8 Best Sales Training Ideas For Sales Teams To Improve Performance

Investing in sales training is one of the best decisions a business can make as it can save you time and effort and offer amazing returns. Sales training has several benefits. It can help reps identify valuable leads with higher purchase intent, help build better relationships and trust with prospects, increase job satisfaction within the sales team and increase your company’s overall sales and ROI.

There are over 13 million sales professionals, each with their own style, so there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to training. Moreover, things are changing rapidly, sales processes are evolving and prospects are getting smarter. So organisations need to evolve too and deploy a thoughtful, data-driven approach to sales training to fit the individual reps.

Sales reps are always on the go to acquire, nurture and convert new leads. If they’re well-trained, they can better understand the prospects and their expectations and can convert leads faster and easier.

Here are the 8 best, actionable sales training ideas for sales teams to get started and skyrocket sales performance:

1. Provide assessments regularly 

Sales training can provide the reps with the theoretical aspect of the sales process. But to provide them with practical exposure and check-in that reps are on a learning curve, sales managers need to engage them with industry case studies and assessments. 

These assessments don’t have to be boring or difficult. You can make them fun and informative at the same time. Here’s how: 

• Create quizzes, polls or MCQs to check the depth of knowledge of the reps 
• Ask the reps to create their own elevator pitches in a hypothetical scenario and see if they’re ready to handle prospects 
• Keep tracking the reps to see how well they apply the lessons from the training 
  

2. Use sales enablement software 

A sales enablement software is one of the best tools to train your reps with data-driven insights. A sales enablement software like Salesken can analyse sales conversations to identify some in-depth insights and boost your sales productivity by 70%. These insights can come in handy during sales training as sales managers can easily get visibility into the strengths and weaknesses of individual reps and iterate and customise training accordingly. Salesken, for instance, can identify any loopholes in your prospect-rep conversation and fix them in real-time.

3. Implement peer learning sessions 

For instance, if an experienced sales rep is retiring or leaving your organisation, get them to conduct a knowledge transfer session to discuss their experiences, learnings, and tips. Organisations can record these in video/audio format and use these resources to start their inside sales training for new joinees.

Salesken, for instance, can help with peer learning as the software’s post-call analytics feature helps identify mistakes, so they're not repeated. As a result, average performing reps can learn from and replicate top performers’ strategies, and even well-performing reps can learn from what their peers are doing differently.

4. Conduct objection handling training 

Objection handling is key to selling. Most objections aren’t unique-- they’re frequently repeated and predictable, so internal sales training must focus on refuting common objections, as well as provide a framework for dealing with new objections.

Instruct your reps to note down every unique objection they come across, so the entire sales team can evaluate the reasons for these objections together and find out potential solutions. 

5. Create mock presentations 

Attractive and informative presentations have always worked for sales reps. In SaaS sales trainings, mock presentation decks can be useful in explaining your products and services so reps can learn. You can help them understand the competitive advantage and USP of your product and plan their sales strategy accordingly. 

6. Keep a competitor analysis ready 

Before arranging a sales training session, make sure that you have a competitor analysis handy. The idea is to understand competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and use this information in your sales pitch. 

By handing over this competitor analysis document to your reps, you offer them quick exposure to your market positioning, a deeper understanding of various products and services and a complete overview of your competitors’ sales tactics. This can help your reps plan their sales pitch.  

7. Incorporate selling through curiosity training 

Have you heard about Selling Through Curiosity (STC)? It is one of the best sales training ideas to transform an early-stage business into a massive success. The purpose of STC is to engage with your prospects, ask questions, trigger critical thinking, and finally create your own assumptions about the prospect. It is all about educating your reps to stay curious and include STC within their sales strategy. The right combination of curiosity and genuineness can take your sales pitches to the next level. 

Some common questions used in STC include “Tell me more” or  “Why do you prefer it in this manner?” With STC, you can go deeper into the conversation and figure out what your prospects really want, which makes it easier to drive purchases.

8. Invest in educational resources and upskilling

A focus on continuous learning beyond just training can also help your reps in upskilling. Buy e-books, trade publications, tutorials and courses from industry experts and share them with your reps, so they can self-train. If you have a tight budget, subscribe to newsletters or other free resources. Many experienced marketers, sales professionals and companies send monthly/weekly newsletters, which are value-packed resources discussing the latest sales tricks and hacks. Your reps can learn a lot from these. 

A special note on training remote sales teams

Here’re a few tips for you to get started: 

• Keep your camera on during virtual meetings. Believe it or not, that’s a great way to show the reps that you are empathetic and equally excited about the training session. This can build the interest of the reps. 
• Use sales coaching software that captures every sales conversation to identify the real-time talking points, suggest the improvement areas, and plan your sales strategy accordingly.  
• Encourage your reps to ask questions, engage in conversations, and make sure that they stay motivated throughout the sales training. That way, you can keep your sales team motivated. 
  

Conclusion

We hope you found these sales training ideas useful! With a great software like Salesken, selling can be easy and fun for reps and managers alike! Salesken can help augment your sales reps’ intelligence by leveraging the power of AI. Our state-of-the-art real-time cueing and post-call data analytics can help you close sales faster and easier than ever before. So what are you waiting for? Book your demo now!