I was very lucky when I started my career in sales. The company that I joined as embarking on a major training programme for all of its sales staff. It felt like we were constantly in training classes, learning all variety of techniques. This was great except that, for someone new to sales like I was, I hadn’t really grasped the basics. I was being taught more sophisticated techniques, in a room with some very experienced sales people, but I barely knew how to prospect.
Since then I have been in many sales training classes and as I have more experience, I can take relevant and useful information from each one to continue to develop my knowledge and skills. However, I do tend to just take nuggets of information rather than any larger learning. This is partly because of my experience but partly because the training is more generic rather than being focussed on my product and overall sales process. Indeed, I have spent more time in some training courses teaching the instructor about my industry than being taught sales by them.
So, what training should you take to improve your sales skills?
The answers obviously depends on what you are selling, who you are selling to and what experience you have. It is quite different selling shoes in a shop than it is selling aeroplanes to multinational airlines!
For anyone starting off, I would highly recommend short, basic training classes that teach you one or two ideas at a time. It can be overwhelming to take a long class and then have to work out what to do differently. It is much better to learn a couple of new ideas, apply them, then learn a few more. To that end, online training can be extremely valuable as it is short, focussed and can be repeated at any time as a refresher.
As you progress with your career, longer, more general training classes will help you to combine your basic skills and develop new ones. Not everything that is covered in the class is likely to be new, you will probably take elements from each one and apply them as appropriate to your own work. Additionally, you can take more specialised courses such as presentation skills or sales negotiations that add a depth of knowledge to a crucial area of your work.
Beyond that, it is worth investing in coaching on a one to one basis with an experienced trainer. This will enable you to discuss specific problems or areas of weakness that you can work on directly. In this way, the training is focussed on what you need to learn rather than what the trainer usually teaches. These sessions could include joint meeting attendance where the coach attends a customer meeting with you to watch you in action and make recommendations as a result. Read more about the value of coaching here https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/value-of-coaching.
Throughout all of your career, I would recommend reading sales books. Each one that I have ever read has helped me to develop an aspect of my work. Much of them repeat many of the same ideas, sometimes with a different wording or emphasis but similar all the same. You may end up skipping through sections to find what is most useful to you.
For anyone looking to develop a training programme for their team, this needs to be done carefully. The team are likely to have a variety of individuals who learn differently, have various levels of experience and different skills. Defining a single training programme for the whole team may not be the most appropriate way of proceeding. In addition, I would strongly recommend working with a trainer who has experience in your industry or a similar industry. The role of a sales person is to understand the needs of a customer and translate the features of their product into value for their customer. A sales trainer who does not understand your industry may struggle to help with this as they have less knowledge of the customer needs than you do. Read more about how to build a sales training programme here https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/training-programme.
Whatever you do, I would urge you to continue to invest in training throughout your career. A small investment in training can deliver huge returns when deals are closed that might not have been otherwise. One of my customers won an additional $100,000 in one deal just from one small part of a training course that I delivered for them. You are never to old to learn and we all forget things so continual training will continually deliver a valuable return for your company.