Methods of business growth differ depending on the industry, but for many, the most efficient way forward is to seek out informed clients with high intent. The best way to do this is through sales, which can involve attending exhibitions or seeking out leads with high intent.
But how do you find success in the sales process? In this article, Real Business will outline how you can increase your own, and your employees’, sales skills, as well as illustrate just how important embracing sales is to your business growth.
Why Is Sales Training Considered Invaluable?
The fact of the matter is this – with many clients, you typically don’t get more than one chance. When it comes down to deciding to do business with you, or your competition, the prospective client will decide based not just on the performance of your business, but your sales reps. Hubspot’s 2021 report found that 79% of consumers speak to multiple vendors before making a purchase, meaning that your competition is always present.
The following are what sales training can specifically do for your company:
- Adoption of sales fundamentals – The fact is – most sales reps begin their career without any formal training. Their sales performance typically hinges on natural charisma and trial and error. Whilst this approach almost certainly aids in personal development, research conducted by the Sales Management Association named “Research Update: Impact of Sales Force Effectiveness Initiatives” found that sales training courses teach essential skills that highly improve the chances of sales success.
- Understanding psychology – The internet has changed a lot about sales techniques, as the World Wide Web gives access to more information than ever, prospective buyers are turned into informed buyers. Modern buyers value relevance and expertise, meaning they expect sales professionals to add value to their lives by solving problems they have, or may have in the future. A good sales team can guide buyers through solutions with detailed, accurate and concise information – all whilst showing confidence, which reflects legitimacy in human interaction.
- Ensuring consistent sales performance – A good sales course aims to create a structured approach to sales, making the sales process repeatable and uniform through standardising best practices across your organisation. This creates a predictable pipeline that, when refined through experience, can lead to clearer forecasts on revenue projections.
What Makes For Good Sales Training Courses?
The following will be a breakdown of what a good sales training course looks like:
- Tailored curriculum – The sales skills should align with the needs of salespeople across varying stages of their careers. As we’ve claimed before, many sales professionals start without any training whatsoever. So a good course should outline both the fundamentals of sales skills and advanced sales techniques such as negotiation skills and leadership development. This better feeds into the business-wide pipeline that your sales cycle will revolve around.
- Application of practical skills – Effective sales training revolves around hands-on learning, incorporating real-world scenarios that you will come across and have to be prepared for to properly adapt. For example, objection handling. Prospective clients may have ideas of their own about your product, or products like it, and your ability to not only defuse anger but reverse their objection is key to improving your chance of sales success.
- Product and market expertise – A strong sales training course equips all sales professionals with in-depth knowledge of the product, competitor products and the landscape of the market they are operating. Possibly the most important element of sales performance revolves around how well a salesman knows the unique value of their solution amongst the myriad of other options.
- Ongoing coaching and mentorship – Sales training, like most training courses, is heavily dependent on doing so. Having knowledge, and then applying that knowledge, creates a cycle of expertise refinement that is only enhanced with ongoing coaching and mentorship.
What Are Some Advanced Sales Skills That Courses Offer?
Once you’ve moved beyond fundamentals and adopted a sales psychology, you’ll be ready to advance onto the sales skills that will pave the way toward joining the professionals.
- Consultative conversation starters – These are your entryway to discovering the unique pain points of your prospective clients. Aligning your product with your client’s situation will make it a lot more palatable in their eyes, and by getting insight early, you can ensure your sales pitch is tailored for the start. For example, “You look like someone who knows their way around X, how come you’re here?” This not only flatters the other party but prompts them to talk about themselves in direct relation to your product.
- Value-focused negotiation – Whilst price is a huge contributing factor for many buyers in the market, this is typically confined to the context of a short-term solution. Value extends beyond, into the long-term, where the high upfront cost pays dividends in the solution it gives. The Harvard Negotiation Project agrees, claiming that focusing on the mutual interest of long-term sustainability can enhance the perceived value of your product.
- Advanced objection handling—Objections are hard because they trigger a flight or fight response in the middle of the sales process, which is already tense and emotionally involved. That being said, advanced objection countering sales techniques highlight that if data is on your side, you can reverse the situation to favour you heavily. For example, suppose your competitors have a lower upfront price than you. In that case, you can switch to long-term value argumentation that highlights the return on investment quality of your product versus theirs.
- Social proof – If there’s one thing that people trust, it’s groups of other individuals. By neatly integrating digestible and comprehensive testimonials and success metrics, you can reduce the perceived risk that the buyer has. Risk is always a factor in the decision of where a buyer places his money, and the reduction of this impulse directly reduces the willingness of a buyer to devote more time to vetting his options.
