Struggling to execute a sales strategy? If you haven’t invested in an effective sales training plan, you stand little chance of achieving your objectives. A sales team can only sell if they’ve been given the skills and resources they need to thrive. While some people have an innate ability to convert customers, sales team development gives you the chance to upskill entire departments.
Below, we’ll take a look at what it takes to create an effective sales training plan in 2024.
Benefits and Importance of Sales Training
A sales enablement training plan provides your team with the resources needed to convert leads into customers and close more deals. By helping your team improve their communication skills, they’ll be better able to connect with colleagues and customers alike. Sales training also ensures your team is fully versed on the USPs of a particular product or service, giving them the best chance of sealing a deal with a customer.
Struggling with high turnover? Sales training opportunities are an attractive prospect to employees, while professional development pathways will also appeal to top talent looking for their next appointment.
8 Steps to Create an Effective Sales Training Plan
To get the best results from sales training, you’ll need to create an ironclad plan. Below are some of the most important things you’ll need to consider.
1. Identify Needs Through Assessment
Before you can create a training plan, you need to get a handle on what areas your team is struggling with. With a skills gap analysis, you’re essentially comparing what you need against what you have, spotlighting the shortfall that training needs to address.
2. Define Training Objectives (SMART goals)
Does your stream struggle with securing new customers or have issues with customer retention? Perhaps some find it hard to deploy hard-sell tactics. Whatever areas you choose to focus on, make sure you’re considering SMART goals. An acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely, a SMART framework serves as the foundation for creating a successful training strategy.
3. Consider Experience Levels, Learning Styles, and Team Dynamics
When it comes to training, a one-size-fits-all solution rarely works. Your team is going to have wildly different levels of experience. Some are going to prefer to be mentored, while others will thrive with independent learning. Even the way your team interacts with each other on a daily basis can inform training. Consider all these factors when deciding on the best way forward.
4. Choose the Right Training Format
Asynchronous learning can be cost-effective and time-efficient, but the lack of trainer oversight and direct connection can cause problems. For most companies, a hybrid approach that brings together independent learning with guided training will deliver good results.
5. Consider Industry Experience, Training Experience, and Ability to Engage Your Team
If you’ve opted against third-party support, you’ll need to assign people from within your organization to trainer and mentor roles. However, an experienced employee isn’t always the best choice. They’ll also need to have mastered employee engagement and coax less confident team members out of their shells. Finding the right fit is often a case of trial and error.
6. Develop Engaging Training Materials
Your team is going to respond better to training if you’ve created compelling learning content. Reams of text aren’t the most inspiring tools for learning, so lean heavily on infographics and images that will help with visualization. People often learn best from real-life sales scenarios, so including case studies is also a good idea.
7. Include Interactive Exercises, Role-Playing Scenarios, and Simulations
Role-playing exercises are a tried and tested approach, while training simulations can give you a clear idea of how well someone will fare in a live sales setting.
8. Implement, Monitor, and Refine
The process isn’t over just because training is. Monitor sales performance and track success by keeping an eye on key performance indicators. If productivity is flatlining or customer satisfaction levels are still plummeting, it’s time to head back to the drawing board and make some changes.
Essentials for Ensuring Your Team Understands Sales Training
Sales is a multifaceted vocation. If you want your team to succeed, they’ll need to master a suite of vital skills.
Sales Funnel
Good salespeople need to understand the difference between unqualified leads from qualified ones. Only the latter group can be converted into loyal customers.
Sales Methodologies
Having a grasp on key sales methodologies like solution and conceptual selling will ensure your sales team knows how to act in any given scenario.
In-Depth Understanding of Products
If a salesperson doesn’t understand a product, they don’t have a chance of promoting its USPs to potential leads. As such, investing in product training for your sales team is a must.
Understanding the Needs of the Customer
Some customers are simply looking for a service provider. Others are more indecisive, and unsure of their wants and needs. A skilled salesperson should be able to quickly sniff out what kind of customer they’re dealing with in order to seal the deal.
Building Rapport and Establishing Trust with Customers
The best salespeople know how to strike the right note with customers, secure their trust, and maintain long-lasting relationships that continue to bring in revenues and generate fresh leads.
Sales Techniques and Tools
Whether it’s proactive selling or a more personal approach that speaks to the customer as an individual, all manner of sales techniques can be deployed to close a deal. An effective sales team should also be armed with an arsenal of arsenal tools, such as client relationships and marketing automation software.
Mindset and Motivation
A successful sales mindset encapsulates confidence and determination to convert leads into paying customers. However, great salespeople need more motivation than this. Sales is more than a numbers game, with those who offer added value to their customers generally more successful.
Five Common Methods for Sales Training
Is your sales training curriculum falling short? Below are five useful methods for turning new recruits into top sellers.
Role-Playing
Role-playing is one of the most effective ways to train a sales team and instill good habits. For best results, craft scenarios to promote a particular sales technique skill, such as dealing with a tricky customer or demonstrating the USPs of a product.
Shadowing
Do you already boast top-tier salespeople within your team? Shadowing is a great way of onboarding fresh recruits, letting them learn the ins and outs of the job from the best possible people.
E-Learning Modules
As well as being cost-effective, asynchronous learning is ideal if you can’t commit to many business hours for training. Perfect for independent learners, e-learning modules are also the only way forward if your business operates remotely.
Group Discussions
Pick a topic like common sales stumbling blocks or pitching a new product and open the floor for discussion. Your team can then share their experiences, offering their own unique approaches to inspire colleagues.
Feedback and Reviews
While receiving feedback from managers and colleagues can seem intimidating, it’s a handy tool for sales training. If someone is struggling to convert leads into customers, encourage other members of your team to offer their insights and opinions to help them improve.
Streamline Sales Training with Gloww
Is it time to rethink your approach to sales training? With Gloww, you have everything you need to execute an effective sales training strategy. Perfect for connecting with remote teams, our full-featured video conferencing platform has all the tools you need to upskill and enhance existing talents.
You can create tailored training sessions in just a few clicks or take your pick from a huge library of ready-made templates. Want to make things more interactive? Add live polls, trivia rounds, or classic games to increase engagement.
You can start creating your online training sessions today. If you want to learn to unlock Gloww’s advanced features, why not take a look at our premium pricing tiers? Do you have a question about the platform? Get in touch with the team.
