Ever thought that a polished, revenue-driving sales training program is the remedy to your steadily plummeting revenue? With this in mind, you might need to re-evaluate how your current sales team operates and whether they might need a shot in the arm
If your salesteam needs sales training, you’ll need more than a manual and a few internal workshops. If you’re used to unorthodox sales team training methods, your sales strategies may end up being an effort in vain.
Does it surprise you that there’s no room for sales flop in a competitive sales landscape? If it does, start focusing on recurring training sessions that stick with your team long after the training sessions are over. Studies have shown that ignoring dynamic and ongoing training and reinforcement means that knowledge gained in training diffuses in less than 90 days.
What Is Sales Training?
Sales training is the process of continuously improving your sales skills or those of your sales personnel. It entails honing the knowledge, attributes, and ability that enables you to maximise sales. For optimal efficiency, sales training is best perceived and presented as a change management approach.
Still, Sales training can be defined as any initiative whose intention is to empower salespeople to master concepts, attitudes, and expertise to influence potential customers to make positive buying decisions.
If properly administered, sales training courses provide tools and techniques that enable sales teams to know what they need to do to present their products persuasively. It makes it easy for you, the seller, to make your offer to buyers in a way that will make them understand and respond repeatedly.
Sales training takes different formats in practice. It can be eLearning, on-site sessions, or virtually. It’s important to realise that these formats can be enriched with sales technology. This ushers on-demand access to interactive learning content that can include virtual quizzes or video-based learning material. Don’t forget that businesses that leverage technology are over 50% more effective at sales and growth.
Top Offline Sales Training Courses in Singapore
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Graduate Certificate in Sales Management
This course has been designed to offer professional sales management training based on the sales techniques used by some of the most successful brands that you know. It’s designed to equip sales professionals with the right mindset, skills, and tools that will be working to ensure that they’re able to close more deals and attract more customers.
Duration: 3 Days
Course Fees: $3500 per student
Venue: The Regent
Here’s the link to this course.
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Effective Selling Skills by Marketing Institute of Singapore (MIS)
Successful salespeople don’t just focus on selling. Their main priority is generating genuine interest in their products or services. You need effective sales skills to pull this off. Throughout this course, you’ll have salespeople walking you through the process of selling. You’ll also get to practise your sales skills for professionalism and confidence.
Duration: 1 day, 9 to 5
Course fees: $705
Venue: marketing Institute of Singapore.
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Sales Mastery and Success
Salespeople have to deal with an aggressive market. It’s stiff competition for everyone involved. It’s a 2-day sales training course that seeks to empower salespeople with effective negotiation, presentation, and sales skills. It’s a course that will elevate you from an average salesperson to an outstanding one. Its main focus is to give salespeople the right grounding from which they can build their sales expertise. The program is designed to use the same, field-tested marketing strategy being used by some of the world’s best performing brands.
Course Duration: 2 Days
Course Fees: Call (65) 6823 1260 to find out
Email: Training@trillion.com.sg
Here’s the link to this course.
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Strategic Sales Training Programme
You’ve heard about the adage, “facts tell, but stories sell.” This course was created based on this simple concept – selling through storytelling. Throughout the course, you’ll be taught about how to use stories to clearly articulate the value of your brand or the products or services you’re offering. You’ll be taught about how to trawl around for the best stories being narrated by your best customers so you can share them with your new customers and inspire trust.
Course venue: 261 Waterloo Street, #03 – 27 Waterloo Centre, Singapore 180261
For information on Course fees, duration, and other details, kindly use this phone number: (65) 9822 7132
Here’s the link to this course.
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How to Win and Close Deals
This course seeks to empower sales professionals with the ability to handle different interacting situations effectively. Powerful closing skills are vital towards creating deals that can lead to higher earning and much-needed revenue for your business. It seeks to empower sales professionals with deal closing capabilities and the ability to handle the resistance they encounter in their sales process.
Who’s it for? Directors, sales executives, and managers with sales and marketing functions. Any individual that wants to close more deals.
Here’s the link to this course.
Are Online Sales Courses Right For You?
