Twelve Ways to Boost Sales Training Program Results

1. Select a sales trainer who knows, or who is willing to invest the time it takes to learn your business and get to know your people.  Remember, low knowledge = low credibility.  And less ability to boost sales!
2. Base the sales training program on the optimal sales process for your business.  The sales training program should use existing or newly-innovated sales best practices that are specific to your business.
3. Gain “buy in” prior to the sales training program.  Effective sales trainers will interview your staff prior to training them to understand their individual needs and gain their buy in to what’s being taught.
4. Tailor all course materials.  When salespeople perceive the sales training program to be “canned” and they spot sections that are not relevant to their business, they often perceive the entire program to be irrelevant.
5. Spread out the training.  Providing salespeople time in between training sessions helps them practice what they’ve learned, ask the trainer for help when new techniques are not working for them and retain the knowledge longer.
6. Require salespeople to attend all sessions of the sales training program.  Creative methods, such as tying learning objectives to compensation and incentives, may be useful.
7. Commit sales managers to 100% attendance so that they can observe their salespeople and note skills bottlenecks.
8. Develop a follow on coaching and reinforcement plan.   Permanent learning and behavior change occur over time and through repetition.  That’s exactly why post-training coaching is essential for long-term success.
9. Provide the sales manager with management and coaching training.
10. Create an optimized sales process and track each sales rep’s performance against the company average.    This provides a quick way to identify bottlenecks in each salesperson’s sales cycles.
11. Consider using short-term incentives to boost sales activities such as cold calling.
12. Provide a similar sales training program to non-sales staff to ensure consistent customer experiences with your firm.

For a list of our sales training classes, please view the sitemap on the right hand sidebar of this page.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

We have some great, no-cost ways for you to perform a sales assessment of your entire sales department’s overall effectiveness:

1. Learn and apply the six elements contained in our Sales Improvement Model
2. Subscribe to our Sales Best Practices E-Newsletter (subscribe on right sidebar of our site pages)
3. Contact us for a complimentary sales consultation and ideas
4. Get ideas by viewing the deliverables we include in our Sales Improvement Program
5. Request our list of “50 Ways to Boost Sales Now!”
6. Read the articles in our Sales Articles library by visiting our website archive

 Over 100 clients of ours have conducted a comprehensive sales assessment of their entire sales operation, yielding substantial sales increases and a great ROI!

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

Our proprietary Sales Improvement Model has been developed and refined over a 20-year period and has helped us increase sales results at over 250 large, medium and small companies. Although presented in a simple format, this model contains up to 50 best practices, sales management systems and sales processes.

For a description each building block of our Sales Improvement Model, click here.   

All Rights Reserved. The Sales Alliance Inc. San Diego, California.

Several studies have shown that people retain less than 15% of what they learn in just one month!  Moreover, most people lack the  sales tools and coaching needed to  permanently change their selling approaches.  So, how can sales training classes have a long-lasting impact? 

Training effectiveness is greatly enhanced by providing sales tools that help salespeople apply specific techniques they’ve learned. Examples of effective sales tools that we help salespeople develop during sales training sessions include: 

Effective Sales Tools

1. Prospect research checklists
2. Prospecting call and campaign openings
3. Elevator speeches for profitable networking
4. Qualification questions list
5. Prospect ranking criteria (e.g. A,B,C quality rankings)
6. Telephone openings
7. Voicemail sales tools and approaches
8. Phone tag reduction strategies
9. Needs assessment questions
10. Major account profiles
11. Problems-solutions checklists
12. Objections and responses list
13. Commitments lists
14. Negotiation concessions
15. Key information to track on a CRM

Although managers have developed and supplied their people with some of these sales tools, salespeople rarely use them!  Why?  In short, “people support what they help to create.”  If salespeople create the sales tools, they’re much more apt to buy into and use them than if the tools are given to them.  After all, the truth most sales managers hate to acknowledge is that their suggestions are often downplayed or ignored.

In summary, when post-training sales coaching is combined with effective sales tools, long-term behavioral changes are likely to occur.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA