Sales professionals must always be on their game and ready to tap into customer needs to convert a potential sale. The best way to ensure your sales team is sharp and up-to-date on the latest tactics is to design a structured sales training program. Training programs lay the foundation for newer sales team members to build good habits and are an opportunity for veteran staff to adapt to new methodologies, like Revenue Operations (RevOps).
The RevOps Model is the new paradigm for modern business. It combines sales, marketing, and customer service under one department. Making a major transition like this is much easier when you have the essentials covered through an effective sales training program. With your sales team unified and constantly learning, adding new techniques and approaches doesn’t have to impact sales performance. Let’s dive into how to enhance your revenue goals by investing in sales training.
The Importance of Sales Training for Revenue Stability
Sales training is the perfect environment to establish good habits, hone sales techniques, and refine the soft skills that all build a foundation for success. Sales is all about optimizing each opportunity. The more practice a salesperson has, the more that closing a deal becomes second nature. Sales training provides these core benefits to your organization:
- Improved closing efficiency - Having an abundance of tools and tactics at your disposal during a cold call or pitch meeting will allow you to pivot when needed to meet the ever-shifting expectations of customers.
- Enhanced relationship building - The art of the long sale is no small feat and something that even the most senior sales professionals can improve upon. Upgrading relationship-building skills will help sales pros make lasting impressions at every customer touch point.
- Heightened team morale - Sales training includes team exercises that bring together co-workers and help them collaborate to co-support individual and company-wide efforts. Shared training also allows everyone to be on the same page and speak the same language. Not only does this boost morale, but it makes the customer experience more consistent.
- Better communication skills - Fine-tuning the little quirks of body language, non-verbal cues, and communication preferences between sales, internal staff, and prospective customers will amplify your revenue operations.
- Greater knowledge of industry and product - Knowing what you’re selling inside and out is a must to convince prospects to become loyal customers. How well you communicate your company’s USPs can make or break your sales performance.
- Increased efficiency - Exploring and learning new techniques, technology, and collaboration styles can refine best practices and gel together your team’s habits and overall production.
- Reduced turnover - Stagnation breeds indifference. Knowing that your company is happy to invest in your development builds an immense amount of trust.
- Maximized potential - Anyone you bring to your sales team will have a natural knack for communication, persistence, and persuasion. That said, continued training and development can take your younger staffers to a new performance level while enabling your top performers to close even larger deals.
Your sales team is the heart of your company’s revenue generation, which fuels the stability of all of your endeavors. Just like RevOps works to co-support revenue generation by combining and optimizing the skills and resources from sales, marketing, and UX, constant sales training works to optimize the performance of each sales expert.
Investing in a structured and evolving sales training program ensures that your team is well-equipped for whatever business or industry shifts come their way. Let’s look at the advantages of different sales training programs.
Types of Sales Training Programs
Whether you’ve adopted a modern RevOps model for sales or are sticking to a traditional sales structure, there are plenty of advantages to be had in implementing a training program. According to Accenture, investing in sales training pays off big, with an ROI of 353% on every dollar spent.
Typically, these programs are broken down into Traditional and Modern categories.
Traditional Sales Training
We’re all familiar with the quintessential classroom style of learning. This can include a set of meetings or workshops where a single or group of presenters speaks to your sales team on new or classic techniques while employees take notes and act out scenarios.
On-the-job training is another vital component of traditional sales programs, wherein a less experienced team member shadows a senior leader or manager. This is the quickest way to bring new team members up to speed on brand-specific nuances.
Modern Sales Training
We’ve all grown accustomed to more modern information-sharing applications as companies have introduced technology-forward practices to enhance efficiency and improve data aggregation. Even small and mid-sized organizations implement AI and machine-learning technologies and tools to manage workflows and achieve greater data visibility. As tools work to improve the efficiency of our organizations, regular training will keep employees abreast of the latest trends and lasting tactics that shift instincts and insights into data-backed business intelligence initiatives.
Keeping your sales team technically savvy will ensure that they’re prepared to speak the language of the modern consumer and optimize their workloads to magnify the impact of each incoming and outgoing message they share with prospects.
Here are some common themes and skills that you should cover in your modern sales training program:
- RevOps
- eLearning / Webinars
- Simulated exercises
- Digital selling
- Personality style training
- Account-based selling
- Sales enablement and readiness
- CRM management
- Data-driven sales
- Consultative selling
- Cold email & email sequencing
Optimize Your Revenue Potential With a Lift in Your Sales Training
Revenue operations and sales training go hand in hand. Both work to create an environment poised to iteratively and steadily excel day by day and year over year. By developing the skills and practices needed to elevate your fundamental expectations of sales performance, you forge a path toward success that was previously unattainable.
If you want to learn more about the RevOps style of business or how to establish an effective sales training program, you can schedule a time to meet with the trusted experts at Relequint. Our team has helped transform corporations into finely-tuned revenue-generating machines.