- Emotional intelligence – By understanding the emotion that your prospective client is experiencing through body language and non-verbal cues, you can find opportunities to empathise with clients and connect with them on a human level. It’s much harder to remove charitability with someone who is seamlessly entering the role of your friend. Feeling heard and understood is one of the most valuable feelings a human can experience, and it’s key to building long-lasting relationships with your clients.
- Leveraging digital tools – Not all sales happen face-to-face, or in one conversation, and digital tools both track and facilitate meetings to complete the sales journey. Examples include CRMs (Customer Relationship Management), to keep track of individual customer journeys via customer account management that lists complaints, queries and concerns, and video conferencing technology, allowing you to connect across a distance to have meetings.
How To Track Progress And Ensure ROI?
Good sales training teaches that to have a team that can create and maintain a return on investment, you have to be able to measure your outcomes. This improves your sales management, as you can pinpoint the areas in which you’re lacking behind your goals.
- Identifying clear metrics – Write up key performance indicators, the most common of which will be conversion rates, average deal size and sales cycle lengths. These will serve as benchmarks to track performance, and it’s recommended by sales experts to establish baseline metrics before training begins.
- Benchmarking against sales target – Compare your actual performance against the predefined sales goals, and you will gain insight into the effectiveness of your sales training.
- Qualitative feedback loops – Surveys, peer reviews and members of sales management can complement raw data by revealing how well the sales team is performing individually, as well as refine the skills of anyone who is falling behind. Furthermore, if there is a noticeable commonality amongst specific lacking skillsets taught within the sales training courses, this information can be used to improve the program.
- Regular progress meetings – Scheduled check-ins with each member of the sales team, as well as meetings where all are present, allow sales management to highlight and deal with problems early. Misunderstandings of a sales strategy can damage the overall efforts of the team in question.
- Data-driven coaching – CRM analytics (such as those offered by Hubspot) can uncover trends in lost deals, prolonged cycles and recurring objections. Once these problems have been made aware to you, you can feed that information back to sales management, who will refine their sales training to iron out these pitfalls.
How To Handle Setbacks And Challenges In Sales Training Implementation
Sales training has a lot of moving parts that can easily collide with each other or the changing tide of the market. The following are some common issues and how to rectify them:
- Cultural resistance – Many old-school salesmen found success through refining their sales techniques, and sometimes they can find difficulty letting go and adopting new practices, mostly because their veterancy still sees positive results. The best way of countering this is to show compelling, measurable data that highlights how the landscape has changed, and how team-wide alignment with the new modern buyer’s mindset will see even higher returns. Regular communication and reviews of sales conversations may be needed to properly hammer this nail in.
- Time constraints – Salespeople are usually very work-focused, and sales training takes time. This can create fears that their personal goals could be missed and that it will reflect on their ability. Showing understanding of these concerns, and adding flexible learning formats may sidestep the issue entirely.
- Budget limitations – If a particular sales training course shows an increase in sales success by sales professionals who take it, then its value will increase in price. This can prove expensive and may deter full-scale implementation. If this is the case, then consider trying affordable, high-impact workshops that focus on areas that you know are either vital or weak within your organisation.
- Generic or irrelevant content – The best sales training is hyperfocused. Avoid content that provides one-size-fits-all solutions toward sales success, as not only do they tend to lack efficiency, but they are also less engaging. Tailor content to fit the team’s industry, and their specific challenges. A sales strategy that you can immediately apply in your day-to-day work will always be more beneficial.
What Sales Training Is Right For Your Sales Team?
There are several different forms of sales training, and the following will outline which one is right for you:
- In-person intensive workshops – A 2020 Harvard Business Review article titled “The Value of Face-to-Face Training” reported that in-person workshops achieved a 25% higher immediate skill adoption rate due to the training’s role-play, peer coaching and immediate feedback loops. According to CIPD’s Learning and Skills at Work Survey 2022, a one-day in-person workshop in the UK ranged between £1,200 to £2,500 per participant.
- Virtual learning platforms – Interactive virtual training is an accessible form of sales training, ranging between £300 to £800 per participant. This type of training aids in long-term knowledge retention due to quizzing, real-time polling and breakout room functionality.
- Blended solutions – Programmes that combine periodic in-person sessions with ongoing digital modules are great for a sales team that needs to fill in work hours chasing targets. They typically cost between £1,000 to £2,000 per salesperson.
- Mentorship-driven sessions – Internal mentorship programmes pair seasoned high-performers with new or junior reps, focusing on hands-on strategy transfer and real-time feedback. Formal costs include minimal overhead, with averages being around £800 – £1,200 per mentee per quarter.
Conclusion
Why is Sales training so important? Because it promotes revenue growth, unlike any other form of training. If you are yet to sign up your team for sales training, you are doing your business a disservice. No matter the form, a sales course has been proven to improve non-trains salesman by a remarkable degree.