Looking for some sales training ideas to boost salesperson engagement? Here are some sales training ideas to give you some food for thought on what information to impart on a sales training course.

Sales training is mainly separated into two categories, the first is learning about the core aspects of different sales techniques such as – lead generation, sales prospecting, business development, the sales process, sales presentation skills etc. This sales training would be customized for the sales techniques that work best in a specific industry or profile of buyer. The second category is very company focused training such as – training on the company’s products or services, the sales process deployed, the internal sales playbook, and the sales assets, tools and resources the sales team will use.

Sales Training Course

While successful salespeople have similar characteristics, the truth is no one is born with all the sales skills and knowledge to sell at a high level, these are acquired skills. This is why sales training is a crucial part of helping new and existing salespeople deliver on the potential they displayed during the interview process. Sales training should help the new and existing team of salespeople to develop and practice the skills they will need to succeed. Sales training should also include elements that help increase the confidence levels of the salespeople not just in the sales techniques but in the company’s unique value proposition.

Sales Training Ideas for Sales Success

Sales Training Tip 1. Teach salespeople to know what they want.

Research shows that the No.1 question salespeople have is “What do you want me to do", which is very relevant. So maybe the first sales training session could be to answer this question and then proceed to asking the sales people what do they want to achieve in their career. What goals are they setting in place, what are their expectations, what time will they set aside to invest in their own self development, what do they believe are the traits of a successful salesperson. People perform best when they already know what is wanted out of them plus it’s much easier for them to do what the business is asking of them if during the sales training you tell them exactly what that is.

Sales Training Tip 2. Teach the salespeople the companies value proposition plus get them to craft their own personal value proposition.

It is amazing how many salespeople do not understand or can communicate their companies value proposition. Also, if the new salespeople are involved in prospecting or business development, they will need to have crafted their own personal value proposition. Any salesperson whether new or experienced needs to be able to clearly explain why a customer should choose them over a competitor. It may sound simplistic but if your salespeople can’t convey a value proposition, they will struggle with buyer engagement. In modern selling, every salesperson must be able to create value with a customer by (a) what they sell AND (b) the way they sell.

Sales Training Tip 3. All salespeople should understand the sales process.

The new salespeople should be taught that the sales process is a set of predictable, repeatable steps that they take with a customer/prospect to progress them through the sales funnel to becoming a paying customer.

This is an example of a straight forward sales process used by many companies.

Step 1. Sales Prospecting: Salesperson (using Ideal Customer Profiles), researches and identifies list of potential customers with 2 or 3 contacts per company.

Step 2. Sales Touch Points: The salesperson plans out a series of sales touch points (email, social selling, phone call) to engage the prospect.

Step 3. Closing the Conversion Gap: Now the salesperson will use sales tools and sales assets along with seeking to understand the prospects needs and challenges in order to close the conversion gap and get the prospect to enter a buying process.

Step 4. Presenting and Selling: This is the top of the iceberg in selling terms, the salesperson will outline to the customer (and buying committee) how the product/service can solve their needs plus why buying from them will make their lives easier.

Step 5. Customer Verification: Every good sales process should have a series of customer verification points along the way, this high-level customer verification is constructed to qualify the prospect. Customer verification at this point in the sales process can include free trials, proof of concept, budget confirmation, timescales, free consultancy etc.

Step 6. Closing the Sale: This is negotiating and contract phase around final pricing, roll-out, implementation or delivery.

Sales Training Tip 4. Teach salespeople the sales habit loop.

This is about teaching salespeople in sales effectiveness. Helping them to cue up sales activity, to have sales routines, time management, how to reward themselves for tasks completed. The output is for salespeople to take ownership for their roles and success.

Sales Training Tip 5. Show them how to use a multi-channel approach.

Today, for a salesperson to increase their sales funnel and drive up the close rates, they need to be skilled in using a multi-channel approach in engaging customers. They need to understand the impact of social media and content on the buyer’s journey, learn social selling, how to use digital assets, how to do social listening, how to craft well written emails and how to use content (whitepapers, research) in the sales process.

Sales Training Tip 6. Make the sales training digestible.

The days of a 5-day sales training courses are gone, research shows that training works best in consolidated chunks of information. Keep each sales training module short. Use concentrated (ten to twenty minutes) learning sessions that contain focused material that immediately hits the point with the salesperson on that particular topic. Give them access to online sales training and point them to freely available learning material for their own commitment to improving their skills.