Are you looking for a remedy to level up your sales performance? Do you think that conventional sales training programs aren’t doing much to help? Then, you’ll need online sales training courses.
Top Online Sales Training Courses You Can Enroll Today
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Sales Fired: B2B Sales & Business Development Course by Skillshare
This skillshare class walks you through the basics of mastering the selling process. It teaches you how to build a scalable sales process that can help you start closing new clients more consistently. They’ll also teach you about the psychology that drives customers to proceed with a purchase and all the things that a product more desirable.
In the end, you’d have learned how to write your own pitches and sales scripts that turn “maybes” into “yes.”
Price: Free
Who’s it for? entrepreneurs, start-ups, freelancers, and creatives.
Here’s the link to this course.
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B2B Sales by LinkedIn
B2B Sales is a course created to help learners master the art of meeting new prospects, handling a typical sales day, dealing with rejections, and closing sales. It’s a handy course for new salespeople and anyone building a sales team. After you complete the course, LinkedIn will award you with a certificate of completion, which will be automatically added to your LinkedIn profile.
Price: $24.99
Who’s it for: Beginners, anyone building a sales team
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Sales Skills Online Course by Acudemy
The course starts by taking you through the basic rules governing sales people. It gives you an overview of what’s expected of you as a salesperson. It also teaches you about the right mindset to adopt, how to handle gatekeepers, how to cold call, and so on. You’ll also learn about how to set up meetings, the right questions to ask potential clients, and how to use presentation guides.
Price: Not indicated. You’ll have to email them to find out.
Who’s it for? Anyone interested in sales, especially beginners.
Here’s a link to this course.
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High Impact Selling by Kellogg School of Management
This course focuses on the key techniques that have been so fundamental in propelling some of the most successful brands in the world. It’s based on the idea that the process of selling a product is just as important as the process of developing it. The class commences by dishing out some solid pointers on how to identify your target audience and understand their requirements.
Price: $1, 950
Who’s it for? Sales professionals who are part of a sales team. Those managing a sales team.
Any professional who wants to sharpen their sales skills and become more confident and efficient in selling.
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Sales Machine: Sales Training B2B Sales Master Course on Udemy
Udemy has so many sales training courses that you can enrol for today, but this one stands out for so many obvious reasons. It’s a course to sign up for if you’re looking to understand some of the proven sales methodologies that successful companies use. Through the course, you’ll be taught about body language, master tonality, pitching products, handling rejections, and so forth.
Price: $194.99
Who’s it for? Sales professionals who want to add new skills and polish their sales skills.
Here’s a link to this course.
Sales Training Programs
Sales training can assume different topics and courses. For instance, Sales training curriculums should cover the broader spectrum from the entire sales process, finding prospects, claiming sales opportunities to growing portfolios, and managing the sales team.
Types of Sales Training Programmes
Whether you need B2B sales training or B2C sales training, there’s an abundance of programs and their providers. These classes offer support to different sales area with examples that include but not limited to:
- Foundational Sales
- Customer Experience and Sales
- Account Management Sales
- Mobile Sales Training
- Retail Sales Training
- Channel Management Sales
- Advanced Sales
- Sales Coaching Training
Some Sales training topics that drive core sales competencies include:
- Sales Management
- Sales Coaching
- Consultative Selling
- Sales Presentations
- Sales Opportunity Management
- Sales Prospecting
- Sales Negotiation Seller
- Productivity and Accountability
- Strategic and Key Account Management
Additional Sales Training Programs Topics Explained
Other sales training topics that are worth investing in can include:
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Coaching a Prospect with New Perceptions
This is sales training that seeks to impart salespeople with the knowledge to lead a customer’s mind to a novel, undiscovered and diverse solutions that address their pain points.
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Collaboration Skills
The topic enables a salesperson to use the collaborative approach to make buying between a buyer and the seller easier.
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Value and ROI Communication
The topic can assist salespeople in telling the stories that inform prospects about what they can achieve by choosing their products/services.
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Active Listening Skills
The topic seeks to empower the sales team to forge strong listening skills. It’s these skills that help them to learn more about prospects, their challenges, and motivations.
