Here's How to Train Your Sales Team to Achieve the Results You Want

• What is Sales Training?
• Ways to Train Your Team
• Books for Sales Training
  

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Is your sales team not quite meeting your expectations? If you want to see phenomenal results from what is essentially the backbone of your business, you have to make sure they’re equipped with the tools and knowledge they need.

Let’s look at the Olympics for a great example of what it means to train a great team. 

Every four years countries all over the world send out their best athletes to compete to win grand titles. Leading up to the games, they undergo rigorous training to perfect their routines and performance. Some of these athletes are even known as the best of the best because of how well they’ve trained over years. Do you think the best of the best ever stop training once they get that title? Absolutely not! No matter how great they are or how great we think they are, they must remain sharp, which is why they are known as the best athletes in the world.

If we want to see Olympic-level performances from our team, we must train them to be the best of the best.

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‍What is Sales Training?

Sales training involves the personal development of skills and techniques related to creating and exploring new sales opportunities, as well as closing sales for an organization.

In my opinion, sales training should be a constant and recurring responsibility of the organization. Some may only do it once a year or only when they hire new people, but the market is always changing. That being said, we could miss out on valuable opportunities because of our team’s lack of knowledge.

Before we can look at how we should train our team, we must look to the Olympics to realize the three traits every team member should have:

• A willingness and openness to learn
• Basic skills for the execution of the project
• Basic knowledge of the tasks needed to achieve the goals

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Ways to Train Your Team

In a team setting, not every member will be at the same level of expertise. This is going to be the first hit to the foundation of the team, but we can definitely use it to our advantage. We must move the team forward while helping to fill in the skill or knowledge gaps and we can do that in a few ways: 

1. Group training - If we want to build your team while also promoting teamwork, this is a great way to start. Doing regular training sessions on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis makes sure the team is on the same page. This is also a great time to leverage the experience of your team members who’ve been doing sales longer and use it to build newer sales people. It also allows us to control the information so you can dictate which areas of sales you want them to focus on the most.
2. Testing & Measuring – This allows us to see where individuals may need specific training. It will also encourage them to look deeper into their sales process and uncover what’s working and what’s not working
3. Books - This is a great way to make your team more focused by pulling them away from the distractions that come with technology. This encourages them to use their own time to read and puts the responsibility on them to build their knowledge. We can also do a book club to create accountability and encourage discussion. 
   

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Books for Sales Training

Secrets of Question-Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results (Top Selling Books to Increase Profit, Money Books for Growth)

We just read this book for our monthly BookCLUB, and it was a great read! It actually has been used by sales teams all over the world and can even be called a staple in sales training.

This book discusses how to ask the right questions when we have the prospect on the phone. Here are some highlights of this book:

• Creating a perceived value by selling the intangible.
• Understanding Customer Needs by uncovering  pain and desires. 
• Uncover Gold Metals & German Shepherds. Some are motivated by a positive reward while others want to avoid a negative consequence.
• Use questions instead of statements to get prospects to agreement

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Instant Leads

This book was written by ActionCOACH founder Brad Sugars with the goal of teaching business owners how to take leads and convert them into loyal customers. But it can still be a great tool for salespeople. The book discusses a wide range of activities and tactics you can use to generate more leads. 

Some highlights from this book are

• Use promotional offers and guarantees to set yourself apart from the herd
• Make sure your plans are cost-effective with a break even analysis
  

If you like this book you will also like Instant Referrals which can encourage your sales team to create strategies to encourage their existing customers to direct more traffic towards your business.

This is scratching the surface of ways you can build your sales team. There are so many more books and tactics that you can use to cater to your team's specific needs. I've worked with many teams to discover ways to build them up in their own unique niche. Contact us today to see what resources are available to you.