Sales Training Tip 7. Show them where to find and access sales assets.

From using LinkedIn, researching profiles and in accessing sales assets, to boost a new salespersons productivity you need to make information easy to access, searchable and fast.  Where to access sales tools and sales assets such as content should be part of their daily sales habit loop. If using CRM, them make such all information integrated.

Sales Training Tip 8. Introduce Gamification.

Create sales games using real customer case studies, then introduce interactive activities. Set challenges for the salespeople across all steps in the sales process. Then have them provide answers and plans. Gamification in sales training is fun and can rapidly improve retention.

Sales Training Tip 9. Start with easy steps.

Depending on your business model or product, start the new salespeople on the easier (nothing easy in sales!!) steps in the sales process. That could be identify 100 prospects for a new product launch, to phone back lost business for research purposes or helping out on the products that are easier to sell. Nothing builds confidence more than successfully completing a sales task with the managers approval.Sales Training

Tip 10. Use E-Learning to Educate.

We live in the digital age where technology has replaced the need for traveling and lost sales time. The use of online sales training, video and E-learning allows salespeople to continually refresh their sales skills outside of working hours or while on the go. Using online training videos and modules, it drives ownership back to the salesperson for knowledge acquisition.

Sales Training Tip 11. Don’t overload them with information.

In line with sales tip 8, be careful not to overload a new hire with every aspect of the sales (and even if you do teach this information right away, it likely won’t be retained).

Break down each step in the sales process and learning the next step in the sales process should be a reward for mastering the previous one.

So, there you have some sales training ideas to use on a sales training course. The buyer supplier relationship along with how buyers engage with vendors is changing rapidly. So, sales training will have to become more dynamic and digitally driven, just like our buyers.

Note: This article was has been republished courtesy of The Digital Sales Institute from their article – Sales Training Tips and Ideas

What is social selling and what part does it play in the social media influenced sales process are fundamental questions now being asked by sales leaders across the globe. They want to know if social selling can help to build relationships, extend a business’s social reach and connect to a network of contacts, influencers and customers.

What is social selling

Engagement has never mattered more to B2B buyers, but the old sales models to engage buyers is becoming obsolete. A hard pill to swallow by many in sales management is that today’s informed and connected buyer is usually in control. When we talk about “buyer engagement," using social media and social selling it can be hard to nail down. Research shows that buyers do want to interact with us in new ways, but on their own terms. This means that when engaging buyers, we need to be credible, be useful, be valuable and be relevant to get their attention in a content fuelled sales world.

In the traditional sales and marketing model it ran along the lines of building awareness, driving interest, try to create some desire which eventually leads to action. This has been the traditional approach to buyer engagement (marketing, cold calling, events, prospecting etc) for a long, long time, since the 1920’s to be precise.

The wakeup call and the reality that we have to acknowledge is that’s not what is going on over at the buyer’s journey. How could it be? Look at our own buyer’s journey and how the availability of information via social media, the web and online has changed our own purchasing decisions. What we see today is a buying and decision-making process that has become much more fluid plus there is a degree of complexity in the buying journey. Modern B2B buyers don’t compartmentalize nearly as much as their predecessors. While they are becoming aware or exploring, they could also be evaluating and considering options. They are looking for help, insights and support way earlier in the buying process without the sales pitch. They will engage with influencers, peer groups and vendors with the primary objective of learning new ways to do things without entering a formal sales process. They see this engagement as streams that ebb and flow throughout their buyer’s journey.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
–Socrates

What is social selling

Social selling revolves around three simple words: transformation, acceleration and collaboration.

It works on the premise that a whole new generation of B2B buyers will purchase software, technology, products and solutions in pretty much the same way as they purchase music, clothes and gadgets.

So, social selling is the sum of connected actions (content, information, news, articles, research, insights) shared online (think social reach/social business). When these connected actions are experienced by customers/potential customers, they will influence the awareness and consideration of your business. Social selling is also about building a bridge between social media marketing activity, buyer connectivity and sales outreach to maximize buyer engagement and minimize wasted resources.

Social Selling Ideas

Why Social Selling is Important in Sales 3.0

So, let’s start with some background information on Sales 3.0 and the buyers journey. Around 67% of the B2B buyers journey is now digitally influenced. They read at a minimum of 5 pieces of content regarding solutions available. Today’s buyers are self-educating, informed and hyper-connected. Social selling unlocks the opportunity for a business or salesperson to get involved in the purchasing journey by being useful and valuable to a buyer as they ebb and flow throughout their buyer’s journey.

