Tag: SALES TRAINING

Investing in Salesperson Training Can Have Up to 353% ROI: Why it Pays to Develop Your Talent

Posted on by hiredna

In a previous post, I mentioned that it typically takes about 11 months for a new salesperson to become fully productive and around 15 months to become a top performer. That’s one of the main reasons why salesperson training is so important. It accelerates ramp time and helps reps reach their full potential more quickly and succeed in a competitive environment.

But this brings up a pressing question. What exactly is the ROI of salesperson training? And how much can you expect to get back for every $1 you invest?

That’s what I’ll discuss in this post.

Looking at 2020 Data

Let’s cut right to the chase. A 2020 study by Southern New Hampshire University found that salesperson training can have an ROI of up to 353%. And a separate 2020 study by the Sales Management Association found “teams that invest in sales training and development are 57% more effective than teams that don’t.”

That’s really impressive!

While this isn’t to say that every company will see results of this magnitude, as lower-performing teams only see an ROI of 4%, this shows the sky-high potential of properly investing in the development of your sales team.

To quantify even further, the monetary return for salesperson training is as much as $4.53 for every dollar invested. Again, this is on the high end of the spectrum, and you can’t automatically assume it will be this much for every company, but many businesses do see this amount of return, which is extremely promising.

Other Compelling Data

To add a bit more perspective to the picture, let me mention a few other statistics that illuminate things further.

Research by Clear Company found that “68% of salespeople say training and development is the most important workplace policy. Although numerous factors contribute to the success of salespeople, such as having the requisite skillset and a guided sales process, more than two-thirds believe salesperson training is the number one factor. Conversely, “reps cited lack of skills and training and development as the main reasons they chose to voluntarily leave their positions. And 40% of employees who receive poor sales training will leave their positions within the first year.”

employee turnover

This speaks to the correlation between inadequate salesperson training and turnover — something that’s absolutely toxic to establishing a winning sales team and to overall company culture. By looking at the big picture, it’s clear just how vital it is to develop your talent, and shows that it helps in multiple ways. Both in getting more out of your salespeople in their day-to-day operations and in reducing turnover.

The Core Benefits of Salesperson Training

At this point, I think we can agree that, when done right, sales training pays off. And we’ve looked at quantifiable data that tells us just how profitable it can be. But what are some specific ways that it produces this type of ROI?

Besides a shorter ramp time, as I mentioned earlier, there are four core benefits that lead to your company earning more money.

First, the better your sales reps are at doing their jobs, the greater the number of deals they’ll inevitably be a part of. From more effective prospecting to lead outreach to lead nurturing, salespeople should become more skilled at this essential aspect of their job, which, in turn, should maximize the number of chances they have to convert.

Next, salesperson training sets the stage for reps to boost the average profit margin per deal. As Modern Sales Training points out, “the best sales teams have learned how important it is to differentiate themselves to build value inside their deals, and building that value is a hot topic for sales training.” The better trained your salespeople are, the more perceived value they can bring to your products or services, which allows them to sell at a premium price.

Third, having well-trained reps naturally makes it easier to close more deals. After all, your salespeople will be in a better position to build rapport with leads, address their pain points, overcome objections, and so on, ultimately letting leads know why they should choose your company over a competitor. As a result, your competitive winning percentage should increase, and you’ll be better able to stand out even in a saturated market.

Finally, there’s the higher retention rate that tends to come along with robust sales training, which I touched on previously. I think Modern Sales Training articulates this phenomenon perfectly with this quote.

“All people want to feel like they’re improving themselves and increasing their skills. If people feel like they have learned all they can learn at your company, they will start to look for another challenge elsewhere.” Smart organizations recognize this and “create sales learning paths for their reps to always have the opportunity for growth, to challenge themselves, and give them the chance to improve their sales skills which will earn them more money.”

By putting your team in a position to succeed and leverage their full potential, most salespeople can’t help but feel more inclined to stick around for longer. And it often instills a deep sense of loyalty, which can strengthen your overall culture.

