Sales Training Won't Work Without This There are four things that companies with effective training share.
By Grant Cardone Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Ninety percent of sales managers suggest that a lack of fresh and relevant training material is what keeps their teams from staying engaged, according to Salesforce. Eighty percent of sales managers claim they do not have the time to train their staffs.
For sales training to be effective it must get your people excited, and then be available when they need it: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In this digital age, you have no time to wait around for the information you need when you have a cell phone and access to all of the world's data.
While sales seminars, consultants and training meetings are valuable, when it is over you need online sales training to support the team. Through very short sales training sessions, under three minutes, and then providing immediate interactive testing we are able to keep sales teams interested and ensure sales skills are being transferred. You must then follow up your online sales training with the ability to access solutions during the sales process to actually help them close the deal. These are the components of a winning sales training program.
Related: An Accomplished Sales CEO Shares 5 Success Principles
For 30 years, I have been providing sales training through CardoneUniversity.com to small, mid-size, and large organizations. From small organizations to Fortune 500 companies, every company that has been successful with their sales training has done the following:
1. Daily sales training
Sales training has to be a daily requirement and an integral part of your culture. For your training to provide fruitful results, it must be done daily. Sales training seminars at the local hotel can only be a supplement to daily training provided by your organization or business.
2. Highly interactive
Effective sales training must be interactive, allowing each person to be involved in the training on all levels. You must have a way to interact with the sales trainer and the material throughout the training. Massively successful training will only come from interactive tutorial videos and proven scripts on specific customer situations, giving the employee the best chance at delivering a successful outcome.
3. Deal closers
The purpose of training must be to convert to sales the same day -- not simply to educate. The sales people and managers are paid when they close a sale, not when they receive sales training. The training must be created in a manner that directly results in sales, not just education.
Related: For Success in Sales, Learn Your Customer's Backstory
4. Measurements
All effective sales training is measurable with reporting. When you don't get measurements you don't get results. This also allows sales managers to compare achievements between members of their teams to see exactly which areas need to be improved upon.
You need on demand, cloud-based sales training accessible from your computer, laptop, tablets, smartphones and soon your car. Sales training is available to your salespeople when they need it, no matter where they are.
Regardless of the training you go with, whether it's Jeffrey Gitomer, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy or Grant Cardone, repetition and availability are senior to quality. Provide your sales people and sales managers with 12 minutes of sales training content per day, and see an average increase in sales production of 5 percent per person -- some organizations see a 40 percent increase.
In the last couple of years, I have delivered more than 15 million sales training segments through my online sales training university. That is more consumed sales training content than my sales training companies have delivered in the previous 25 years of live and in-person sales seminars and meetings.
If you believe your people could be more effective at sales, follow up, prospecting for new customers, negotiating contracts, closing the sale, handling sales calls and converting Internet leads, you have to look at new platforms and technologies to provide relevant sales training on a daily basis.
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