Sales training is a training and training space that companies offer to their sales team. It is the sum of teaching strategies aimed at improving the sales capabilities of an organization’s agents.
To give you an idea, more than 35% of employees directly relate their commitment to a company to factors related to their training. If you add this data to the costs that a high degree of turnover represents for a company, the reasons for implementing a sales training program become clear.
To develop a sales training or commercial training program that delivers value for the company and leads it to improve its results, it is necessary to work in two large spheres: technical skills (hard skills) and soft skills ( soft skills ).
Now that you know what sales training is and its importance, continue reading because we will give you the tools to put your sales training plan into practice.
How to train the sales force?
To start building your commercial training plan, it is important to detect where the gaps are or what skills your team needs to improve.
Many times, sales training focuses on improving aspects inherent to the position the person occupies.
The sales manager is offered, for example, a course on how to improve management skills; while the product team can attend training on technological developments in X or Y market.
Of course, this and all types of knowledge add to professional development. However, it is also essential to motivate the sales force to take on new challenges and learn skills that may not be directly related to their current functions.
What training should a salesperson have?
When answering what capabilities a salesperson should have, it is important to consider that agents must be experts in key aspects of any business and have the soft skills that facilitate their role.
That said, your sales team should receive training in:
- The company and its processes;
- The client, its segment and its competitors;
- The product or service and its differentials;
- Emotional intelligence, transparency and empathy.
The importance of good training is evident, because it helps improve the employee experience and this improvement favors the customer experience. This was demonstrated by KPMG in a study where it relates the employee experience to each of the CX pillars.
Read on to learn how to train sales employees in 5 steps .
How to improve the customer experience with commercial training?
1. Strengthens knowledge about the client
The first point to consider when planning sales training is the consumer and their needs . When closing deals and offering the best customer experiences, agents must know who your company’s buyer persona is.
This will allow you to know in depth the problems, needs and expectations of consumers when selling. This way you will be able to guide your speech and strategies in the most effective way to close the operation successfully.
If you want your team to anticipate customer needs, read this article to learn more about their expectations before, during and after the sale .
2. Turn your salespeople into experts of the product or service
Another key aspect to improving the customer experience through sales training is to transmit to salespeople all the knowledge about the products or services you sell.
Your agents must become experts in the product’s value proposition and its differentials. This will allow them to be aligned with customer expectations and, as a consequence, have a positive impact on metrics such as NPS ( Net Promoter Score ) and customer loyalty, according to a KPMG study .
Do you want to discover the best way to highlight your products? Read: What is customer value and how can it be created?
3. Improve your ability to listen to customers
Customers are looking for an immersive experience that involves being heard and being seen. This trend was revealed in Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 .
The best salespeople know that empathy and active listening are essential when closing a deal. Therefore, when training your agents, you need to convey to them the importance of listening to the consumer carefully and thus detect the aspects in which the product could help them.
In addition, they must be able to put themselves in the customer’s shoes to generate strong connections and improve their experience. Keep in mind that empathy is another key aspect of the customer experience, highlighted by the KPMG study cited above.
If you want to improve listening in your sales team, also read: Listen to the customer, the 3 pillars to generate empathy .
4. Give them tools to answer customer questions
Customer questions are an essential indicator that they are interested in the product. Therefore, agents cannot miss the opportunity to provide complete attention to queries.
During sales training, you can include a script or pre-script. This will allow you to include frequently asked questions and offer optimized answers for each of them.
To learn how to anticipate your customers’ queries in sales training, read: Sales script: what it is and how to make a sales speech .
5. Reinforces the importance of transparency
47% of people prefer companies that operate with transparency, according to a PWC study .
Although honesty is key in all areas of a company, during the sale it becomes an indispensable factor – integrity is even one of the six criteria that define the customer experience, according to the KPMG study cited above.
Therefore, it is essential that your sellers are sincere and present truthful arguments to sell. In the end, a good salesperson must persuade with real elements.