Why It Literally Pays to Develop Your Talent

Most sales leaders know that salesperson training is important and has value. But not all understand just how big of an impact it can have. With some companies seeing an ROI of up to 353% or $4.53 for every $1 spent, it’s well worth the effort and can pay dividends in the long run.

And if you’re looking to find dream candidates using a proven science-based approach, check out HireDNA. This cutting-edge software allows you to attract and retain top industry talent, with over 90% of candidates climbing to the top of the sales force within their first year.

Onboarding Remote Salespeople vs. In-House Salespeople: Strategies to Win at Each

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A growing number of today’s sales companies have a mix of both in-house and remote salespeople. In fact, recent data from HubSpot found that 46% of sales companies now implement a hybrid model. While there will certainly be some overlap between onboarding remote salespeople and in-house salespeople, each demands its own unique strategies.

With that said, here’s how to handle each.

Onboarding Remote Salespeople

Convert Traditional Onboarding Materials into a Digital Format

The first order of business for sales leaders making the shift to remote onboarding is to take the traditional onboarding materials you’ve been using over the years and make them easily accessible for remote reps. This may sound obvious, but it’s one of the biggest stumbling blocks among sales trainers just getting their feet wet. After all, if there’s a major gulf between the materials your remote salespeople access and what your regular in-house reps access, it’s guaranteed to create friction. That’s why you want to ensure there’s complete homogeneity between the two.

So how exactly do you go about this?

I suggest taking inventory of essential onboarding materials, such as your employee handbook, company policies, company culture outline, and so on, and creating a digital packet that’s accessible through an online portal. This is a great starting point and will provide a cornerstone of online resources for all your remote reps to help them get their bearings.

Create a Series of Onboarding Videos

One of the biggest barriers to successfully onboarding remote salespeople is the lack of personal touch they don’t get like they would with face-to-face, in-person training. While it’s impossible to completely replicate the in-house experience, you can get pretty close by creating a series of onboarding videos. And when done correctly with iterations over time, this can help you create a consistent, repeatable process that adds the personal touch with minimal time expenditure.

Fortunately, this is easy to do with a platform like Bitable.

With it, you can create high-quality, professional videos using pre-made templates. Bitable lets you record training videos, screen-capture videos, and animated training videos with ease. That way, you can build a series of onboarding videos in sequential order that fluidly moves remote salespeople through the process step-by-step. And if they ever need to reference a particular topic, they can always go back and review it.

Build a Tech Stack

Needless to say, tech plays an integral role in a remote salesperson’s day-to-day activities. So right out of the gate, you’ll want to supply each rep with a comprehensive tech stack that can be accessed from a single digital location, such as an online portal. This may include communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, project management tools like Trello and Asana, and CRM tools like HubSpot and Pipedrive.

Here’s a detailed example of what a tech stack may look like for inbound sales teams.

The key is to provide a standardized tech stack to create a uniform digital onboarding experience and also provide the requisite training on each to reduce the learning curve (something that can be done through online training videos as I just mentioned).

Onboarding In-house Salespeople

Use a Milestone-Based Process

One of the biggest advantages to onboarding in-house salespeople the “old school” way is that you’re heavily involved with their development and can keep close tabs on their progress. To streamline in-house onboarding and help new reps realize their full potential in the quickest amount of time, I suggest using a milestone-based process.

Here’s what top corporate sales training company The Brooks Group has to say about it.

“A formal, milestone-based onboarding process provides the framework to give reps everything they need to succeed within your sales organization within an appropriate time frame. A successful onboarding process:

  • Sets time-based goals for content and skills mastery
  • Establishes expectations for new rep participation in the process
  • Guides both the representative and the manager through the process
  • Includes clear checkpoints to measure progress”

While you’ll want to use a milestone-based process to a certain degree when onboarding remote salespeople as well, you’ll really want to emphasize it when onboarding in-house reps for the simple fact that it’s so easy to track everything firsthand. Also, it helps standardize the process to ensure everyone is on the same page and prevent disparities from hurting your overall sales system.

