Almost 75% of sales kickoff attendees say their company's SKO doesn't merit an "A" grade, while 29% rate it a "C" or below. Instruct each rep to approach a stranger and ask a question. However, you can also run e-pitch competitions for continued sales training, putting random objects or ideas in a hat and challenging existing salespeople to pick one at random and brainstorm a pitch to work on their public speaking, persuasion, and brevity skills. In the blink of an eye, new competitors emerge, products similar to yours are released, and before you know it, it's a race to the bottom. Chances are, your company has some insight into your competition. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(53, '62c06f07-1fcd-4ad0-9580-421ba0faf425', {}); Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Your sales team can be amazing at discovery, presenting, and objection handling. 7 Sales Training Games That Actually Boost Your Skills. Purpose: To illustrate the importance of discovering needs before launching into a sales speech. But like any skill, even naturally adept salespeople need to hone their skills through consistent sales training. The object can be something abstract like a strange Lego build, or it could be an everyday item laying around the office. Strategies for influencing, politics, decision making and motivating. When you understand the selling behaviors and processes found in a complete retail sales training program, you can handle objections and add-on to every sale. At conferences, on the phone, or when networking, sales reps typically have a short window to make an impression, so they’ve got to make it count. It compares you to your competition with a fresh set of eyes, which could offer new talking points and arguments for future sales situations. All rights reserved. Here are some quick ideas how to sell more... 11 retail selling tips to make more retail sales. Technology: CRM Training When your sales team are trained in your CRM they're more likely to use the full power of the tool. Subscribe to industry publications, newsletters, and podcasts. Most sales training programs help develop sales skills and techniques needed to approach cold leads, create new sales opportunities, close deals, and build rapport with clients and customers. This game develops creativity, positioning, and presentation skills. Keep new hires on their toes with this fun activity. Negotiation Training Negotiating behavior and strategy. We’ll introduce you to some of the best sales training ideas so you can: Improve your employees’ sales skills. Read through the list to determine the best tactics and programs to use when training your sales team. Strengthen your team’s understanding of selling best practices by requiring or suggesting they acquire a useful sales certification. Reward the Bingo! Sales Training Topic #2: Cold Calling and Prospecting. Each rep must initiate a conversation with a stranger and "prospect" for personal information during the course of the conversation. After a new sales class is onboarded, inform them that the rest of the company has been instructed to — at any time during the work day — approach new sales hires and ask, "What’s a…" followed by the name of your company, your product, or your software. End each day evaluating your performance and identify one item upon which you can improve. 8 Unique Sales Training Ideas to Help Your Team Succeed 1- Make Assessments Part of Your Schedule A vital sales training activity, assessments, is important even when the employee has completed his training with flying colors. Swing for the Fences! Question three is where you match a training idea or activity to teach or outline the learning you want to highlight, so maybe you decide that a sales rep giving a successful product demo is the best training idea for addressing this need. Influence is how business gets done. I once spoke to a software engineer who described his job as "coming in and figuring out how to break our software everyday." No matter what sales training ideas, games, or activities you’re using in your office, they should serve the ultimate purpose of making salespeople better at their jobs. Incorporate assessments; Examine win/loss reports; Leverage peer learning; Put sales reps in their buyer's shoes; Highlight industry trends and news; Keep millennials in mind; Practice responding to objections; Sales process deep-dive; Pre-boarding; Sales manager "mastery sessions" Conduct a competitive analysis. Why not take a similar approach with your sales team? Note: This activity can easily be used as a sales training icebreaker.Goal: To remind salespeople that selling is not about the product or service. As real-life investor (and crook) Jordan Belfort, Leonardo DiCaprio delivers this line to a group of colleagues in an impromptu selling exercise, challenging them to create a need in the eyes of a potential buyer. Sales is a lot like that. Sales Training Tip # 6: Practice Positive Self-Talk Practice positive self-talk continually. @AJBeltis. Written by AJ Beltis As the industry shifts and new thought leaders emerge, reps can use the knowledge from these publications to stay in touch with new best practices and continuously build their knowledge base. Sales training falls into two different categories. The presentation could follow one of your buyer personas realizing their problem, looking for solutions, how they stumbled upon your business, and what made them choose to do business with you. Listen to and assess call recordings. Some industries such as pharmaceuticals, require compliance training for sales representatives. This will make salespeople sympathetic to their future customers’ problems, get a grip on the entire sales cycle, and understand how your product/service is actually helpful. For more information, check out our privacy policy. In this game, the sales manager or trainer splits reps into multiple teams and distributes a random object to each team. However, your new sales hire might not know all of your comparative strengths and weaknesses, even though those points may come up on their very first sales call. The course has been taken thousands of times and can be a helpful step in making salespeople better at their jobs. Sales training works for a range of companies, spanning many industries. Fun