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Identifying Prospect’s Actual Needs
The topic will help a salesperson to get to the core needs of a customer, how to address them, and position a given brand.
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Creating a Convincing Solution
It seems clear from this topic that a salesperson will gain knowledge on how to impress prospects with their proposal and close deals quickly.
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Creating a Personal Value Proposition
This topic helps the salesperson to understand what they represent and their core values. If the personal value is established, it helps to build customer rapport
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Sales Messaging
Helps learners to create persuasive sales messages indicating what they do, who they represent, and the benefits they offer to prospects.
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Social Media
Salespeople can leverage the topic to optimise better their social media platforms including LinkedIn/Facebook to find new leads using proactive selling strategies
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Lead Generation
Salespersons can learn from this topic how to innovate and idealise new sales opportunities.
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Telephone Sales Training
The topic enables sales teams to research, approach, and appeal to cold prospects using the telephone.
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Networking
Helps sales teams to acknowledge the power of networking and how to leverage it to find new leads from new collaborations.
The Value of Sales Training
Carefully designed sales training programs build techniques that help businesses to tap cold leads, identify opportunities, and close deals, not to mention they help to build rapport with prospects.
Today, organisations still struggle to gain more sales. If your sales function is market-driven, then it becomes easy to generate sales with mind-blowing profitability. Yes, marketing can take a more distinguished role in your business. Still, sales should command an equally significant position whether the sales team is simply linear or a cross-functional team.
But what’s the value of sales training? Some benefits are listed below.
Sales training drives the performance of the sales team and increases sales volume through:
- Polishing the sales teams to get the most out of every prospect’s interaction
- Instructing sales teams on a dynamic selling process that empowers them to leverage top selling skills based on a customer’s shopping behavior/triggers
- Enhancing sales team capacity to execute corporate-validated selling tactics
Sales training advances customer relations by:
- Enabling salespersons to understand a customer’s primary buying motivations
- Helping the sales team to handle customer pains and objections effectively
- Eventually, sales training advances the sales agenda by teaching sales teams to identify and capitalise on “hot leads” quickly.
Sales training reduces sales personnel turnover by:
- Orienting and polishing new personnel faster
- Empowering proficient salespeople to succeed with new opportunities
- Also, it must be remembered that Sales training cuts training costs by optimising Sales team training time and allocated training resources
Benefits of Online Sales Training
Increasingly, businesses are going the online sales training way. Maybe it’s the affordability or the user-friendly technology involved in between. But did you know that online sales training programs come with benefits that traditional training methods cannot surpass? Here are some:
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It’s Flexible
In essence, Virtual training programs, including sales training, can be accessed from any smart device of choice. Even without congregating in a physical conference room setting, your sales team can learn and internalise on the go. You can leverage individual courses that meet business-specific needs.
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Easy to Manage
Online sales training courses and programs need not be complicated. They don’t require you or your salespeople to go through a human resource to get access. You only log into a training platform and Voila.
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It’s Certifiable
You probably don’t know that online retail sales programs come with reporting and tracking applications. Now you know. If so, these virtual courses can allow managers to follow up on the performance of the team during and after training. It’s possible to sneak-preview the efficacy of every course provided, and it can be broken down to individual branches or stores.
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It Ensures Consistency
Through online sales training, your team gets to learn through video and micro learning content. This ensures that learners read from the same script. Your team enjoys up to date sales insights regardless of location or time. Additionally, it makes it possible to standardise your training programs and offer the exact courses.
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Cost-Effective
Online sales training is cost-effective. If you compare that with the traditional, trainer-led classroom learning, you’ll realise that the virtual option will save you a heap of resources: no more speaker fee, stationery, accommodation, or transport expenses.
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Ideal for Millennials
Millennials and Generation Z love interactive learning sessions over the internet. They seem to have a penchant for savvy gamification and leaderboard features. Also, they love feedback after training. Since this format involves online report cards, Millennials can see how they fared and use that to retain or internalise the training materials.
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It’s Scalable
Arguably, online sales training is the only format that lets you train sales staff simultaneously in different locations. With this model, trainees absorb new knowledge as it emerges. You cannot achieve that with trainers on-site.