Buyers aren’t always in the market, but they are always in the market to learn. At any time, only 5-10% of your target market is actively looking to buy and another 20-30% open to considering a change. This means a business must constantly work to build credibility and trust with the potential 90% of buyers in the consideration/status quo cycle.

However, buyers are always learning throughout these cycles, continuously self-educating, making connections with peers and influencers, and consuming relevant content. This has two implications for the sales organization:

When buyers are ready to leave the status quo, the 1^st vendors they turn to are the ones who have built trust. They can even collaborate with a trusted adviser (salesperson) on solution prior to conducting their own research. Leaving it to inbound marketing or a Google search is not enough anyone. Businesses need to use connected actions and social reach to influence buyers so they can get on their short list of potential suppliers. A buyer may ask an influencer or thought leader to suggest a short list to them. Social selling works to bridge these connections so they have come to understand, trust and have a positive impression of your business capabilities.  The use of planned “connected actions" on the social networks and constantly reviewed social reach can positively impact the ability to gather more interest, from more buyers, more often.

It means all salespeople (and maybe your entire organization) needs to become proficient in a different sales skill.  As part of sales transformation and to accelerate buyer        engagement on the social networks, social selling training will be required to allow the sales team to be able to share content, to connect, to engage and to nurture relationships. It also places an onus on sales management to ensure they have time to do the activity and help them become “thought leaders" who can communicate value without the sales pitch.

What is social selling in relation to Customer Acquisition

If you acknowledge that buyers not just use but are heavily influenced by social media on their purchasing decisions, then you should be thinking more about how can the sales organization engage your “buyer’s community" or “buyer’s network" using social selling.

• How do you engage and reach buyers online? (It can’t be limited to just inbound marketing or your web site)
• How does your business (social reach) become part of these networks or communities, where your connection actions will be judged by the relevancy of what is shared, your insights, your ideas and your expertize and not your branded sales pitches?
• How will your business create content for your social sellers to share that is highly relevant to these networks, knowing that branded sales orientated content is ignored?
• How will you set goals that track buyer engagement, not just to help determine the right ways to reach out and connect, but also to measure leads and revenue from your social selling strategy.

The Value of Social Selling to your Business

To answer what is social selling, you must remember that without a clear social selling strategy is just random acts of social marketing. To deliver results it must be comprised of many different social activities that work in unison to extend social reach and engage more buyers.

 What is social selling going to mean in your business?, it should focus on crossing the chasm between the use of old sales techniques to social tactics that implies competitive advantage for your business. In the digital era,the shift in value has moved from the product or service you’re selling to the value YOU provide to buyers.

Sales Transformation. Leading companies use social selling as a different way to link customers, content, conversations, products, and solutions.

Sales Acceleration. How faster growing companies do a better job of differentiating, showing return, and handling the customer’s perceived risks to change using the Social Channels.

Customer collaboration. Forward thinking companies educate buyers via Social Networks, sharing ideas and perspectives, investing in customer success, and create a customer perception of working as partners.

We hope this article has gone some way to answering, what is social selling and what it means for your business.

The building blocks for successful sales prospecting or lead generation are not solely down to selling skills but a combination of prospect lists with data, accurate targeting and understanding the buyers journey.

Prospecting can be a reluctant or even feared selling activity, especially when the term “cold calling" is mentioned. However prospecting is a vital sales activity and well trained sales people should view as a necessary aspect of being successful in sales. The positive news is using tools like social media and social selling to engage prospects, the actual event of contacting a prospect should be called “warm calling.  Warm calling is about a sales process where reps use social data to research their prospects prior to making a call, understand where they can add value and can demonstrate concern about a buyer challenges. Regardless of the sales cycle, reps whose first goal is to offer the buyer help (white papers or industry research as examples) and guidance (seminars, vendor profiles etc) are far more successful and satisfied than people merely engaged with cold calling.

Here are some tips to win at prospecting using warm calling:

Set aside day every day for sales prospecting. Work with your sales coach or manager to help manage what you are doing or being asked to do. Set targets for prospects researched, profiled and engaged – daily.

If a sales person is blindly approaching prospects with emails and calls without reason other than a profile view then they will fall flat and fast.