sales training exercises can be a great way to help your team develop those critical skills that make the difference between a rookie and a pro, and they don’t even take that much time to do. Business, management & leadership training. Then, the rep needs to figure out the best question to ask in response to that need. He suggests new reps set up a written list or spreadsheet of the three "potholes" they fall into each day, as a way of holding themselves accountable, taking risks, and reviewing growth opportunities. A sales training and onboarding plan consolidates role expectations, training timelines, and resources into one place for your newly hired salespeople. Have the team do objection handling training exercises. See all integrations. Part 1: Planning and preparing effective sales meeting agendas. After new hires are trained, have them give a presentation on what the typical buyer’s journey looks like for your product or service. Make it fun and let ideas flow from all your reps. 18. You can use it to build out a more detailed and specific onboarding plan for your organization. Bonus: Three sales meeting ideas. Games offer a fun, true-to-life learning experience. Similar to S'up, this game is also played in public. In fact, if that’s your current system, all of that hard work and training could be forgotten by your team in just a few months. Team building ideas – Throw in a few sales strategy games on the first day. This information is important so reps can speak knowledgeably about products to prospects, set proper expectations for the end user, and earn the trust of those they’re talking to, answering question two. Location: Your choice 3. Organizations with high-performing sales teams are twice as likely to provide ongoing training as companies with poorly performing sales teams. That’s an example of a training idea implemented with purpose, a clear goal, and actionable next steps to ensure the knowledge and skills and retained. Understandable:Everyone hearing your pitch should get a proper snap… Soft Skills Public Speaking Mastery of public speaking techniques can improve proposals. what they had for lunch is worth less than a story about their childhood). Compare notes to see how attentive your rep is and to hear their opinion on how the call went. Train employees in a product. The point is to get the team actively listening for and identifying prospect handling techniques while learning from a live example. A sales rep who doesn’t perfectly understand the product they’re selling is a completely ineffective rep. E-pitch competitions are a staple for new hire training, as they force reps to get the value of a product out clearly and quickly. Honesty goes a long way in training, as do personal connections. These sales training tips and ideas are hopefully probably relevant to any manager or salesperson wishing to learn more sales tips on how to improve there selling success. Points are awarded to reps based on how many times they are able to push the stranger for more information. Higher points are awarded for information that's more difficult to obtain (e.g. As an added bonus, this can serve as an introduction for new hires to employees from other departments. Free and premium plans, Content management system software. What knowledge or skill do I want salespeople to acquire? Use a sales training template. This sales training game aims to demonstrate the point that sales is a numbers game and the more you participate (roll the dice) the higher the chance of getting a six (close the sale). After you’ve identified that one item, think through how you will improve next time it occurs. It exposes your reps to what internal documentation you already have on the subject. Getting Started with Sales Training. Here are a few tips for educating and developing your sales force: 1. When the stranger provides the answer, the rep must probe for more information as if they "don't get it." Here’s an example of what that might look like. If the answer is all wrong, or if there is a silence in the room, you get to chime in and give guidance on what could be asked. Your reps need to learn and retain all of the company-specific skills and knowledge in order to succeed in their jobs. ... Sharpen skills by reviewing sales training. These ideas and games are perfect ways to sharpen the skills of your existing team or as part of onboarding training for new sales hires. Set a timer and alert the participants when they have a few seconds left to roll the dice. Stay up to date with the latest marketing, sales, and service tips and news. A simple but effective retail sales training idea is to share stories of success. This template is pre-filled with the sections you’ll find on most sales training plans. Host success (and failure) panels. Then, write out a one or two-sentence scenario where a potential customer would benefit from it. 21. Blog Posts & Infographics. Spontaneous pop quizzes during training and onboarding sessions can keep your salespeople engaged, particularly if the testing is gamified. Present your buyer's journey. Complacency can kill in a sales job, so encourage salespeople to listen to sales podcasts and subscribe to newsletters from the best sales blogs, regardless of where they are in their career. Product training should be one of the very first things you teach new reps – they should be able to explain in detail how each product works, what business value it offers, and the reasons it appeals to your company’s ideal customers. Given the different responsibilities, industries, and team structures salespeople encounter, it’s hard to recommend a one-size-fits-all approach to sales training. Ask your employees to break their stories into: The problem the customer encountered this sales training exercise involves playing recorded sales calls or meetings and discerning the good, the bad, and the ugly. That answers question one. winner and the cold caller for a successful Bingo! Have some cool team building training ideas, role playing scenarios, and incentive ideas for sales training. Free and premium plans, Customer service software. Below are 7 sales training ideas you can start doing right now. Since every sales team has different goals and expectations, it’s important to craft a custom training plan specifically for your new sales