Often, the most undertrained employees of a company are the salespeople. It has long been a skill that was deemed natural, not enough time, or we rely on our sales manager to coach them. But sales training is essential because sales generate revenue, the essence of any business.
Over the years, companies have not prioritised sales training programs, believing product and service knowledge was the superior skill required to hold. They hired industry people with product knowledge, feeling comforted that they could communicate effectively with customers when asked questions about product performance.
It may be a lack of understanding of what salesmanship requires to excel and deliver sales goals and good margins. Sending people to a day course on sales techniques is not sufficient training. But companies need to promote sales skills as a key skill in their team.
Training sessions on the sales process should be part of the sales leadership’s mandate. You would never hire an untrained lawyer, accountant, or tradesperson; sales training is equally important.
The unnecessary damage to companies neglecting this vital skillset
A well-trained sales team will outsell competitors and cultivate business relationships for the future. Untrained salespeople can lose up to 70% more deals than their trained counterparts. Good training is about communication skills, planning skills, understanding customer needs and providing recommendations that solve customer problems.
Today, many products and services can appear similar to customers, and often, when this occurs, companies try to compete on price. Product knowledge as a core skill is quickly devalued by customers as the same knowledge is often available on the Internet. Rather than attempting to compete on price in business-to-business sales, it makes more sense to have a well-trained sales force than to reduce your selling price continually.
Salespeople are also pivotal in signing new business, particularly to larger accounts. Despite advancements in technology and social selling, B2B sales is still a people-to-people interaction, and an experienced sales team can assist you in generating more leads and converting more prospects into customers.
Training in salesmanship can benefit your business in a variety of ways. There is a good chance that you will obtain an advantage over a substantial amount of competition with a well-trained sales team.
Let’s consider seven of the benefits of sales training for your company.
1. Error-Based Education Is Expensive
As with every other profession and talent, mistakes can occur in B2B sales. These errors can be agonising and costly. Sales training and coaching aim to reduce errors and assist salespeople in learning from them. An experienced sales trainer or sales coach could assist the sales team in avoiding mistakes in advance instead of making the same error once a month for an entire year.
Failure in sales can be expensive, but what’s worse is the often debilitating effect it has on sellers who do not comprehend why the errors are occurring or what they can do to prevent them.
Most training programmes will aid the sales team in developing best-practice guides that can be disseminated throughout the organisation to prevent the repetition of errors.
Online sales training is one of the best methods of gaining consistency in knowledge, skills application and sales culture across a decentralised sales team, which most are today in B2B selling.
2. Knowledge is Strength
Sales training provides your team with a richer comprehension of your products, services and the industry they serve. Your sales team will be more effective at informing others and positioning your brand the more they know about what you do and what you sell.
Prospective customers are unlikely to be persuaded by a sales representative who lacks adequate knowledge of your products and services. The best sales training coaches your team to sell within the context of your brand.
Sales training in B2B is not limited to learning how to respond to prospects’ queries. Much more crucial is learning the appropriate queries to ask. Sales professionals are experts in asking questions to uncover and delve deeply into the needs of potential customers to recommend solutions.
At the most fundamental level, have you established a budget for this project? Who else is involved in the purchasing decision? When do you need the solution to be in place? Before qualifying a sales opportunity, B2B companies need answers to each of these crucial enquiries.
3. Developing Brand Loyalty
Most sales professionals will interact with your customers and clients on both a professional and personal level. They can strengthen your credibility and position you as an industry thought leader in the eyes of your customers.
Sales training enables your sales team to accurately diagnose the source of your customer’s business issues and circumstances before recommending solutions that precisely meet their needs. Customers are more likely to repeatedly purchase additional products and services from you if they have a positive experience with your company.
Customers base most of their purchasing decisions on their level of trust in a brand, and your sellers are an extension of your brand.
4. Business Expansion
It is simply impossible to develop a business without also growing its employees. In the most basic terms, every business has a growth strategy. A significant portion of this strategy will involve sales, and if your representatives are not properly trained, they may struggle to implement it.
For example, your growth strategy may include selling to larger companies. The required sales strategy, techniques, and competencies can be quite distinct from those required for selling to SMEs. Your team can execute your growth strategy and take your business to the next level with the assistance of sales training and sales coaching of superior quality.
5. Return on Investment
Each year, leading businesses in all industries invest enormous sums of money in sales training and receive exceptional returns. A salesperson who learns how to sell without discounting their price will be invaluable in their sales career with a company.
Most companies recover the cost of training between one month and six months after completion, and then those skills deliver timeless returns year on year.
6. Changes in your Market
The internet has had and will continue to significantly impact the purchasing behaviour of individuals and businesses, making it more important than ever for your sales staff to acquire new skills. All markets are inherently dynamic, and training is essential for maintaining your salespeople current.
Changes in technology, legislation, and customer requirements will render you and your business irrelevant if you do not adapt. The salesperson is a vital link between the customer and the business, relaying customer feedback to the business.
7. Developing the Resilience of Your Sales Team
It is more likely that salespeople who have received sales training will become more resilient in the face of adversity. However, trained sales professionals can surmount rejection and more effectively convert customers.
There will always be more No’s than Yes’s in sales, and to survive, let alone thrive, it is essential to have the skills and coping strategies to cope with this. Inevitably, the excitement and highs of obtaining large deals are accompanied by the lows of losing large deals.
While it is essential to always reflect after a loss, salespeople frequently become excessively self-critical and take rejection and loss personally. In the worst-case scenario, this destroys confidence and forces decent people who could be successful to leave the industry because they never received the necessary support.
Sales training is essential to building resilience, which will pay off in spades when the business is confronted with the inevitable future recession, blackout, or other crises.
In summation
When you consider the seven points we have raised, it becomes clear that Sales Training is essential to the growth of any business and it would be highly recommended. Specific training for your team through proven sales courses.
There will always be many reasons to delay training, but unless you take action, sales will not improve, and your cost of selling will increase as deal closing ratios are poor and the pressure remains on price along with a reliance on existing customers.
If you have not recently invested in sales training, it may be time to do so. Sales team training should be a priority for your sales leader. Sales Focus Advisory have been delivering training since 1990. Our programmes in training and coaching have underpinned our sales turnarounds, delivering growth rates of 28-42% in sales in shorter time frames.
© 2023 Sales Focus Advisory. All Rights Reserved
