Sales Training Article: Why You Should Invest In Your Sales Team

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company

A few years ago I attended a conference. One of the speakers was in the sales training and consulting business. He recalled a conversation when the CEO of one of his clients shared a concern:

What if I train a seller that decides to leave the company?

His reply: What if you don’t train a seller and they decide to stay?

While his response was somewhat self-serving, sales trainers and their clients expect there will be a return on money spent on training salespeople. According to research from Karen McCandless at GetApp™, summarized responses received and key takeaways included:

  • More detailed training allowed clients to feel more confident and filled a knowledge gap to utilize social media to sell to their customers (especially considering that prior to training only 15% of sellers utilized social to connect with prospective clients).
  • Developing the ability to align what a seller is hearing from a potential customer to a value package that the customer will actually see as relevant to them is critical, and that sales training can help professionals understand this connection.
  • 92% of sellers improve selling abilities after training.
  • If companies adopt sales software specific to their needs, proper training in the tool is crucial if they’re going to optimize payback. After adopting sales software, 95% of sellers increased productivity, 86% boosted revenue and 78% improved customer satisfaction.

It is amazing to me that vendors continue to invest a great deal of time and money in product training that has less relevance than ever before. Lower levels use the Internet and social networking to learn about offerings as they have a distrust of salespeople. When calling at executive levels, buyers will NOT tolerate detailed product pitches. I believe it’s time to reassess the role of sellers and modify training accordingly.

Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you.

article