How-to Guide on Sales Training

sales training

Sales training is the process of developing a seller’s skills, knowledge, and personality traits to motivate customers to change their behavior and boost their sales success. Sales training should be considered, designed, and delivered as a change management program to be most effective.

According to estimates, the global sales training market is worth $4.6 billion. Despite this, most sales training is ineffective in the long run. This is because most businesses do not adequately define and manage sales training. A lot of information needs to go inside the sales training material, which is why research should be an integral part of the sales training guide creation.

To provide effective sales training, you must define its objectives and focus on enhancing your sellers’ behavior and supporting this change to achieve sales success.

marketing planHow to make sales training effective

Previously, sales training consisted of one or two days of polishing certain skills. Sellers would undergo training, learn new sales skills, and then be expected to put those skills to immediate use. They were left to their own devices for the most part.

The vendor was accountable for remembering what they had learned in class and recognizing when and where to apply it.

It’s no surprise that most training doesn’t deliver the expected results over time when you consider that if learning isn’t reinforced, 77% of it is lost in just 6 days.

Armed with this knowledge and the scars of a few sales training failures, companies set out to improve the content inside sales training material through reinforcement. Some of the steps taken to make training effective include:

  • Transformational experience– These are psychological concepts that must be implemented for long–term behavior changes to be effective. This includes how adults learn as well as how people cooperate.
  • Coaching– For new skills, sellers must know exactly what to do, receive help when they are outside of their comfort zones, and get feedback on their actions.
  • Leadership support– Desirable sales performance requires a work culture that encourages and supports it from the head of the hierarchy down to the rest of the company.
  • Motivation– Without motivation, you will not be able to modify the behavior of sellers. Sales drive extends beyond monetary incentives. It encourages sellers to understand the differences among their customers.

In all this, your backbone should be the value created for customers and its constant, consistent delivery.



Programs for sales training

The subjects and abilities covered in sales training are diverse. Sales training programs should cover the full sales process, from discovering new clients and winning sales opportunities to developing accounts and managing sellers.

Some of the most important sales training topics for maximizing performance and increasing sales skills include:

  • Consultative selling
  • Prospecting for sales
  • Negotiating a sale
  • Managing sales opportunities
  • Account management (strategic and essential accounts)
  • Managing sales training
  • eCommerce

Making sales training stick

Live learning is a vital aspect of a training program, but it’s also important to remember that what happens after the training is just as important as what happens during the training.

There are primarily three methods for developing and delivering training:

  1. Create your own sales training programs
  2. Purchase third-party sales training modules and certify your trainers to deliver the ideas.
  3. Collaborate closely with a third-party sales consulting training firm. Inside sales consulting teams, you can find the experts needed to create a comprehensive training suite.

Each offers benefits and drawbacks and should be employed differently depending on the company’s size and goals. All sales training should have a solid reinforcement plan regardless of the initial training. Sales coaching around goal creation, action planning, execution, and ongoing responsibility are required for long-term habit development.



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Editorial Staff

This article was written by SBMarketingTools.com editorial staff.