Introduction To Sales Training

Introduction To Sales Training
    Sushmitha Lakshminarayan
    Experienced Soft Skills Trainer

    In today’s word, sales teams have ambitious targets to be met and their compensation is based on the sales they make. Hence, it is vital for salesperson to be competent on knowing the product and how to sell the product.

    We shall classify the skills required for sales in to three categories:

    Checklist Of Sales Individuals
    1. Product Knowledge
    2. Business Knowledge
    3. Soft Skills

    Product Knowledge:

    Sales training needs to cover the product he/she needs to sell, and benefits customer gets on using the product. Training shall enable salesperson to provide elevator pitch and the product benefits when they get short span of time. Seller may need to have an ability to meet the customer need by connecting multiple products if his product is not meeting their requirement.

    Business Knowledge:

    Sales training needs to educate on where the product fits in customer business. They must be equipped in developing the sales strategy to closing the deal. Education shall provide the framework for sales to know where to start and steps involved in sales process, finally close the deal.

    Customer Business:

    Training needs to cover techniques to learn about the customer business and understand their pain points, future investment plans. Customer gains confidence when sales understand and appreciates the business, they are in.

    Opportunity Development:
    When customer has an enquiry, it needs to further develop as an opportunity and finally generate revenue for the company. Sales needs guidance on engagement plans, tools required to develop the enquiry into order.

    Proposal:

    Sales needs to know components involved in a proposal and stakeholders within the company to be involved to create a proposal. It is the formal document submitted to customer. Hence sales training to cover in depth knowledge on making this complete and convincing for customer.

    Price Negotiation:

    Company shall have a great product which benefits to the customers. However, price is the major component in breaking or making the deal. Also, sales need to win the order not by just wining, they must meet the profit goal. Hence, Learning shall cover in detail about winning the order that meets the profit goal as well as customer feels that they got the product with the right price point.

    Soft Skill:
    Salesperson may be technically competent to sell the product. However, if he is not having the soft skills then it is humongous task to make a sale. Key soft skills required are follows:

    Softskills essential for Sales Persons
    • Networking
    • Relationship building
    • Communication
    • Leadership
    • Influencer

    Networking:
    Customer does not prefer cold calls. Customer needs to have easy accessibility to connect to person who can help. Sales needs guidance to build formal networking.

    Relationship Building:

    Sales needs to build trustable relationship with customer. This enables the company to close the deal quickly and avoids customer to open the bid for multiple vendors. Training to practical examples, tips and tricks to build relationship.

    Communication:
    Training needs to provide a framework to make an effective communication with customer. Different technologies can be used in communication like – face to face, email, phone, articles etc. Sales training needs to be intelligent in picking up the right technologies.

    Leadership:

    Sales can be individual contributor or manager. Irrespective of the role a salesperson plays, leadership skill is important. Customer may have a need however it may not be an active need and eventually it may impact the productivity of their team. Sales needs to proactively take steps to educate the need to resolve the problem and support customer to persuade within their organization to show the immediate need to address the problem. Sales must handle stakeholders within his organization and customer organization. Hence training to give importance to leadership skills.

    Influencer:

    Customers have multiple choices to give the order to any companies. All the vendors may have a great product. However, if salesperson is a great influencer, then it is easy to penetrate Customer Organization and promote the product and communicate effectively about the values about the product. Sales needs to be guided on how to be great influencer.

    Methodology to execute the sales training

    Training should use multiple techniques to upskills the salesperson. Following is few options and its benefit.

    Execution Methodology

    Benefits

    1. Class Room (Instructor Led)

    Can deliver effective training and enables networking

    1. Virtual – Remote (Instructor Led)

    Helps to reduce the cost

    1. E-Learning

    Great option when it comes to scalability

    Training material preparation should ensure the real examples are used and there are exercises for students to try the techniques introduced.

    Conclusion

    If company wants to grow, adding new sales employee is one of the key strategies. However, without proper guidance and training, salesperson spent more time to close the deal and may not meet the companies target. Hence, investing on training the new salesperson is critical to meet the growth goals and upskill them regularly makes a sustainable growth.

    “Invest in competency – Invest for Future”

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