If reps are not taking a value first approach then it is not worth even making the call or sending the email

Sales people who are trained to look outward, use social media tools, focus in on the world of the buyer and what they value will perform better in their roles.

‘Dear Buyer, The reason for my call today is…’ If a rep cannot complete this sentence then they should not be making the phone call as they lack sales process and value wedge knowledge.

When engaged with prospects, it is important that the context is there the relevancy of the approach has to be valid.

Use social selling tools, social insights, data and lead generation software! The days of having multiple browsers open to find prospect information are long over. It is amazing how many sales managers do not know this yet

Warm calling to activate sales leads is about making the customer the hero, make them glad to have connected with you, bring value and understanding before any sales pitch.

Confidence comes from being in control. So practise the sales conversation, write scripts, the genuine reason for the call and connect this back to a challenge, know your value wedge, understand your industry plus study the buyer’s journey.

Mistakes are learning tools. Every call is a learning opportunity to enrich any sales person’s skill. So do not fret on mistakes and embrace the learning.

Know when to hold and when to fold. When a prospect is not a good fit or you can’t add value move on.  When your product or service is not sparking a buyer’s interest then do not add to the pipeline, rather think of it as a step closer to find a matching prospect.

Focus on the Outcome. Prospecting is not about selling, it has a different goal. It is about exploring the possibility that you might be able to create value for the buyer and maybe do something together down the line. Selling, at this point really is cold calling.

Have fun. Enjoy the fruits of your research and the social insights you have gathered. You bring value and are worth listening to. Buyer to Supplier relationships has to start somewhereand opening these relationships is what prospecting is all about.

Month: October 2017

Taking a sales skills course is the most purposeful route in enhancing a wide range of selling skills including cold calling, telephone sales, business development, closing, social selling, sales prospecting and sales presentations amongst others.

When deciding to undertake a sales skills course ensure that what you are being taught actually works for today’s savvy customers, in other words – What is working now so you understand what selling really is about in the sales 3.0 era. Also, too many sales courses just focus on sales process or steps in the sale. Research shows that the mindset of the salesperson is actually more important that any sales skills because if the mindset of the sales person is not right, no amount of sales training will work.

Sales Training Class

Look for a sales skills course that teaches you the soft and hard selling skills plus covers your belief system as to encourage a more optimistic view of your ability to sell. Courses that help you adopt the right attitude to your sales role and then provides you with the insight for the most useful sales tactics when dealing with customers or prospects.

It’s all about providing you with the framework to manage your sales activities, to develop practical skills in identifying and negotiating sales opportunities, to help you present compelling solutions that will ultimately win over more customers while improving your sales results for your company.

So, before you take a sales skills course, let’s review what makes a good sales person.

• They have empathy and engage in active listening
• Works hard to develop an understanding of the prospect’s needs
• Is comfortable at engaging prospects or customers at their level
• Is credible and can add value to a prospect’s life
• Skilled in asking questions to uncover needs or remove obstacles
• Ability to network and engage multiple decision makers in an organization
• Can pinpoint and quantify the value their proposed solution will bring to the buyer’s business

Sales Strategy Presentation

The B2B sales skills every salesperson needs to master

Soft selling skills

Empathy

The ability to put yourself inside the shoes of another person, seeing the world through their eyes. Empathy builds trust and shows customers that you care about their business above trying to sell them something.

Communication

Sales success depends on the ability to gather and provide information in a way that makes a potential customer want to do business with you. It’s not just about asking and listening, salespeople have to skilled at active listening, otherwise conversations will be unproductive.

Mindset

Your most valuable asset in the sales process and engaging customers is your mindset. Your mindset is your way of thinking, your opinions on yourself and on your skills. Average salespeople do what is convenient, Successful salespeople do whatever it takes.

Openness

Openness is the maturity to receive feedback to help improve your sales and interpersonal skills. You can train, you can learn, however if you don’t have awareness about yourself and the openness to grow then you might struggle to be successful.

Collaboration

No one is an Island. You may need the assistance of other people inside your company to help you with a prospect or the sales process. The sharing of information and exchanging of ideas has become essential between sales, marketing and other customer interaction teams. Collaboration in working towards the same goals can have a major impact on your results.

Decision making skills

The point of making a decision is to achieve a certain outcome. In the sales process you need to be able to make judgment calls on your own, whether to continue chasing a prospect, how much time to invest in a prospect or customer, when to ask for a purchasing decision etc. The more comfortable and skilled you are at making these decisions, the better the outcomes (as long as you learn to live with the consequences of your decisions).