Give New In-house Reps a Mentor

In a previous post, I mentioned that it typically takes around nine months for a new rep to become competent to perform and 15 months to become a top performer.

But I also mentioned that a strong sales onboarding process can reduce this time by as much as half. One of the best ways to do that is to assign a mentor to each salesperson — someone who personally oversees their development and primes them for success.

Just like you want to use tech to your advantage to aid in onboarding remote salespeople, you’ll want to use the face-to-face nature of in-house onboarding to your advantage here. By assigning each new rep their own mentor who they can shadow, ask questions, and turn to for support, it naturally creates a framework that accelerates progress. Not to mention it helps create a more close-knit culture that benefits everyone.

For a detailed overview of sales mentorship and guidance on how to set up a formal program, I suggest reading this article from HubSpot.

Winning at Both Types of Salesperson Onboarding

With close to half of today’s sales companies having a mix of remote and in-house salespeople, it’s incredibly important to offer effective onboarding for both. Again, this largely boils down to capitalizing on the opportunities of each, and implementing the specific strategies mentioned above should help you do just that.

And if you’re looking to fill your talent pipeline with elite salespeople in your industry, check out HireDNA. It can help you find both sales candidates and sales leaders, with 92% of recommended candidates becoming top performers within one year.

Building A SaaS Sales Team That Gets Results

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Cloud computing is the future. There’s no denying the efficiency it has introduced in key industries across the globe. Particularly, the software as a service (SaaS) industry has been instrumental in driving this global change, with 83% of the enterprise workload expected to be in the cloud by 2020.

However, as any SaaS company would likely tell you—selling their product isn’t easy. Increasing competition in this space means SaaS providers need more than just a good product to be considered successful. They need an effective sales team. In this post, we’ll provide tips on building a SaaS sales team that gets results.

If you prefer to speak directly with a SaaS sales recruiting and training expert, set up a consultation with HireDNA today. Contact Us

Define A Sales Strategy

If you believe a leader in SaaS like Slack, achieved a multi-billion-dollar valuation based solely on their product, then you are wrong. According to a Harvard Business Review study, about 50 percent of high-performing sales teams have proper sales processes in place for their teams to follow.

In the cut-throat SaaS industry, it’s important to have the right direction when hiring sales reps. A plan that provides direction and facilitates growth is necessary. A functioning sales team requires adequate policies and procedures in place to run like a well-oiled machine.

Understand Your Sales Cycle

From attracting prospects to closing deals, the sales cycle is unique for every industry. Sales teams need to acquaint themselves with the customer journey as well as the organizational sales cycle to be able to sell more efficiently.

Part of this process is to understand whether you’re selling a high touch product or a low touch product. The type of product has a definite impact on your sales cycle, subsequently altering your sales technique.

For example, a low touch SaaS product is more or less of a self-service. Prospects typically sign up for products through the website, and your sales department does the rest.

In stark contrast, high touch SaaS products require dedicated pursuit of high-quality prospects, and a unique sales approach.

HireDNA offers comprehensive sales cycle evaluations and assessments to help you identify opportunities for growth and train your sales reps to meet your goals. Learn More.

Identify Your Target Audience

Sales is all about understanding the needs of your customers, and the value you bring to them. You should diligently research the market and conduct competitor research to ascertain your target audience and determine the demographic that best suits your product.

Here are some questions to ask when identifying your target audience:

  • What are the problems that your SaaS product aims to solve?
  • Have you determined the group that actively seeks the solution to these problems?
  • Have you identified the main platforms where you expect to drive the majority of your leads?

Extensive audience research provides SaaS companies the data they require to equip their salespeople with the right information to sell more efficiently. 

Bridge The Sales And Marketing Gap

SaaS consumers are generally well-informed and enter the conversion funnel with a predefined intent in mind. When dealing with such a sophisticated product and customer, marketing and sales teams need to function as a cohesive unit.