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Pace Yourself
You cannot absorb all the materials in a sales course all at once. Enter online training, and you can hack it piece by piece. The thing is, learning is controlled by the individual trainee and not an instructor.
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It’s Data-Driven
With the right insights and curse material, your sales team is likely to improve performance. Online sales training gives your sales team the lowdown on what courses can work. As such, you’re able to identify what classes can drive results. Also, it’s easy to foretell your teams’ readiness, content retention percentages, and adoption success.
Getting Started with Online Sales Training
You must be itching to try online training courses and programs. To get started but, have you taken time to assess your team’s readiness for the training. Here are questions to ponder over:
- Is the delivery of your current sales training content engaging?
- Do you have a scalable sales training delivery model?
- Is it easy to transition and iterate your current training program?
- Are you employing captivating sales training material and assets?
- Do you have market-relevant strategies and messaging tactics?
- Has the target market trends or prospect’s personas evolved since you last updated your training material?
- Are your salespeople having a hard time accessing sales training assets and resources?
- In conclusion, have you restructured your course content to stay in line with your buyer’s motivation and behavior?
If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative, it’s a good sign that you need to switch to a virtual sales training module.
Business Sales Training Decisions to Consider Before Execution
What decisions would you need to make before conducting the much-needed sales training session? Here are some:
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What Is the Best Training Format?
If there’s a large number of trainees, it’s crucial to go for group training. This can be reinforced by individualised training on-site. On the other hand, a smaller number can do with personalised training on-site or online. Put it another way, individualised on the job training can include staff conferences reinforced with how to do demonstrations.
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Where Is the Training Venue?
Where did you hold your last training session? It could have been your main office or at a branch office. Nonetheless, either option has its pros and cons. Though the centralised training is more impacting, there are high logistics costs involved.
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Who Will Be the Trainees?
Identifying sales trainees is a demanding step. In essence, a company will select trainees for initial sales training when it hires new personnel. For continuing programs, the rule is to choose trainees based on criteria. It could be based on trainee and trainer convenience or seniority.
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Who Will Do the Training?
This can be facilitated according to:
Initial Sales Training
Given that this is usually a line function, the top sales executive can be mandated to conduct the sessions. If it’s a staff based session, the personnel director or sales management plays a leading role.
Continuing Sales Training
Continuing sales training touches on the introduction of new policies, adoption of reviewed sales techniques, and procedures and incorporation of polished sales strategies, among others. The responsibility is usually left to the top sales executive.
Sales Training Staff-Often
Top sales executives will delegate training programs to their juniors. On the contrary, larger enterprises have a dedicated sales training director operating under the top sales execs.
External Experts
organisations turn to external trainers for partial training, especially in the technical areas. They can charge substantial amounts for these services.
Considerations When Choosing a Sales Training Course Provider
You know too well that your new business cannot conduct sales training in-house. After all, the capital strains may hold you down. As such, you’ll need to approach and work with a professional training provider. But how do you go about this?
First of all, you’ll need to decide on the composition of your sales enablement drive. It’s a critical decision that requires the participation of key decision-makers in your company. Task those decision-makers to grasp your goals since they’ll work in tandem with the trainer to create the most useful courses and solutions.
On the other hand, you need to assess aspects such as:
- The depth and breadth covered by available courses
- Availability of innovative training and delivery methods
- Thought leadership, competency and the quality of training topics
With this in mind, you’ll need to consider the following when shortlisting sales training firms:
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Experience
Did you know that a training provider with longevity says a lot about their experience and success in the sales training domain? Indeed, a firm that has been around long enough is sure to have honed its training concepts and models to help your team succeed.
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Customisation Capabilities
Without a doubt, there’s no other business like yours out there. So, you’ll need a trainer that can customise their programs to suit the sales’ needs of your company. It’s never a one size fits all. Again, a training course that has been customised with case studies that reflect your sales realities is likely to motivate your team more.
