Choosing the right sales training program can make or break your company’s success. It will set your sales team up for success and increase your revenue potential.
However, choosing the right sales training program can be a daunting task. Finding a provider who understands your business, goals, and objectives is essential.
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Experience
One of the best things you can do is hire a dedicated sales training specialist to handle your company’s learning and development needs. They can monitor team performance, research and book sales training courses, and more. Bringing in a great sales trainer for an extended workshop or training session is a great way to boost morale and ensure your team is on the same page. However, it’s not the most flexible of options and may require your entire team to step away from selling for a few hours or days.
Good sales training programs should give new reps a clear path to success. It should have a system for tracking progress and offer plenty of opportunities to reinforce skills after the workshop. This can be done through coaching sessions, virtual seminars, or a single-stop sales training portal that implements knowledge.
It’s also essential that a sales training program be customizable to your unique business situation. Look for providers that customize their training with the language, scenarios, and challenges that mirror your team’s real-life sales situations. This will make the training more relevant to your team and increase the likelihood that they’ll use the new skills on the job. In addition, a great sales training program will include assessments that help each participant understand their strengths and gaps.
Know Your Needs
When selecting a sales training program, it’s essential to consider your business needs and objectives. For example, if your sales team has difficulty closing high-dollar deals, it may be worth investing in a deal flow accelerator program that helps you build more credibility with prospects and clients.
To ensure the sales training you choose matches your goals, look for a provider who can customize the program for your specific business and sales process. This will confirm that your salespeople can apply their new skills in real-time, leading to greater effectiveness and ROI.
Some programs build practical and tailored sales training programs that the sales team leadership can own and manage. Their unique methodology includes ride-along and field observations, an audit of the sales org, interviews with salespeople, managers, and executives, personalized assessments, and more.
Another consideration is how much time your salespeople can invest in the program. It’s easy to get caught up in sales theory, but the best sales training programs focus on how they impact daily results.
They teach participants how to improve their selling skills by connecting the customer experience and product knowledge to sales proficiency. In addition to hands-on, virtual instructor-led training sessions, they provide a mobile app that allows salespeople to learn independently at their own pace.
Research
When researching sales training programs, look for a provider offering courses that align with your business goals. For example, if you’re looking to shift from field selling to inside sales, investing in a system focused on field skills no longer relevant to your revenue growth goals may not be worth investing in a study focused on-field skills.
Likewise, to increase your sales team’s competitive edge, consider finding a provider that offers negotiation courses. The course includes an assessment to help identify key negotiation opportunities for each participant. The program also provides various formats, including instructor-led and at-your-own-pace courses.
Find out how other clients have benefited from the training you’re considering. Ask the sales training company for client testimonials, and see if they can connect you directly with their successful customers.
If your budget allows it, consider hiring an in-house sales enablement specialist. These professionals will handle your training budget, monitor your team’s learning needs, research and book sales training solutions, and more. They can be an excellent resource for connecting your sales training to the broader business strategy and goals and ensuring it all works together. They can even offer a customized curriculum to support your unique selling situations better.
Look for Certifications
As you research sales training companies and programs, look for ones with certifications. These indicate that the company offers a structured program that aligns with industry best practices and is designed to be a comprehensive approach to improving sales performance.
The program helps salespeople develop their selling skills by addressing belief systems and long-held assumptions that lead to nonproductive habits. They then help attendees replace these habits with more productive behaviors that can lead to consistent success in the field.
Another essential feature to look for in a sales training program is how customizable it is to your unique business. It would be great to look for a program that includes ride-along and field observations, account reviews, interviewing key stakeholders, sales managers, and salespeople, and auditing the organization’s management process, KPIs, culture, and talent. They then use these insights to customize the curriculum to your company’s sales situations and language.
A good program will also include ongoing support and reinforcement. This may include one-on-one or group coaching, e-learning modules, reinforcement emails, checking that participants have implemented their new knowledge in daily sales activities, and discussion at team meetings. Ideally, these reinforcement activities are spread over time rather than a marathon sales “boot camp” that wears on the participants. This will increase the chances that they will implement their new skillset and improve their sales performance beyond the confines of their training program.