There’s a famous marketing analogy which goes like this:
Telling your date she is attractive is Marketing.
Telling your date that you are attractive is Advertising. Then, what is Selling?
Making your date fall in love with you is Selling, according to me.
In fact, this one line is the single, biggest truth that has distilled, after having trained over 32,000 sales professionals from 8 countries, across 2 decades.
Sales training topics must be chosen after getting a thorough understanding of the challenges in a sales job.
Yes, sales can be hard with the targets, pressure, uninterested customers etc. But sales can also be very exciting, rewarding and satisfying, if you get it right.
There are only 2 ways how you can get it right in sales – Get lucky or get trained.
During the 2001 dotcom crisis when most people in my software sales company lost their jobs, including my boss, I was among the handful who survived.
In fact, that year I was among the only 2 sales reps across 8 regional offices who took home incentives that year and it was certainly wasn’t because of luck.
I attribute my success to an investment I had made couple of years earlier, on sales training. 50,000 rupees as fees for the course was a huge sum those days Yet I spent it to learn SPIN selling technique, which at that time was the world’s most researched, successful and expensive sales technique.
It was my own hard earned money from doing part-time while in college, which I paid in EMIs over 24 months. It turned out to be the best investment decision with consistent & exciting returns even after 20 years.
A well planned sales training can be pivotal to a company as well as the sales reps. I always work hard to make the sales reps feel that it is ‘the first day of the rest of their lives;.
In this article I have listed on the top 6 sales training topics that will make your customers fall in love with what your company is selling and help your sales reps have a rewarding and exciting career in sales. But before we get to the topics shouldn;t we be asking –
What should be included in sales training?
For the sales training to be effective it is important think through using the the sales training process.
A typical sales training process consists of the following steps:
- Training Need Analysis which includes asking all the stake holders – sales reps, sales managers, senior management about the sales challenges according to them.
- Content Development based on the inputs of the last step. Special care is to be taken to ensure that training content is designed to build high product conviction, show superiority over competition, well- crafted sales pitch.
- Training Delivery should be practical, role-play oriented & experiential in nature. Most sales training programs are mere motivational in nature and not designed to build skill. Selling after all is a skill, like cycling, swimming.
Imagine a motivational or a theoretical session on swimming, cycling or singing? Mere knowledge on how to sell or swim is not enough. Hence, it is highly important to have enough time planned for practice sessions of the sales knowledge imparted.
So, how do you run a sales training session? Exactly like you would run a swimming class. Some instructions and lots of practice!
- Post-Training Feedback about the trainees by the trainer & vice versa.
- Performance Review post training of the sales reps and content to be updated if required based on results.
Now that you have the bird’s eye view of the sales training process, I will list out the best sales training topics for you first, and elaborate them one by one.
List of Sales Training Topics
Challenges in Sales Career
Benefits of a Sales Career
Pre-sale Preparation
Prospecting
Buyers Journey (How People Buy?)
Sales Process
NOTE: Whether, it is B2C or B2B, Sales training topics are the same. The sub topics may vary.
1. Challenges in Sales Career
Under this topic List down about 5-6 challenges that are faced by sales reps like targets, pressure etc.
Facilitate the learning that every job has its own challenges and sales job is no exception.
Also that the rewards outweigh the challenges.
It is always better to first ask them the question – What are the challenges in sales?, listen to their answers and then reveal the contents of your slide. This way, they feel involved, own the learning and find the training very engaging.
The above point holds true for most trainings, regardless of the topic.
2. Benefits of a Sales Career
100% of all sales reps are accidental sales guys. Nobody would have dreamt or planned while studying that one day they will be sales reps.
Sales profession has the most number of opportunities and least number of entry barriers. Hence, most people end up choosing this profession, by chance.
If it is a beginner sales training program or for freshers, please know that, the trainee might be skeptical and still considering other job options.
Hence, it is important that we sell the benefits of a sales career to the trainees with very powerful and enticing 5-6 rewards of being in sales job.
The trainees should feel that, though they may have got into sales job by CHANCE, they will stay and succeed by CHOICE.
3. Pre-sale Preparation
Sub topics here should basically answer these three questions:
Given the demands of the sales profession,
- What is the most important KNOWLEDGE that a sales person should have?
- What is the most important SKILL that a sales person should have?
- What is the most important ATTITUDE a sales person should have?
Knowledge – Industry, Market, Company, Product & Competition
Skill – Established or well-known sales methodology
Attitude – Positive attitude, Never-say-die mind set
4. Prospecting
Prospectingin sales is the process by which you identify the people or organisations
who are likelyto buy from you based on certain parameters like demographic,
psychographic, economic and geographic match to your company.
The end goal of this topic should be a specific list of 100 or thousand names of people or organisation that the sales rep will target this year. This list is also called as calling list or prospect list.
There are many prospecting techniques available. Please Google and choose the best technique that works for your organisation.It would also be useful to include buyer personas here.
5. Buyer’s Journey (How People Buy?)
If you can show the sales reps, how people buy, it helps them in approaching, how to sell. This topic requires a graphic or a flow chart tracing the customer’s journey from the time before the first contact till purchase.
There are several models outlining the Buying Process or Buyer’s Journey.
Four steps in the Buying Process:
Awareness of Need
Explore Options
Clarify Doubts
Make The Purchase.
Do google for Buyer’s journey images and choose one that works best for your company.
6. Sales Process
Over the last 2 decades, I have seen them all. A 3-step sales process to a 10-step one. My advice is, keep it short and simple unless someone has a loaded gun to your head.
What are the steps in the sales process?
A typical sales process includes these 4 steps:
Initiate The Sales Meeting
Probe for customer’s challenges
Demonstrate Solution
Close The Sale
CONCLUSION: Sales training is a big responsibility. It can make or break many careers, not just of the sales reps. Companies suffer for long periods of time due to poor sales and many shut down as well.
Hence, utmost care is to be taken to ensure that the sales training content is well researched, comprehensive, yet simple enough for the newest member to pick the knowledge and skills imparted.
What do you think about these 6 sales training topics?
Do you need help with sub-topics for any of the 6 topics in this article?
Do comment below and let me know.
To Read The Article 5 Best Sales Training Companies in India, CLICK HERE