5 Sales Training Secrets that Will Boost Revenue

Sales training is an important part of the sales strategy in most companies. To take your sales training to another level and give your organisation a revenue boost, you should go beyond having a sales strategy, developing a sales training strategy as well. This involves giving careful consideration to the types of sales training courses that you will provide to your salespeople.

Such a strategy doesn’t just mean training on your products and how to sell them, although that training material is important. There are also other areas that you should look at, including the five we have outlined below.

Create Training for Your Top Salespeople

For many organisations, sales training is largely focused on those salespeople who are underperforming or who are just hitting their targets. It’s an obvious and important strategy, as you need to provide whatever support you can to help them improve.

However, you shouldn’t neglect your best salespeople. They won’t need the same sales training as an employee who is underperforming, but the right training can help them refine their skills.

Training for your top salespeople can also be beneficial for staff retention. You will know how important it is to keep your best salespeople on your team. By providing them with training, you are demonstrating support and giving them help in areas where it is needed.

Providing training also shows you are prepared to invest in the development of your best sales employees.

Provide Basic Sales Training Courses

In some organisations, basic sales training takes place once and is then never revisited. In other organisations, there is a lack of focus on basic sales skills, with training content focusing instead on products and advanced sales strategies and methods.

In most situations, however, it is important not to lose sight of those essential skills that are needed in all salespeople, whatever your industry. Even your best salespeople will benefit from refresher basic training, particularly if you provide it in an engaging and enjoyable format, such as via e-learning.

Develop Excellent Onboarding Training for New Sales Recruits

There are a number of challenges that many companies in the UAE and Saudi Arabia face when hiring new salespeople:

• Keeping them – there is always a risk that a new recruit will leave within a short period of time, particularly if they have a poor onboarding experience.
• Getting them up to speed – it takes time for a new salesperson to get up to speed to the point where they are bringing in results and hitting targets.

Good quality onboarding training for new salespeople can help with both of these challenges. Onboarding training can make new sales recruits feel welcomed and supported, while also providing them with the essential knowledge they need to be successful.

Remember, there is a lot to learn as a new salesperson in your company. This includes everything from your products and services to your processes and procedures. There will be new systems they will need to learn, and they might even need to learn about your target customers or industry.

If you hire inexperienced salespeople, they will also need to learn about sales. By providing them with high-quality sales training during the onboarding process, you will enhance their skills and confidence levels.

Furthermore, onboarding training for new sales employees, whatever level of experience they have, will also get them up to speed faster, shortening return on investment timescales and saving you money.

Provide Customer Service Training to Salespeople

Customer service skills are no longer the preserve of your customer service team. For many companies, all employees need to have good customer service skills, including salespeople.
One of the problems is that there is often an assumption that because salespeople are customer-facing, they must have good customer service skills. This isn’t always the case. Therefore, you should provide customer service training for your salespeople. Ideally, this training should be tailored specifically for those working in sales.

Offer Industry-Specific Training

In the modern world, very few, if any, industries standstill. The environment in which industries operate is always evolving and changing, with those changes being driven by everything from customer expectations to technology to the competitive landscape to the supply chain.

As a result, new pain points for your customers can move higher up the priority list, while pain points that motivated buying decisions in the past can become less of a concern.

It is important your salespeople understand the challenges and opportunities that your target customers face. As those opportunities and challenges are always changing, this knowledge needs to be continuously updated to ensure everyone on the team has the information they need to help close the sale or win the contract. Regular industry training can deliver this knowledge.

Providing Comprehensive Sales Training

Finally, it is helpful to make training available to your salespeople in as wide a range of areas as possible. For example, advanced training on your CRM to help salespeople become more efficient in using it to generate leads and get sales. Training on sales topics specific to your company is also beneficial – an example is voice training skills if your employees regularly interact with customers on the phone.

That said, the five main points in this article should be the key focus areas, as they will give you a competitive edge and help you boost revenue.