If you have a business and your goal is to grow, remember that a fundamental part of achieving it is having your teams very well trained, which is why it is necessary to treat the issue of sales training as a main axis within your growth strategy.
For this, it is necessary to take into account the best techniques on the market. After all, having well-trained employees is essential to the success of the business as a whole.
Sales training must take into account the transformations suffered by the market. For this reason, if the consumer profile is constantly changing, then the sales strategies must also be updated.
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The ideal is that each business has its own training with sales techniques based on its values, product and market context.
If you are already thinking about creating a course to help train those who work with you, read our 10 practical tips that will help you develop quality sales training.
1. Understand the needs of your team
All teams need to be made up of people who share common points, but who have their differences and peculiarities.
It is important to know the strong and weak points of the employees to emphasize their positive side and invest in improvement to work on the aspects that need to be improved.
To understand these needs, an excellent strategy is to hold meetings with team members and jointly analyze the latest results obtained in terms of sales.
The intention here is not to generate conflict, but to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the team members in order to point out the need for improvements.
It is worth noting that each member of the team may have different needs, but it is possible that some points are common.
Therefore, it is essential to group these needs. This way you manage to deal with as many pros and cons as possible.
2. Define the objective of the training
Before beginning sales training, it is important to have a clear idea of the objectives to be achieved throughout the process.
What is the sales goal for the period?
How soon should the learned strategies and techniques begin to take effect?
By defining the goals and objectives, after finishing the training you will be able to better understand the results obtained and you will be able to compare them with the previous ones.
Remember that if you offer a training without knowing its purpose, it is absolutely unfeasible. It’s even possible for your salespeople to get lost in what they need to do.
3. Choose the best topics to address
When it comes to sales, there are techniques and strategies that apply globally.
What is the value, after all, of swimming against the current, if the market defines the rules that will be followed by sellers?
One of the factors that most influence these techniques is consumer behavior.
And how to understand these techniques and know which are the best for a given moment?
A golden tip is to use keyword tools to understand what are the best topics related to selling techniques.
Take a look at what’s on the rise, what’s trending in your market, and what’s no longer useful as a selling strategy!
Remember that techniques are always changing and your business needs to follow market trends. For this reason, always analyze the market situation and the moment in which your company finds itself.
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4. Analyze your competitors
It is very important to study your competitors to know and understand the sales techniques that are being applied.
Every company has a different approach, and you can glean insights by taking a look at what your competitors are doing.
In your analysis, try to understand if they offer courses to train their teams.
Try to understand what topics are most heavily exploited, the techniques used and passed on to sellers, and any other important details.
The main topics are generally grouped into a few categories, such as product and company knowledge, market awareness, and specific sales techniques aimed at each company’s products.
After analyzing the profile of the training offered by the competition, start thinking about how to build your own course based on the characteristics and peculiarities of your business and your product.
The secret is to exploit the best of each training available on the market to create rich material capable of adding value to whoever takes that course.
But don’t kid yourself, even the best sales training needs to go through constant updating. The market changes and the courses and techniques also undergo alterations.
5. Choose the best format for your team
The sales training format should be chosen based on the profile of the sales team.
There are basically two types of training: face-to-face and online.
Nothing prevents, however, that the chosen training is mixed, with a part offered in person and another virtual.
One detail to note is that online training only works effectively when the tools are available to team members.
In other words, it is useless to make the best training available without follow-up or monitoring and indicators that the techniques and knowledge were effectively absorbed by the team.
In online or face-to-face training, it is worth offering an adequate structure, with support for the participants and a training day compatible with the needs presented.
Very fast courses may not be enough to convey the information. On the other hand, very long courses become cumbersome and exhausting for the participants.
6. Use real examples in your industry
To make sales training more interesting, and offer a truly immersive experience, it is interesting to explore real examples of the business.
Telling success stories, successful sales and techniques that have been applied correctly helps to gain the attention of the team.
Do not allow business training to remain only in theory, with lessons to be learned far removed from the reality of your business. If necessary, create examples, but that are close to the reality of your company.
By showing a situation that has already happened in your business and telling how it was resolved, you may encourage your team and realize that they are capable of achieving the same results.
7. Focus on practical activities
An effective sales course must have the right ingredients of theory and practice.
Remember that one of the main objectives of training the sellers on your team with sales techniques is to obtain more satisfactory results in the market.
That’s why getting down to business should be part of the course. Only in this way will it be possible to identify the progress of what is being taught, the degree of immersion of the employees and the transformation potential of the training.
What is the best period to apply the techniques taught? Once the theory course is over!
This way people can put into practice what they have learned while the information is still fresh in their minds.
That is why the course, in addition to offering quality information, must be motivating and lead sellers to give their best as soon as they start selling.
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8. Invite experts on the subject matter
One of the ways to give a new face to your sales training, differentiating the course from others – which are often known for being boring, cumbersome and repetitive – is to invite people specialized in the subject to speak directly with your team.
In addition to sales experts, it is worth investing in the participation of coaches, people who master short-term transformation tools and techniques. They can better develop the personality and vision of your employees and lead them to success.
In the end, as important as learning new sales techniques is eliminating old habits and limiting beliefs, and coaches can help a lot in that process.
9. Promote interaction
A good sales course should promote interaction between all members. Selling is communicating!
We can say without fear of being wrong that the keys to success in a negotiation are centered on good communication and excellent interpersonal relationships.
Encourage your sellers to interact and participate effectively in the construction of knowledge!
They must feel recipients and builders of the sales techniques presented in the training.
Our last advice is: break the idea of traditional training courses, which focus on the raw presentation of information. The course you’ve created has to be fluid and dynamic, okay?!
10. Monitor the performance of your team
To know if the sales training had an effect, it is important that you closely monitor the performance of your team.
Learn exactly what the pre-training data is so that it can be compared with the results obtained after the implementation of the techniques taught in the course.
Asking vendors for feedback helps you understand how satisfied you are with the course, what’s going well, and what you can improve on in future trainings.
And make it clear that they can give honest feedback.
Although they are critical, they are essential to reflect the real vision of the sales team regarding the course offered and, thus, improve future opportunities.
Create your own sales training
As we mentioned before, sales training can be delivered in person or online.
This second format has grown a lot in recent years, taking into account the ease of learning, practicality and the possibility of studying and learning based on your own calendar.
For this type of sales training to be successful, you need to invest in a good distance learning platform that offers adequate resources and results tracking tools.
If you liked these ideas and you are thinking of creating a sales training for your team, but you still don’t know how to start, read our post that teaches you the .
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