Driving sales performance is like adding rocket fuel to your company’s growth and revenue. But developing sales training techniques that consistently gear up performance can be a challenge for sales and training managers.
In this article, we’ve selected the ten best sales training techniques to increase your company’s bottom line in 2022.
There are four primary types of sales training. Sales management, service sales, inside sales, and field sales.
Effective sales training is the key to meeting sales quotas and performance targets. Investing in sales training is critical for companies interested in consistent growth and profits.
Sales training offers a wide variety of benefits, including:
Despite these benefits, creating effective sales training methods can be a challenge for many companies.
Most sales teams get by with the occasional lucky hire. As a result, a small group of high-performing sales reps carries the rest of the sales department which makes little to no contribution to the bottom line.
However, companies that can consistently develop average and even sub-standard sales performers will consistently enjoy improved sales figures and steady growth.
While a three-day intensive training boot camp may seem like a good idea for improving sales performance, research has found multi-day training events are essentially a waste of resources.
Sales reps forget approximately 50% of training content within five weeks without consistent reinforcement. Instead, keep training materials easily digestible and fresh in the minds of your sales professionals.
High-performing sales reps are extremely goal-oriented. Sales managers can take advantage of this near-universal trait by creating specific achievements for their sales teams and reps to pursue.
Additional goals to standard quotas and sales targets let sales managers tap into sales professionals' inherent desire to meet and exceed targeted performance levels. This technique can also be useful for improving substandard portions of a company’s sales cycle.
For example, if sales reps are struggling to convert leads by phone, create a goal and reward for the top three sales reps to improve their on-the-phone conversion rate each month.
There’s no shame in bringing in outside talent to introduce fresh and innovative sales training techniques. In fact, 46% of top-performing sales professionals received training from an outside consultant in 2020.
Consultants are valuable additions to your sales training due to their distinct perspective and deep wealth of specialized knowledge. Companies should take advantage of outside consultants when they need revenue boost but can’t identify a strategy to bring that boost to fruition. Employing an expert can also signal to employees that your company is committed to their success and will not balk at investing resources into ongoing sales training and improvement.
A deep-dive analysis of internal sales performance and productivity can be an extremely productive training tool.
Cutting-edge software like PerceptionPredict’s Performance Fingerprints harnesses the power of data and predictive analysis. A sales candidate profile compiles historical performance data and psychographic trait assessments into accurate sales performance predictions. This allows a sales leader to hire people who have the highest probability of success of benefiting from the sales improvement programs in place at the company.
Assessing internal sales teams allows sales leaders to identify what might be holding some members of the team back from putting training material into practice and increasing their results.
5. Databases and Wikis
Sales wikis and training databases are vital for driving exceptional sales performance. Sales reps that have consistent access to training materials perform better than their colleagues with once-in-a-blue-moon training.
Establishing a body of training materials and FAQs can also be a powerful tool when onboarding new sales professionals, minimizing ramp time and time investments from the rest of the sales team
Sometimes there’s nothing like the real deal. And that’s why one of the most effective sales training techniques is field training.
Sales managers and sales reps should work collaboratively with field training to polish sales pitches, reinforce soft skills, and build confidence in sales reps’ overall sales skills.
Field training isn’t just beneficial for the sales reps receiving one-on-one, real-world training. Field coaching also leads companies to yield an ROI up to 4x larger than the cost of field training programs.
Employee recognition motivates your sales team to work harder and feel more appreciated and loyal to their company. Even better than simple celebrations are detailed breakdowns of sales success stories that highlight exactly what went right, and what could have gone wrong.
Success story breakdowns are perfect tools for both training and motivating your team. After sharing your success story, take away actionable and repeatable sales activities the entire team can adopt.
Fine-tune sales training to align with overarching company efforts and goals by integrating sales departments with complementary departments like marketing and product management.
Open clear lines of communication with other departments to reduce the odds of silos developing within your company. Ease operational stresses by reducing or eliminating bottlenecks that reduce workflows’ effectiveness.
Working with product management provides sales reps with the most up-to-date information on product benefits and features, sharpening their sales pitches and growing their confidence.
Sales is a high-pressure industry. With demanding hours, frequent rejections, and rapidly shifting sales environments, it’s unsurprising that sales reps are 2x more likely than the general workforce to suffer from mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.
Plus, there is a direct link between employee and customer satisfaction. Fortunately, improving your company’s focus on sales rep wellbeing can be as easy as implementing an employee feedback process or introducing an employee recognition policy.
Role-playing has been a critical aspect of sales training for decades. Role-playing allows sales reps to hone their sales skills and improve their pitch in a low-pressure environment.
Sales teams and managers can also provide constructive feedback during role-playing exercises. When the rest of the sales team contributes diverse insights, rapid improvement follows.
Now we’ll go over the most common FAQs about sales training techniques.
A mentor system for training new employees is advantageous on multiple fronts. First, connecting new sales team members with experienced mentors can reduce potential anxiety in new hires for a more cohesive, trusting, and collaborative workforce.
Secondly, an on-hand mentor provides near-instant feedback for new hires. When time is money, answering questions quickly can make the difference between a speedy ramp time and a months-long acclimation period.
Identifying sales mentors for training and onboarding can be tricky. Mentors should possess a variety of skills, experience, and personality traits that are relatively uncommon in the larger population.
Look at high-performing sales reps to start. Then, comb through your list and identify the most articulate, patient, friendly, and supportive sales reps on your team. These well-rounded, highly successful employees mold new hires into exceptional sales reps.
As we mentioned before, effective sales training is an ongoing effort. But it can be challenging to devise new and exciting ways to conduct ongoing sales training with your team.
If you’ve hit a dead-end with sales training ideas, consider these ideas for ongoing training opportunities:
Have your sales reps put their sales training into action by bringing a member from another department up to speed with new practices, or by creating presentations to share with the team that dives deeply into individual training methods and strategies.
PerceptionPredict harnesses the potential of predictive analytics to empower companies during the hiring and performance review processes.
Predictive analysis uses statistical algorithms and computational modeling to create highly accurate forecasts of a wide range of operational metrics and sales KPIs.
PerceptionPredict’s Performance Fingerprints have worked around the globe to create unparalleled sales teams whose performance has propelled the growth of international powerhouses like CrowdStrike and Mercedes-Benz.
To learn more about how predictive analytics can help you identify the traits, habits, and skills that drive sales performance at your company, book a demo today.