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Is Your Sales Training Not Delivering? These 5 Strategies Will Change That

4 minutes read

Companies spend a lot of money on sales training, and rightfully so. A well-trained sales force is a high performing sales force.

In the United States alone, industry estimates for corporate expenditures on sales training
and performance improvement are more than $5bn annually
Sales Performance International

However, with increased investment, sales leaders are asking about the impact and effectiveness of the trainings. Are we getting it right with our sales training? Are we happy with the ROI on our educational investments in sales?
At SmartWinnr we have been closely working with some of the global Fortune 500 companies to identify the optimal ways to get the highest returns on your sales trainings. Here are the top 5 ways to create maximum impact on sales through sales trainings:

  1. Align your Sales Training to your Company’s Sales Methodology
    Every sales focused company has a specialised sales methodology that suits its specific market and its strategy. More often than not, trainers focus only on skills and techniques to achieve better results. While learning about the basics are important, it is also important to tie these skills back to a proven and established sales methodology. This approach gives context and essential background on the ‘why’s and what’s of such techniques.

    Firms where salespeople use the company’s methodology and get consistent coaching see 73% more quota attainment
    CSO Insight Research

  2. Reinforcement is the Key
    Companies make a huge investments in sales trainings with good intention. But most of it goes to waste. Research indicates that in spite of all the trainings, most of the knowledge gained during training is lost very soon.
    Use systematic, regular and ongoing learning and reinforcement to help reps learn and retain better. This helps them to apply new learning to their selling.

    Sales teams implementing post-training reinforcement see 20% more reps achieving quota.
    Aberdeen Research study

  3. Use Spaced Out Learning Technique
    Reps are always busy chasing leads and closing deals. Time for training is very limited. Trainers have the tendency to cram a lot of material in a single day. They try to infuse as much learning as possible in that limited time. This results in extremely intensive trainings where the trainer tries to cover every possible aspect. It is practically impossible for sales reps to learn, retain and apply at least some of these best practices.
    The solution is to turn sales training from tactical, sporadic events to well-planned, long-duration knowledge development programmes. You need to have a systematic training approach with reinforcements across an extended period of time.

  4. Collect and Share Tribal Knowledge
    More and more millennials are handling sales in today’s world. They are far more willing to share and contribute as compared to their older counterparts. A generation ago, sales reps were expected to gather knowledge from their managers or people above them. The ecology has changed dramatically today. Millennials are more comfortable to share knowledge and open towards learning from their peers.
    It’s a good idea for companies to make use of that. Provide a platform that leverages this and you will have a clearly measurable way to help millennials learn from each other’s experience.

  5. Byte Sized Learning for Millennials
    The conventional ways that companies target sales training are through classrooms, role plays and digital learning through Learning Management Systems.
    Does that work out for millennials? In most cases, no.
    Try getting them into a classroom and teaching them about your sales methodology. It will be difficult for you to keep them off their smartphones for too long.
    Millennials are used to byte sized information. So, why not use their obsession with their smartphones and invest in a technology that disseminated knowledge in small pieces? Ditch those long emails. Use WhatsApp groups for quick information sharing. Add gamification to the learning process for better engagement. Use a mobile-first learning tool to reinforce knowledge.
    The above strategies will definitely help you get more out of your sales training programmes with little additional investments. So don’t wait and start now!


Want to gamify your training? Check out the below articles which explain how to best gamify your training

Improve Employee Engagement of your Remote Teams with Gamification

30 60 90 Days Gamified Sales Training Plan

‘Work from Home Warriors’: Sales Training Game for Remote Sales Teams


Looking for a sales training software that takes your sales training to a whole new level?

Explore SmartWinnr’s Learning and Gamification features. Learn how to run fun and engaging sales training and sales coaching for your team through SmartWinnr.

Curious to learn more about it? Book a demo today!

Published on Thu Sep 22 2016

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