Discover here 5 models to persuade more customers that your salespeople should know.
Technical sales training (hard skills)
73 % of workers consider that the responsibility for the development of the workforce lies with organizations and 54% with individuals .
For its part, another KPMG study determined that access to training and continuous updating is part of the emotional salary and is considered a talent development strategy for companies.
The first thing that sales teams think about is sales training, training salespeople in technical skills (or hard skills ) that allow them to achieve the expected results.
Discover below some of the most important training topics.
1. CRM Sales Software
It is common to hear that sellers complain about the time they waste filling out forms or entering different platforms to search or upload data.
There are others who think that the acquisition or optimization of a CRM in their organization complicates their work, since they were used to doing it differently, and now they invest a lot of time with software.
The truth is that sales software is designed to facilitate tasks and integrate data .
Although a CRM must be practical and easy to use, salespeople must be permanently trained, not only when they join the company, but also when a new functionality is acquired or there is an important update, so that they know how to use it.
Teams that have adopted a CRM to analyze the entire sales process spend an average of 99.1 minutes to generate a sales estimate or forecast, compared to 125.1 minutes for those who do not use it.
2. Prospecting and negotiation techniques
For Lard Bucket, author of the book Powerful Selling , many salespeople are interested in filling their sales funnels with potential leads as much as they can. This will only lead to them receiving as many “no”s as they can.
A sales training plan should include efficient lead and prospect management training . This will allow you to attract more qualified leads and increase the possibility of closing more business in an intelligent way.
But to shout victory, you have to know how to negotiate and know the profile of the interlocutor from the beginning of the sales process.
For this, there is a method known as Rapport whose objective is to create empathy and give a feeling of trust and security through communication techniques and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) . Even though it is widely known in the sales world, many salespeople don’t really know how to use it.
3. Systems analysis and evaluation
A sales training plan also needs to take into account that organizations have internal systems that employees must be able to use.
The sales training process must consider new technologies and how to incorporate them into your daily routines, both internally and with customers.
It is not that the seller is an expert in technology, but that he knows how to apply it to the business world and take advantage of it to optimize the sales process .
4. Knowledge of the product and the company
When the salesperson feels part of his company’s organizational culture , it reflects this in all stages of the sales process. According to a Deloitte study , organizational culture is the second most important factor (42%) when generating a sense of belonging.
Therefore, the sales training plan must reinforce knowledge of the strategic objectives , as well as the mission and vision of the company.
It is also of great importance to know and be up to date on the technical aspects, characteristics and specifications of the products and services they offer. As well as company policies and transversal processes, such as payments, logistics, after-sales, among others.
5. Market research
Sellers must know basic aspects of economics and finance to use them to their advantage. This is very useful especially for B2B sales .
They must also know the market segment of their company and its clients very well to understand its particularities and draw up the best strategy to reach them. This training is especially relevant if the market or demand has undergone any change that is affecting results or representing an opportunity.
Do your qualitative market research in 7 steps .
6. Consumer behavior
Understanding what leads a customer to buy a certain product instead of another is a complex process in which several factors intervene.
If you want to improve the interaction with your current and potential clients beyond communication, commercial training should delve into consumer behavior and how it has changed with new communication and information technologies.
Sales training in soft skills
With the rapid evolution of technology, machines are increasingly capable of performing some mechanical functions that were previously performed by humans.
This is already being seen with the incorporation of chatbots and artificial intelligence capable of answering customer questions, almost without human intervention.
According to the Harvard Development Center , while technology does its job, people must focus on learning and developing certain skills, which will mark the future of 21st century professionals:
1. Analytical thinking and innovation
Your training plan should include how to analyze all the data and information captured through automation, to use it to build innovative solutions.
59 % of consumers believe companies should use the data they collect about them to personalize their experiences , according to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023.
A tool may help you generate leads and manage customer data, but it’s up to you and your team to analyze what to do with them and how you can close more deals quickly.