In essence, marketing drives your sales team. They are responsible for capturing leads and are also responsible for helping to nurture them before they are passed forward as SQLs (sales qualified leads) to the sales team.

Inefficient communication between the two departments inevitably hinders the potential of the sales team. If the two departments are misaligned, sales representatives will have difficulty convincing prospects to buy your SaaS solution.

Aligning the objectives of the departments before beginning on prospect outreach efforts can have long-lasting benefits for the future of your SaaS sales team.

Hiring The Right SaaS Sales Reps

In this highly competitive space, you need to find sales rock stars with the right set of skills. Your reps should have exceptional product knowledge and the ability to connect the product as a solution to a prospect’s problems / goals. Here are a few things to look for in the best SaaS sales reps:

  • Tech-Savvy. While your reps don’t need have support-level technical skills, they should be fluent in the tech space. They should have the proficiency to understand your product and speak about its features knowledgably.
  • Long-Term Client Relationships. Many SaaS companies operate on a subscription basis. To that end, it’s important that your reps understand the nature of long-term B2B relationships. They should be able to identify the potential for long-term relationships in a given lead and should have the ability to nurture those relationships.
  • Solid Track Record.Nothing speaks louder about a rep’s ability to sell than a proven record of success. While startups often seek out younger talent as a way to save on costs, it’s still important to look for some kind of experience.
  • Strong Profiling Ability. A strong SaaS sales rep will be able to adequately profile the targeted customer and adjust their strategy to improve the sales process. If your rep chases undesirable leads, this wastes the company’s time and money.

HireDNA provides comprehensive candidate assessments that assess 21 core selling competencies. We have a successful placement rate of 80%! Learn more.

Build Your Winning Sales Team

Building a successful SaaS sales team on your own can be a challenge. HireDNA is here to help, offering leading technical sales recruiting and training services to build and improve your sales force. From screening, recruiting, and hiring top sales candidates to training and equipping your team for success, we are your partner throughout the sales development process.

Why Choose Us?

  • 20 years of invaluable experience
  • 80% of our sales talent search ends in a successful hire
  • 79% candidate retention
  • 50% faster new hire ramp-up
  • 92% of our recommended and hired candidates reach the top half of the sales force within 12 months
  • Our partners have experienced 25% top-line revenue growth

Ready to equip your SaaS sales team with industry-leading expertise? Get in touch today.

Contact Us

Assess Sales Training Needs: Find & Resolve Performance Gaps

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In a demanding sales environment, identifying the real problem behind low productivity is crucial. Uncovering performance gaps is often the first step to assess sales training needs. This process can help decision-makers to identify real factors that influence the performance of their sales team and fix them through high-quality training. In this article, we’ll help you understand how to identify and resolve performance gaps through training.

If you prefer to speak directly with a sales training expert, set up a consultation with HireDNA today. Contact Us

Why Perform An Assessment?

A sales training assessment is a crucial step to improving the performance of any sales team. The Objective Management Group (OMG) provides some promising statistics on the use of assessments vs the lack of assessment:

Use Assessments

  • 61% Quota Attainment
  • 14% Attrition

Don’t Use Assessments

  • 49% Quota Attainment
  • 19% Attrition

The comprehensive, science-based OMG assessment, which HireDNA uses in our evaluations, has proven to be even more successful. With the OMB assessment, organizations have achieved 88% Quota Attainment and only 8% Attrition. Learn more about HireDNA sales staff evaluations.

How To Find Performance Gaps In Your Sales Team

When laying the groundwork for your training program, there are several questions that need to be answered:

  • Does it do a satisfactory job of highlighting areas that need improvement?
  • Does it sufficiently address the performance issues that hinder employee productivity?

Proper analysis of training needs can unravel such answers, leaving you with precise data on how to proceed with your sales department. Here’s how to perform a sales training assessment to uncover these gaps and create a plan of action.

Conduct A Preliminary Analysis

Before you identify the barriers to your sales rep potential, you need to assess their current standing. You can then use that information to establish the desired outcomes of a sales training program.

