In an always evolving enterprise environment, it’s crucial to keep your sales reps trained and informed of every shift in focus and new priority market. Companies are always thinking of how improve performance, increase revenue and expand into new territory as they grow. As your company is brainstorming fresh strategies and navigating new waters, sales reps can often be left in the wake. Unfortunately, a disconnect forms between sales reps and sales strategies if reps don’t receive enhanced training when they need it most. This can often lead to lost opportunities and negatively impacted bottom lines. Check out some tips on how to bridge this divide.
Make a Match: Sales Training and Strategy
The first question you want to ask yourself is “how is our company going to grow?” Looking at the big picture for your organization will help you put the pieces together. Whether you’re planning on entering new market segments or a new industry entirely, you’ll have to match those strategies with how you’ll train your sales reps.
Start Off Strong
An easy solution is to create a sales enablement calendar that details the training priorities each month. Consider starting your calendar at your annual sales kickoff, a regional mid-year event or anytime you have everyone together for face-to-face training.
Maintain Momentum
Starting off strong is great, but you don’t want your employees to lose motivation after a few weeks. Ensuring that your employees are motivated all year round is vital and will contribute to success.
One thing your team can do is arrange monthly “debates” that incorporate each topic on the calendar you created earlier on. A topic up for debate might be “how to score in your next sales meeting” or “best practices when whiteboarding,” as well as the sales learning techniques that will drive mastery of those topics among salespeople, sales specialists, etc.
Encourage debate of the topics and techniques among your team based on the competence gaps you need to fill and the key plays you want to make. Always consider your desired outcomes as you think about the key plays for each debate.
Team up with Sales Leaders
Perhaps one of the easiest things you can do to prevent any disconnect is to partner up with sales leaders to help identify and craft training sessions. Ask them what they need to be successful. Open communication is a win-win for all parties involved and can ultimately tie together any loose ends.
Finally, when you learn what type of training is needed, customize it for that team. Personalizing your training will not only ensure your reps are getting what they need, but will also generate more enthusiasm, which is likely to generate higher attendance.
Compelling Coaching
Who doesn’t like fun and games? These tactics can be integrated into the learning process to further engage your salespeople into learning new strategies, especially from their peers.
Prioritizing relevant learning topics and key plays tends to engage enablement teams. When your team is excited, then that same energy will be reflected onto your salespeople.
A version of this post was originally published on the Allego Blog. You can read the original post here.
