Last month I discussed several key concepts to consider before beginning the hiring process. Assuming you’ve made the right hire, the next critical step in empowering a new sales representative to produce is providing a superior sales training program. In the majority of cases you will be working with two basic types of new hire, those with or without industry experience. Depending on the audience your training program will vary greatly.
What’s your sales philosophy?
Before we dig too deeply into training design, let’s outline a basic sales philosophy that will direct all sales training efforts. Your organizational sales philosophy is an important guide for all new and existing salespeople to follow, here’s an easy to understand sales philosophy that should work for most organizations:
- A salesperson is there to sell; they are not order takers.
- Customer’s are there because they really want or need to buy.
- The salesperson must earn the right to pursue the sale.
Now that we have a general sales philosophy, keep in mind when designing any type of training program your desired outcome needs to be clearly defined. Your program goals will be a determining factor when designing your content, delivery method and training exercises performed during the workshop.
What does it take to design a great sales training? First of all, I believe there are three ingredients in any successful program:
- Substance
- Relevance
- Energy
By “substance” I mean the knowledge, the skills and tools that are transferred to participants in the sales training session. Your “substance” is the meat and potatoes training new hires will use on a daily basis. Relevance is a key part of the process, when you can show participants the relationship between what you talk about in your session and what they are required to do on a daily basis on the job, the more successful and lasting effect your training will have.
They “get” that what you are teaching is relevant to their success in the field.
And by energy I mean your individual style and enthusiasm that you bring to the class, the level of involvement that you draw from the class and the way you interact with the participants to make the most of the substance and relevance of your program.
Secondly, there are four broad content areas that should be covered in any successful sales training workshop.
- Product Training
- Communication Skills
- Sales Skills
- Sales Process
The one area that will vary greatly will be product training, if you are dealing with an inexperienced recruit you’ll have to invest a significant amount of time and effort to bring them up to speed on the basics, such as; bankcard history, interchange, transaction flow, chargeback’s, terminology, competitors and general overview of the marketplace.
If your office is offering a large number of products it may be wise to start new salespeople on the basics like; credit, debit, check and gift card. Any other product inquiries can be directed to their sales manager to field until they have a firm grasp of the basics.
On the other hand, when you’re dealing with experienced salespeople the product training portion of the program should be designed to bring them up to speed with your individual product mix. Experienced salespeople can usually integrate new products easily into their sales offering.
The final three categories of a successful sales training; communication skills, sales skills and sales process are areas that every sales representative, new or experienced, need to master. Some training concepts that you may want to consider covering are:
- Sales Skills
- Communication Skills
- Building rapport
- Listening
- Qualifying opportunities
- Verifying
- Describing benefits
- Observing
- Handling objections
- Questioning
- Explaining
Remember people absorb information in three main ways: visual, auditory (hearing) and kinesthetic (feeling or doing), so make sure when delivering your sales training you present information in all three formats. Don’t just lecture with power points, get your participants involved; roll play and have them work together as a group through out the training session.
Hiring quality salespeople can definitely be a challenge but getting them to produce successfully is an even larger hurdle to overcome.
Your sales training philosophy and execution are key factors in ensuring your new sales representatives have all the tools necessary to produce out of the gate. Give them all the tools and support necessary and you will create sales producers every time.
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