In order to meet the organizational objectives, managers and supervisors must have a clear understanding of the current level of knowledge and skills their sales team possesses. The initial analysis also sheds light on the existing barriers to growth, which can be used to ascertain a realistic set of desired outcomes.

Determine Your Organizational Priorities

In order to come up with effective performance drivers, organizations need to prioritize their learning objectives. This provides insight into what actually matters for the organization and allows experts to prioritize goals/learning outcomes when designing the training regimen. For instance, if your priority is to improve your customer satisfaction scores, your training procedure should specifically include ways to deliver a better customer experience.

This step particularly requires the input of senior management and top-level executives, as they are typically responsible for determining the company’s priorities.

Identify Your Sales Growth Bottlenecks

Once you’ve laid the foundation for a sales training needs assessment, the next step is to identify key factors that are hindering your sales team’s performance. In order to bridge performance gaps, you first have to identify them.

HireDNA offers comprehensive sales staff evaluations and assessments to help you identify KPIs, uncover skill gaps, and discover opportunities for growth. Learn more.

Here are some ways you can assess and pinpoint areas that need improvement:

Analyze Periodic Reports

As far as your sales team is concerned, a glimpse of the monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual managerial evaluations can lend important insights into the performance of the sales department.

  • Was the team able to meet their monthly targets?
  • What was the most commonly cited problem among sales representatives?

Following up with team leaders can offer up a different perspective, while allowing you to understand performance issues from an inside perspective.

Closely Monitor Sales Representatives

One of the most effective methods of identifying performance gaps is by observing employees during their on-job hours. You can even go as far as formulating a task-based scenario or simulation and carve out the areas that exhibit inefficiency.

Live observations can reveal some real barriers faced by your sales representatives:

  • Is their unfamiliarity with the technology you are using leading to extended call times, and subsequently increasing call-drop rates?
  • Does conflict resolution continue to present an unsurmountable barrier to your sales department?

Observation is one of the most effective ways to extract actionable data that can help you to create a plan of action. The direct exposure to the problem helps experts create a sales training solution tailored to the exact scenario.

Conduct Employee Surveys

Surveys provide an excellent platform for employees to reveal performance issues that are hidden from management. From ineffective online training forums to company policies that are proving to be an obstacle, surveys can reveal what otherwise would not make it to the surface. There are several methods to try, including surveys, polls, focus groups, and live webinars.

This feedback is highly valuable, as it comes directly from the sales representatives that you’re trying to train to be more productive and efficient.

Tailor Your Training Strategy

Having assessed sales training needs, including current capabilities and the blockages that have hindered your sales potential, it’s time to formulate a training plan that can increase the performance of your sales team.

An effective training strategy revolves around the needs and performance issues of every individual sales representative, while also catering to the organization’s macro-goals. The key takeaway is for organizations to understand that every individual represents a different knowledge-base, a different skillset, and therefore, a unique challenge when required to train and improve.

Build Your Winning Sales Team

Time is money. Businesses cannot afford to train their salespeople for weeks. This is where the sales recruiting and training experts at HireDNA step in. Whether you need to assess and train an existing team or quickly ramp up a new hire, we offer a suite of innovative sales training tools and strategies to help turn your staff into a winning sales force.

Why Choose Us?

  • 20 years of invaluable experience
  • Training time decreased by 50%
  • Our training enables organizations to leverage 33% more sales opportunities
  • Our partners experience 25% top-line revenue growth

Ready to train your sales team to be the best? Get in touch today.

Contact Us

5 Sales Training Techniques That Improve Sales Performance

Posted on by hiredna

Learn five proven sales training techniques to improve sales performance. 

Sales is one of those professions that can never be mastered. Products, services and marketplaces are continually evolving, which means training and development are never-ending processes.

It’s also the case that more than 80 percent of what employees learn is forgotten unless ongoing learning and reinforcement takes place. To drive your organization’s sales performance, coaching and training need to be delivered on a continual process. And to ensure every member of your sales team has the tools for success, there are five proven techniques you can utilize.