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Assessments
Assessments enable sales training to be personalised to the learner. With this in mind, a trainer can use the most effective approach. With assessments, trainees can quickly gauge their capabilities and weaknesses. Remember, trainers that offer assessments contribute positively to the efficacy of the training exercise.
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Coaching and Reinforcement
To consolidate your sales team recently acquired knowledge, the training program should be followed up with interactive coaching and reinforcement. It pays to choose a trainer that is passionate about reinforcement. You know it’s essential to capitalise on the momentum of the training since it’s the only way trainees are sure to turn the lessons into actions.
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Sales Management Training
If you play the sales manager’s role, then, it’s evident that you’ll be in charge of guiding trainees after they complete training. That said, they’ll need to leverage the best practices for in-house coaching and progressive sales development. The ideal course must offer sustainable sales performance improvement.
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Thought Leadership
It’s not a hidden fact that sales enablement is continually advancing. You must collaborate with a provider that shifts with incoming trends. As such, check and shortlist firms that lean towards innovative thought leadership applications and training resources.
Interview and Pick the Best Fit
Have you narrowed down to a possible shortlist of training providers? Great! From here, you’ll need to interview shortlisted firms on a one-to-one basis. Asses the proficiency of every sales representative to find the best fit through these interviews.
To find the best fit, the interview conversation needs to include the following questions:
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Can My Team Get a Training Demo Before We Commit?
There’s no second-guessing a trainee’s capacity. You need to know whether they can provide a demo of what and how they train. The truth is, reputable trainers won’t hesitate to provide a video-based or an on-site demo. This should help you identify whether they’re the perfect fit.
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Can the Training Be Customised to My Needs?
Yes, there’s no business like yours out there. That means your sales realities are unique. Ask the provider whether they personalise their courses to address your needs. The best courses should cater to your day to day scenarios, language, and sales challenges. Ask them if they use relevant case scenarios. Granted, it’s the perfect motivation for your team.
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Why Are You Different From Other Providers?
Can a sales training provider open your team up to challenges that you hadn’t thought of previously? If they can, it could be quite a discovery. Ask a provider-specialist or not, to show you whether they can enhance your sales approaches beyond the average. If they can, you need to hire ASAP.
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Do You Have Other Successful Clients in My Industry?
A sales training provider that comes with a lustful of successful clients is your best bet. However, you’ll need to ask them whether they have notable clients and whether they can provide referrals.
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What are Your Preferred Training Formats?
It goes without contest that live, instructor-led sessions are the most productive training formats. That said, you well know that there are exceptional circumstances that call for other formats. These can be virtual or eLearning arrangements. Ask the provider to confirm the presentation that appears well suited to your team without forgetting the budget.
Sales Management Steps to Ensure Sales Training Sticks
Perhaps your business acknowledges that sales is an ever-evolving function. Good for you. In light of that, you need to view sales training as a crucial sales management tool. It moves from basic product /service selling to focus on customer needs and satisfaction.
Even with the best intentions, sales training courses can fall off the course with devastating consequences. Despite this, the management can take surefire steps to ensure whatever the sales team learns sticks. Here’s what they can do:
Before Training
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Pre-screen the Training
Before it all kicks off, there’s a need for the sales management executive to do an overview of the lessons ahead. He/she needs to know what to support. Importantly, the top management mustn’t have biased on some course material. As such, consider holding an overview session to get everything in the clear.
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Communicate with the Team
The sales management team should communicate with the participants as a show of solidarity. Significantly, they exhibit pessimism for the upcoming training. Their actions can and will influence the tone and readiness of the team to attend the sessions.
During Training
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Show Up and Contribute
Nothing can ignite the sales fire in the sales team than having the management executives present and contributing to the sales training exercise. Forget the part where they say it can hamper team interaction. A manager who sits through a training session sends a strong message that the practice is crucial for everyone.
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Minimise Disruptions
Ordinarily, a Sales Manager who expects the training to be successful should let the sales team take part fully. Contrastingly, having them to attend to other core functions simultaneously will distract them. For instance, don’t schedule training sessions when you know the annual or quarterly reports are due.