2. Active learning
Maybe you’ve heard about lifelong learning . This concept refers to the increasingly evident need to create a mindset of continuous learning.
This is because the world changes quickly and a single graduation and postgraduate degree are no longer enough to stand out in the company or in the market.
Salespeople have to be willing to leave their comfort zone and at the same time, they must learn to use their talents to their advantage and for the team’s results. Achieving this is not difficult if you consider that 76% of employees look for opportunities for personal growth.
3. Creativity, originality and initiative
Your sales team needs to develop skills to offer its value proposition . The world is highly competitive and that demands more creative, relevant and personalized action initiatives with respect to its competitors.
According to the Zendesk study cited above, 70% of consumers spend more money with companies that offer a personalized and seamless experience.
Furthermore, P WC in the study cited above revealed that offering innovative (57%) and personalized (50%) products are two of the customer’s main criteria when trusting a brand.
In a first approach with a prospect, for example, the first impression is key. Since the customer experience involves a journey, the product will not be offered directly because before reaching that point, there is a time for the seller to introduce himself to the company.
Perhaps that potential client has already heard the same learned script several times and will lose interest unless you are creative and original enough to gain their attention and sympathy.
4. Solving complex problems
For an increasingly complex world, increasingly complex problems . Binary responses and thoughts such as good or bad, yes or no, stopped working in the midst of the disruptive environment of today’s world.
That is why implementing training for salespeople requires training them to reflect on the most varied perspectives and to constantly challenge themselves in their convictions and tasks.
If the goal is very high, they must know what to do to achieve it, if the customer is angry about a failure, they must have the tools to reverse the situation and if you are losing clients, they must take actions to improve the retention rate.
5. Leadership and influence
A recent study asked 2,400 professionals what motivated them most at work. The answer, to the surprise of many, was “the nature of the work itself,” followed by “the ability to grow and progress.”
Leadership is the main factor (47%) that influences an organization’s ability to create a sense of belonging, according to the Deloitte study cited above.
Understanding this trend is increasingly important for sales team leaders since for years it was believed that the only way to motivate a team was through bonuses and rewards.
Although leading a group has always been challenging, a scenario marked by recurring changes and a work mentality linked to purpose makes it even more so.
To learn more about this topic, learn about these 10 business leadership books that every manager should read .
6. Emotional intelligence
As new technologies expand exponentially, the unique attributes of human beings such as relational skills, attitudes and values are increasingly important in the world of work.
A sales training program that includes self-awareness, self-management, empathy and conflict management tools, for example, can practically help salespeople grow in terms of emotional intelligence and use these tools on a daily basis with clients and customers . colleagues.
You may be interested in: 10 business leadership books that every manager should read .
How to make a training plan?
By identifying the needs of your sales team and the topics they need to develop, the next step is to structure how the sales training will be done. Paul Cherry, from the acclaimed book, “ Questions That Sell ,” makes some recommendations:
- Explain to your salespeople why they are receiving certain training and the importance of putting it into practice in their daily lives;
- Identify which objective of your sales plan or company OKRs you are working on;
- Boost one skill at a time. For example, if your group needs to improve both conflict management and negotiation skills , start with the one that is a priority to achieve the expected goals. After a while, when you start seeing results, you can start with the others and so on;
- Ensures that the plan is interactive and dynamic;
- Create strategies for salespeople to engage with what they are learning and continue their individual study and training;
- Listen to your salespeople and ask them for feedback on the training received.
Optimize your customer experience with Zendesk
As you already know, training your sales force improves the customer experience. Now that you’re in that process, make the most of it by offering your sales team the best resources to create meaningful connections, loyalty, and revenue.
Zendesk customer service is a complete software that will allow you to enhance the experience of the customer and your agents , thanks to its functionalities:
- Messaging : With this conversational solution you can provide your customers with 24/7 support from your website, mobile applications, social networks and commercial channels . Learn more benefits of messaging.
- AI and a
