A Beginners Guide To Corporate Sales Training

Introduction

Your sales team drives the revenue. Therefore, it acts as the lifeline of your business. Hence, if you expect excellent results from your sales team, sales training is the most important investment. U.S. companies spend over $70 billion annually on training and an average of$1,459 per salesperson – almost 20% more than they spend on workers in all other functions.

Sales Training

Even the most basic sales skills are used in everyday life. Communication and persuasion are daily tasks. Sales training is the process of developing salespeople's skills, improving their knowledge, and inculcating key attributes to enhance their behavioural tactics to drive sales success effectively. To be most effective, corporate sales training must be considered, planned, designed, and implemented as a change management initiative.

The sales training required can vary from one sales representative to another, especially if they are new to the industry. In the world of sales, there are always new strategies and new technologies to learn to sell effectively.

For new salespeople on board, completing company-specific training is a priority. Unless your new hire is a complete fresher, that person will have at least a basic understanding of the mechanics of selling.

For a corporate sales workforce, a sales methodology is the approach the team adopts during the sales process. It focuses on the systematic side of sales activities like call preparation, meeting formats, improving overall sales effectiveness, finding high-quality leads, and managing customer relationships.

Regardless of the training method you use, build a best practices guide around it. It can be delivered internally to reduce training time for new representatives. Developing an internal training system is the best way to optimise the learning process.

Modes of Training

Some of the modern methods that the industry adopts to train salespersons include:

On-the-job field training

Workshops, seminars, and lectures

Meetings and conferences

Freshers' internship training

Correspondence training

Visual and simulated training

Companies ideally prefer a live one-day kick-off, bringing the sales process to life and demonstrating how to execute the strategy through role-playing.

Sales Training: Effective Techniques

Get new sales entrants up to speed quickly by letting them hear demos or pitches at the earliest. Incorporating daily micro-training supported with demonstrations helps the sales team learn multiple skills over time.

Get sales professionals with profound experience in sales and negotiation to design customised, practical, and easy-to-implement training modules. The training should apply to real deals to be relevant.

Make sure new salespeople can articulate value and sell stories. Explain to them the expectations, processes, and knowledge of the company. Then map them with a fully skilled salesperson for training, shadow calls and practice demos, followed by an evaluation.

Bring your sales executives into real-life situations in a semi-secure environment and engage them in active listening rather than a training simulation.

Higher employee engagement and morale have a direct impact on the bottom line. Sharing success stories and mutual successes instils confidence and unity among your salespeople and motivates them to satisfy customers.

Introducing key terms and concepts in the sales field before students engage with the actual lesson material reduces cognitive load. Hence, always include pre-training modules and personal training in the corporate sales training process.

Review what worked and failed to prepare you, improve your response, and create an adaptive strategy.

Personalise training with one-on-one mock scenarios, help establish open dialogue, and engage learners.

Include an experienced mentor who allows beginners to get hands-on experience and personal benefits through story sharing.

Review sales leadership success stories and new developments and provide consistent expectations and processes guidance.

Takeaway

Corporate sales training should have a strong reinforcement plan. Leverage the best learning solutions and corporate training to benefit your sales organisation through human-centric sales processes. Setting sales goals, action planning, implementation, and ongoing accountability is critical to driving long-term behaviour change in salespeople.

You can also contact Imarticus Learning through chat to get support on training solutions. For career counseling, you can visit the training centres in Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore or Chennai.