fits in the market's bigger picture. These insights will generate valuable ideas to improve your sales organization and even your sales leaders.
In-person seminars are a great way to bring the team together, build camaraderie, and take a productive break from work.
When searching for a sales workshop provider, get answers to the following questions:
There are a lot of slickly marketed — and overpriced — sales seminars out there, so if a provider isn’t willing or able to answer these questions, look elsewhere.
Attending a sales conference is an excellent way for your team to keep up to date on the latest trends and strategies in sales. Look for a program that offers a mix of roundtable discussions, keynotes, and workshops.
As your team grows, you need a go-to place for them to get answers to their sales questions. That way, they can self-serve their training, and you won't lose sales because a rep is waiting for a meeting with you or a sales manager to get the answers they need. This doesn't mean you should be unavailable, but repeat questions are more efficient to answer with an internal company wiki or training documents.
There’s a misconception that sales involve trickery, like a magic show that attempts to “pull one over” on the audience. Or that sales is a robotic equation with repeated scripts: “Input X here, Y comes out there.”
In truth, the right attitude, honest intentions, and empathy will get you farther than tricks and hacks. In that vein, here are some techniques to practice:
In essence, you train sales skills by focusing on these areas:
To structure the best sales training programs, ensure that the daily schedule provides a mix of information intake, shadowing, role-play, and feedback for trainees. Here’s what a schedule could look like:
Run through the seven questions below to assess the areas your team needs to work on:
If you're a startup with a small sales team, pre-made sales courses combined with short, in-house roleplaying practice sessions may be ideal. As you grow, paying an outside consultant to come in or sending your team to conferences will make more sense.
As part of onboarding, every sales rep should go through training on your company's sales process. Additionally, you should have regular refreshers and updates when you make changes.
Your sales process should clearly describe your sales team's steps, tactics, and strategies to find, qualify, nurture, follow up with, and close leads.
Standardizing your sales process will ensure that every salesperson follows the process correctly and doesn’t stray off course. Lack of standardization can lead to problems down the line, like sales reps overpromising what your company can deliver and landing you angry clients.
Ensure the training for your sales teams includes the following:
Failing to provide ongoing sales training is one of the top mistakes companies make, resulting in lower performance and higher turnover as time goes on. Therefore, it's critical to provide continuous training so your team can keep honing their skills and become expert salespeople.
You don't necessarily have to spend tens of thousands of dollars if you're in the beginning stages of building your sales organization. You can take advantage of free sales training like The Art of Sales by Northwestern or HubSpot Academy.
If you have a budget, consider some of the following options:
Try to find a way to provide training in different formats, e.g., text, audio, and video.
Make sure to teach your salespeople strategies that relate directly to their roles. Here are some examples:
To create effective, role-specific training, ensure every role has clearly defined responsibilities. For every responsibility, develop a piece of training that addresses it.
The ideal sales training combines the time-tested strategies that work with the specific tactics YOUR business needs to close more sales.
That’s what The Sales Connection specializes in. Our Seven-Figure Closer Sales Training System streamlines your sales team’s training, removes outdated, pushy tactics, and levels up the performance of all your team members.
Learn more about how we train the world's top 1.3% of sales talent.
Kayvon Kay
Kayvon has over two decades of experience working with high-level closers and perfecting his sales methodologies. He has earned the title of Canada’s #1 pharmaceutical sales representative and continues to share his expertise as a keynote speaker and through his multi-million-dollar coaching program.
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