Five Sales Training Techniques to Build a Successful Team

Who can sell a comb to a bald man?

Of course – a good salesperson.

Sales reps don’t close a sale; they open a relationship and eventually build a long-term, successful enterprise.

For a sales force, however, ABC (Always Be Closing) is not just a piece of cake. It undoubtedly calls for proper guidance and training.

Companies create cloud training systems supported by informative content to train today and, later, serve as a knowledge base for the sales workforce.

American companies invested $90.6 billion on training in 2017, with almost one-third of the budget on sales training. About $20 billion was spent on sales training in the U.S. in 2015.

Sales reps usually spend nearly 80 percent of their productive work hours interacting with clients or customers.

But, what if the team

• Is not clear about the product they are selling?
• Has no experience to convert a prospective lead into a sale?
• Cannot correctly communicate with the customers?

So many what-ifs have just one solution – online training. Companies need to find solutions in the form of online training programs to overcome these multiple challenges.

Challenge #1: Communication

• Sales employees reaching prospective leads within an hour are seven times more likely to have more meaningful conversations with them.
• Fifty-five percent of sales reps lack the most basic and effective communications skills.

These two different examples have one thing in common: communication. If the sales team lacks adequate communication skills, language fluency, and corrective use of gestures and other influencers, then they are highly unlikely to close the open deals.

Communication Solutions: Videos
Real-time demonstrations in the form of videos can portray:

• Different types of communication skills the sales team needs to develop
• The outcome of poor communication and wrong body gestures used by a salesperson

Challenge #2: Product Knowledge
The sales team needs to remain abreast of the product features and benefits, but they may find it hard to stay up to date on continuous updates of features.

Product Knowledge Solutions: Images and Quizzes
Interactive images provide a visual representation of the product, teaching the sales specialists about the features for better retention of knowledge.

Exciting quizzes framed at the end of each training course provide valuable inputs about the product that may be missed during training. Certifying their performance after each quiz compels them to test their retention power playfully.

Challenge #3: Access to Information
The sales team needs to have round-the-clock access to information for answering customer queries as and when required.

Access-to-information Solution: Knowledge Base
The engaging and informative online sales training courses created on the Training Maker platform serve as a knowledge base for the sales team when needed.

Challenge #4: Qualifying Leads
According to HubSpot:

• Thirty-six percent of sales reps consider lead closing the most challenging task.
• Twenty-two percent of sales employees treat lead qualifying as the toughest task of all.
• Nearly 40 percent of sales reps consider prospecting the hardest part of their job.

All leads are not equal. But effective prospecting is considered the vital first step in any sales process. If the reps are unable to find qualified leads, they will struggle to close the deals.

Solution to Qualifying Leads: Success Stories
Embed inspirational videos covering success stories of sales achievers into the eLearning course. Highlight the challenges, tactics, and methods used to overcome the same.

Challenge #5: Motivation
Working in a high-pressure environment can reduce the morale of the sales team – and even, to a certain extent, affect their health. Employers must find ways to motivate the sales team.

Solution to Motivation: Certification and Gamification
Motivate and reward the sales learners with credible certificates after successful completion of the training course. Embed interesting quizzes to incite the trainees to take part in training. This can help learners with

• Understanding important lessons
• Reducing the pressure to an extent
• Retaining information better
• Motivation
• Engagement

Cloud training systems arrest employee dissatisfaction and turnover by offering adequate corporate training for the personal development of the team. It is easier to design training techniques for the sales team if the challenges are identified. This article is likely to give you a basic idea of the type of training techniques you can think of to create a good sales team.

Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He is an expert in learning management system and eLearning authoring tools – currently associated with ProProfs Training Maker.