1. Role-play Exercises

Roleplay exercises provide a great way of applying what sales employees have learned to real-world situations. It’s one thing to learn the theory, but it’s another to apply it in the right way. Assign the roles customer, colleague and employee as required, and set the scene with a scenario that is common within your industry.

Role-play is often as much about the journey as it is about the result. Employees need to think in their feet, improvise and utilize their knowledge and skill to achieve the desired outcomes. However, just as important are confidence-building, problem-solving and listening.

2. Mentoring by Experienced Salespeople

Young or inexperienced sales professionals can benefit greatly from having a more experienced peer to talk to for advice. As well as offering advice based on broad experience, a mentor can offer emotional support, help with goals and be a friendly ear for complaints and grievances. It is vitally important that relatively new sales professionals can speak to someone on their level in complete confidence.

Assigning the right mentor to a sales professional takes care of the ongoing training and development needs that are crucial in the role. As a manager or business owner, you can communicate with the mentor at regular intervals to assess the employee’s progress.

3. Field Training With Feedback

Nothing prepares a sales professional for the countless scenarios they will face like field training. An employee can spend hours in the classroom or on e-learning courses, but nothing develops sales techniques like real-world experience. 

Shadowing an experienced and successful achiever is a great way for less experienced sales professionals to apply key techniques. While employees may make mistakes, there is someone there to offer guidance when it is needed. And let’s be honest: Learning from mistakes is an intrinsic part of developing sales skills.

4. The Use of Real Success Stories

Nothing inspires and motivates a sales professional like a real story of success and achievement. Simply knowing what is possible through hard work and a willingness to learn is enough to give inexperienced employees the will to develop in their role.

Whether you use the mentoring process or public speakers to communicate sales success stories is up to you. As long as you give people a flavor of what they can achieve, you can drive motivation levels for increased sales.

5. Expert Coaching by Sales Training Experts

To bring a fresh perspective to training, consider bringing in a sales training company to work with your more inexperienced sales professionals. These specialist companies employ accomplished and experienced sales experts with real-world experience — who offer invaluable advice and insight.

Using a third-party sales training provider allows your employees to tap into a wealth of proven expertise. And if you and key members of your sales team aren’t solely responsible for training and development, you can concentrate fully on your own responsibilities.Visit our site to learn more about how we can help your company maximize your sales training investment to accelerate revenue growth. 

5 Tips to Improve Sales Force Retention

Posted on by hiredna

Numerous hours are spent training new hires for their roles within the sales force. 

Organizations invest time, effort and money getting reps up to speed on their new roles and providing insight on the organization’s sales culture. When a sales rep leaves, the organization is back where it started with recruiting and training. Sound familiar? According to DePaul University’s 2015-2016 Sales Effectiveness – Sales Acceleration Survey the cost of losing a sales rep is substantial:

“The annual turnover rate for sales employees is high at 26 percent, and the average cost per sales rep turnover is $97,690.”

So, how do you convince your sales reps to stay? Here are five tips for retaining top sales performers prior to hiring them:

1. Lead by Example

Employees appreciate and value strong leadership. Share company roadmaps, goals and objectives upfront with your sales candidate. Begin fostering excitement around their new role and how they will fit into the overall mission of your organization. Set objectives and expectations during the interview process, so potential job candidates clearly understand what will be expected of them in upon hire. According to a recent study on HR and Recruiting Statistics for 2016 by Glassdoor:

“67 percent of employers believe retention rates would be higher if candidates had a clearer picture of what to expect about working at the company before taking the job.”

2. Implement a Strong Sales Culture

Establish a sales culture that matches the type of sales talent you want to hire. Use your sales culture as a guideline for hiring new reps. Hire people who not only have the skill sets you are looking for, but also fit seamlessly into your existing sales culture. Developing a conducive environment for your sales force creates a connection between your sales rep and your organization.