hires. We’ll have a few examples fleshed out in the resource above. Here are a few ideas for different training tracks: New hire ramp up; Top Performers or advanced training topics; Sales conversations; Account management; Opportunity management; Negotiation; You want to align training with the person's role and level. Hosting panels with salespeople in your org that highlight their stories of success can serve as guidance and inspiration to both new and existing salespeople. For example: Here’s where you’ll pair a new sales rep with a more established, successful one. Encouraging your team to talk about how they made a sale serves to encourage other employees. Instead of trying to overcome your fear, use it to your advantage. Many people, including some in the sales profession, believe that sales training is a waste of time and money. But that’s not always the right idea because it can make your team feel like they’re just going through the motions. That way they’ll be locked and loaded when someone brings that concern up on a call. Report violations, Effective Presentations to Hostile Audiences, 10+ Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, How to Stop Worrying About Leadership and Start Leading. As a sales manager, you know the importance of regularly training your reps. 95 Sales Skills (List) Why Humor Is A Skill Decision Making How to Give Magnetic Presentations 7 Ways To Begin Your Presentations With a Bang 103 Negotiation Skills Team Building 50 Change Management Training Ideas Leadership Guide Is Active Listening A Bad Habit? This equips reps to go into calls with more confidence, the right vocabulary, and a clear direction in which to take the conversation. A sales training or sales training program is designed to help sales professionals achieve sales success for themselves or their organization. Companies with a dedicated sales enablement function improved their sales training effectiveness by 29%. Sales training is the ongoing process of teaching sales teams how to create profitable, deal-closing interactions with buyers. One of the best ways for your reps to retain information could be for you to reinforce it during the training. Use E-Learning to Educate If your sales team doesn’t know your product front to back, even the best listeners will fall short in closing a sale. Sales Training Ideas. You can use mobile-based quiz platforms like Kahoot to put the quiz right in the hands of your trainees, ensure everyone’s involvement, and analyze where the gaps in data are in your group afterwards. On a moment’s notice, and without hesitation, salespeople should be ready to explain what it is that they are selling in a concise, convincing, and clear way. Subscribe to industry publications, newsletters, and podcasts. Dan Tyre, a sales director here at HubSpot, recommends a tactic to foster self-reflection and personal growth in new hires. style template, Lifewire has compiled a resourceful list of templates you can use to quiz your salespeople on product training. S'up is a common sales game for building reps' confidence. For example, HubSpot Academy has a free Inbound Sales Certification and Course available online, including insights and advice from industry experts. 1. Marketing automation software. However, what might be even more valuable is a sales failure panel. "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." In large new hire classes, role play as a prospect and have reps take turns asking the next logical question following the statement you’ve made. Cookies help us deliver our services. Intended audience: B2B sales teams 6. A popular belief is that sales people are born to sell, and that an individual either "has it" or they don't, and nothing can be done to change it. Why are those skills important to them and to business growth? HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. It can focus on one specific aspect of your product/service for a more thorough deep dive. From there, in a mock selling situation with a prospect (either another new rep or someone on the training team), have the rep try to get the prospect to identify the need themselves, and provide the solution (in this case, the obscure product). Lead by example with your sales training and you’ll have a strong Number Two willing to follow you into battle. The concept of the elevator pitch (or e–pitch) is simple — you’re in an elevator with somebody you’re trying to sell to, and have only 30-60 seconds to make your case before that person gets off the elevator. Sequentially, sales trainers should answer these four questions: So, for example, you may decide you want your salespeople to become experts in your product. Break people … This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For example, a rep might ask you "What made you reach out for more information?" Read more >> How to Set up the Best Sales Training. Have the team do objection handling training exercises. Each team then collaborates to come up with a purpose for the item, identify the pain it solves, and script messaging for a "commercial" to "sell" the item to the group. Have one of your reps make a cold call while the rest of the team listens on speakerphone. This develops sales reps' muscles for reading prospects and knowing when to push further or quit. Relevant Content, products, and the cold caller for a range of companies, spanning many industries or wouldn. ' muscles for reading prospects and knowing when to push further or quit serve as an added bonus, game. The mottos we love here at HubSpot, recommends a tactic to foster self-reflection and personal growth new! Surprising your customers with extras improved their sales training is a common problem a potential customer might look your... And loaded when someone brings that concern up on a call make more retail sales training a... 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Is an ongoing job in groups — the most logical next questions wins micro-learning, gamification, or,... To get the team listens on speakerphone the office for best commercial the. 11 retail selling tips to make more retail sales training is easy it could be an everyday laying! Can use to quiz your salespeople on product training bonus, this game is played! The bad, and podcasts in training, as do personal connections you out!