Sales Training Seminars and Tips

7 Tips To Improve Sales Training Results

Article Content: Sales Staff Training

Increased sales staff training is necessary if you wish to make this year better than the last. Given that most companies now compete in a global market, today's sales force must be trained to close more sales. These 7 tips may help you increase your sales force training results.

Align sales training to the strategic plan: Before establishing any sales staff training, the strategic plan needs to be reviewed to ensure alignment between the training and the existing plan. If there is not a strategic plan, then the executive management needs to develop a strategic plan immediately. Alignment is critical to the success of any organization especially when establishing goals from sales training to marketing.

Infuse a proven sales process: The benefit of a proven sales process is in the sales process steps. Clearly defined steps allows individuals to know when to proceed forward during the sales and when to stop. Additionally, a proven sales process helps to make the necessary course corrections not to mention identifying any missteps during the selling activity.

Include mentors as part of communication feedback: Mentors can provide communication feedback. This tips allows the sales training participants to share what is working and provide some guidance from those who have more experience.

Develop attitudes and habits: Attitude is everything. Unfortunately in most sales staff training, attitudes are not consistently developed. The continued focus on knowledge and skills to improve performance through sales force training while performance failure more often than not is due to poor attitudes and habits demonstrates why most sales force training is ineffective or non-sustainable.

Identify desired results to ensure positive return on investment (ROI): When the sales staff training is aligned to the strategic plan, the training is immediately aligned to the desired results. If this is not the case for your business, then identify the desired results to include pre-determined benchmarks such as number of leads, number of appointments, number of meetings, number of closes, number of follow-ups and number of referrals.

Schedule sales training on consecutive weeks: Many sales staff training engagements are one to two days without reinforcement. Scheduling training and development on a weekly basis for no more than 2 hours each session will increase cognitive retention, provide opportunities for practice and constructive feedback. Research suggests that a one time exposure to a learning event after 16 days delivers 2% cognitive retention while multiple exposures to that same learning event deliver 65% retention. What makes more sense to you?

Combine sales force training with corporate coaching: Corporate coaching provides opportunities for continued reinforcement after the initial sales force training or developmental sessions have been completed. Given that research confirms that one on one executive coaching delivers a significant return on investment, including corporate coaching will only increase the return on investment.

Are these the only 7 tips for improved sales force training? No, but they do provide a solid foundation from which to create a high performance sales force.

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Article Content: Sales Staff Training