3. Establish Employee Development Plans

Have a development plan in place that provides a roadmap for new sales employees. The plan should include measurable goals and a timeline for achieving those goals. In your organization’s interview process, share the basic career roadmap while discussing your sales candidate’s interests and career goals. Take the time to discuss your organization’s development plans for new employees, so the candidate understands the opportunity and commitment offered for progressing their sales career.

4. Provide Ongoing Training

Organizations that provide ongoing training opportunities for their sales reps demonstrate they are invested in their employees’ success. Discuss any training opportunities with candidates during the interview process. Share how your organization’s sales training includes both instructor-led and online courses covering a broad range of topics from products, services, tools and systems to soft-skills they will need while interacting with customers. Let your candidates know upfront that your organization is committed to their career development.

5. Offer Employee Benefits

Employee benefits play a large part in recruiting and retaining top sales performers. Benefits can include perks like providing health insurance, sales bonuses, flex time, telecommuting or tuition reimbursement. Benefits should be aligned to your sales force and provide motivation for the sales rep to remain with your organization. Discuss benefits and perks with your sales candidate during the interview process and be clear on whether or not any of them are tied to specific sales targets.

Establishing and investing in your organization’s strategy for improving retention will result in a positive ROI in terms of employee retention and satisfaction. Interested in a thorough evaluation of your talent acquisition and retention process? Revecent can complete an analysis of your company’s onboarding and retention strategies to identify areas of improvement. Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.  Revecent is a national sales recruiting and sales enablement consulting firm. We help technology and professional service companies recruit and optimize sales talent to accelerate growth. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization’s sales team exceed expectations.

Why Most Sales Training Programs Fail

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Companies invest a significant amount of revenue into the development of their salespeople each year.

Corporations in the US alone spend over $70 Billion on training, and still, there is a mass of sales reps that underperform.

In fact, according to, The Science of Selling; by David Hoffeld, 38-49% of ALL salespeople fail to make quota each year.

Why?

Many companies are incorrectly addressing the training needs of their sales force. Fortunately, many of the mistakes organizations make when creating and delivering training programs can be fixed.

Let’s take a look at the most common reasons sales training programs fail, and how to avoid these pitfalls to produce lasting results.

Failure to Customize the Training to the Needs of Your Team

It’s important to take inventory on how your sales team is performing, and determine what areas you would like to improve to ensure your sales training program has the most impact.

Take the time BEFORE you develop your curriculum to conduct an evaluation. Gather key insights on the strengths and weakness of your team and use the information to customize the training to address those areas. This approach will enable you to focus your time on the tactics and strategies that will have the most impact on your performance.

Unfortunately, many companies overlook the importance of an evaluation and rely too heavily on making assumptions about their training needs. Assuming incorrectly increases the risk of implementing a program that is not relevant, thus reducing its impact.

Not Aligning Your Sales Process with the Training Methodology

Many companies approach sales training as a one-off event. Once the training is over, sales reps are left on their own to figure out how to implement what they learned. It’s no surprise that nearly 50% of the training is forgotten within five weeks.

Planning in advance for how you intend to align the training content with your day-to-day sales process will go a long way to reinforcing lessons learned. It allows your salespeople to apply strategies and tactics regularly through repetition resulting in true behavioral change.

Not Establishing An Accountability Plan To Reinforce, Monitor, and Measure Results.

Having a plan for holding your reps accountable is essential to measuring results from for your training program. It’s like Peter Drucker, the management guru, would say, “You can only improve what you can measure.”

To make the best use of the time and resources invested in your sales training program, you should define what you would like to get out of it BEFORE you start. Begin by asking the following questions:  

  • How will we measure success?   
  • What metrics will be used to track performance?
  • What areas would we like to see improved the most?
  • What are the expected results?
  • How often will we meet with the team to review progress?

Having a sales training program that increases revenue and performance is what every company wants. The way to get the most value out of your training is to ensure your curriculum is tailored to the needs of your team, it integrates well with your daily sales process, and you have a well throughout plan to reinforce and measure your results.