After Training
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Communicate Expectations
If you’re the sales manager, it’s critical to know what the sales team has lined up as soon as they finish training. You have the responsibility to communicate whether a new solution or tools will be availed. Also, you need to disclose whether there will be an assessment or follow up sessions. Ideally, you should communicate how the team needs to implement new ideas within a specified timeframe.
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Commit to a Reinforcement Plan
Sales managers need to partner with the training provider to come up with a reinforcement guide. As a rule, this guide informs the sales manager of the steps to take to support, implement not forgetting the completion timeline. Simply, the reinforcement guide becomes the guiding light after the participants finish the live training sessions.
Components of a Successful Sales Training Program
Do you know what determines the future performance of your salespeople? Surprisingly, it’s the quality of training that you provide them. If you expect to impart high impact sales knowledge, here are key components to consider.
Essential Sales Skills
Even the most seasoned sales gurus will tell you that sales training is the jackpot chance to refresh and gain more skills. You’ll need to incorporate essential skills in any course or training program. Some critical skills include:
- Prospecting
- Cold emailing
- Cold calling
- Sales demo
- Proposal drawing
- Deal closing and onboarding clients
Indeed, you’ll need to employ demonstration, role-playing, and video training to help trainees internalise.
The Customer Experience
Customer empathy is a medal trait for any salesperson. With that in mind, your training model should include components that assist new hires in understanding the diverse areas of customer experience. Successful salespeople feel what the customer is feeling up to the time they close a deal.
Your Products and Market
If you missed it, then you need to know that your sales training program needs to incorporate lots of details about your market, products, or services. Necessarily, make sure that you highlight and underline your unique selling proposition throughout the course materials. It’s what helps the team to respond to the question-what cleverly makes you different from your competitors?
Your Sales Process
Teaching new personnel about your in-house sales process cannot be underestimated. If the new hire has been trained differently, the chances are that they abide by a different template. Every team member must be on the same wavelength about your processes by the time training is over. Consider the team having uniform knowledge about:
- Preferred lead generation methods
- Methods for qualifying customers
- The definition of sales funnel stages
- The rules guiding the entire sales process
- Proposal creation procedures
- Upselling and cross-selling
CRM Training
Today, savvy salespeople need to know how to use the CRM system accordingly. Though the materials from the CRM vendor are essential, consider personalising the training even more. Remember, it’s best done hands-on.
Team-Building Exercises
Of course, your new sales team need to learn new skills fast. However, consider bonding sessions throughout the training sessions. Make sure that members interact as much as possible to achieve the bonding effect.
Assessment
Is it crucial to have an assessment during training? If yes, consider self and external assessments. It’s the best approach if you want to measure individual strengths and weaknesses. However, you’ll need to be consistent with the assessment from start to finish.
Four Key Phases of Effective Sales Training Programs
If you’re designing what you think will be an effective sales training program, then you need to query whether it will necessitate long term change and generate positive results. You need to interrogate four key phases before you start creating a program.
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Evaluation
Evaluation means assessing where your sales team is in the current. Also, you need to determine where you want it to be and how you’re going to get there. It’s important to realise that evaluation requires a full-scale assessment by participants, managers, lower-level executives, and clients to some extent.
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Impact Training
This phase involves high-pressure impact training to create rapid awareness. In fact, it takes the boot camp training style where you want to bring everyone up to speed in a short time. This can be done live, virtually, or in a pre-recorded format. Impact motivation is ideal if your goal is to build consensus, motivate in the short term, or convey best practices.
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Reinforcement
If you’re not reinforcing impact training, the chances are that the results won’t last. In this light, you’ll need to employ reinforcement to help members to internalise and apply new knowledge gained. In fact, it’s not a comfort zone since team members must step out and try things from a new perspective.
Furthermore, you need to incorporate coaching in the reinforcement phase. Salespeople face challenges as they implement new skills, and as such, you need to sustain the coaching for up to 18 months.
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Accountability
This phase is more about coaching than training. This calls for accountability to oversee the sustainability of new sales habits. Sales managers or peer accountability partners can help team members to keep going. Remember, it’s essential to maintain regular communication as soon as the impact training ends.