Problem solver

To be creative when proposing solutions to customers. Trying to avoid the vanilla flavoured answers that every other salesperson offers. You do not become successful by selling things to people, you become successful by solving problems for customers. Selling skills are not a matter of trying to convince a customer to buy something, but instead it is the skill to identify their needs and showing them how your product can help them be successful.

Hard selling skills

As well as the above soft selling skills, there is also a range of hard selling skills that every salesperson should master. These skills can be taught through a sales skills course and training.

Sales Prospecting

Despite the rise of inbound marketing, one of the most valuable selling skills is the ability to do sales prospecting to find new sales opportunities. Prospecting can be done via social selling, referrals, cold calling, events etc. To be truly successful at sales prospecting you need to take a more strategic approach, one that builds credibility, value and trust with the prospect. You need to learn the skill to have a discovery-based conversation with a buyer, one with a value proposition that differentiates you from the rest, to get the buyer to listen and gets the buyer to invest more time talking to you.

Qualifying prospects

Qualifying a prospect is the sales skill to decide if the contact is really a genuine prospect. A qualified prospect must meet some criteria that indicates they have the potential to become a paying customer. Too many sales pipelines are crammed with unqualified leads. 80% of prospect’s make it through the whole sales process without ever making a decision due to poor or reluctant qualifying.

Sales presentation skills

Sales presentation skills is your ability to tell stories, paint pictures and impart a vision for the future that will capture the audience interest and make them comfortable with buying a change management process. Closing a sale is as much about getting the buyer(s) to undertake change as it is about price or product fit.

The skill to create and deliver a sales presentation that hits all the points uncovered in the discovery phase is a vital skill.

Social selling

Social selling now plays a huge part in sales prospecting and networking with customers. The potential to communicate and influence via social media is now expected by buyers. The reality is in the buyers digitally influenced world, you need a good level of social media understanding. A social selling strategy allows you to target the right set of buyer profiles, done skillfully it offers an excellent channel to influence, make connections and build a network of relevant people to extend your social reach (and by default your ability to talk to potential customers).

Product knowledge

People buy from experts. You need to deeply understand where your product fits into the market and the value it delivers to a customer. It is about understanding the benefits your customers would be most interested in, and how these benefits relate back to the goals your prospect has shared with you.

Market research skills

Apart from product knowledge, buyers are seeking to engage with salespeople who can add value to their lives. They want to collaborate with salespeople who understands their business and market. You need to bring insights, trends, forecasts so you can really engage the customer and set you apart of the typical sales driven salesperson.

Closing skills

Before you ever get to closing a sale, you must learn to see the signs that give you the right to ask for the sale. Have you delivered on your promises and made the customer aware of what you have delivered? Have you covered off any points from other decision makers? Do you understand their decision-making process and have you helped them to make buying easier?

Whatever sales skills course or sales training courses you undertake to improve your knowledge of selling, we want to wish you well. Because a career in sales is about constantly learning and not being afraid to make mistakes along the way. Best of Luck.

Our latest video in our sales tips series has eight great tips to inspire sales performance.

So what is it that separates average salespeople from great salespeople?. Is it attitude, habits, ability or is it something else deeper in their personality. Whatever it is, we do know one thing and that is salespeople have one of the most demanding jobs in the world. They have to constantly produce results while dealing with rejection almost on a daily basis.  We also know that great salespeople are Persistent and Consistent. They know that engaging buyers is about getting through call after call, having social interactions, sending email after email, and hearing  ‘no thanks ’ after ‘no thanks’.

Ask anyone in a sales role and they will tell you that they love it but at times they loath it. For the days when the going gets tough or you just need that bit of inspiration, we’ve put together this video with eight motivational tips to bring you some motivation.

As the influence of social media grows, the buyer’s journey will change not just whole sales models but how we sell. The whole concept of Sales 2.0 as a sales technique has been around for going on a decade but still many salespeople struggle to embrace it. When it comes to B2B selling, then research firm Forester projects that over the next four years, 1 million B2B sales people will be replaced by buyers using self-service e-commerce. Those of us that want to have a long term career in sales will have to learn new selling techniques, re-tune our understanding of what sales and sales training means, while moving away from the more traditional forms of buyer engagement. The sales industry as a whole will have to embrace new sales models along with a sales process that really strives to add value to the buyer first and seeks to sell second.

Social Media Selling

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