Enterprise sales training landscape.

Sales training has always been viewed as a crucial tool for enhancing productivity. In our conversations with CXOs of startups regarding their sales problems, sales training almost invariably comes up together of the top 3 things that is bothering them.

However, sales and marketing consulting firms are one among the broad umbrella terms that cover a wide range of interventions. While the target is to make sales representatives more effective, the sort of intervention, trainer profile, mode of coaching varies significantly depending on the sales training.

We’ve had an extended held view on the effectiveness of sales training in general. More thereon later. during this article, we'll try to understand the various types of sales training interventions that organizations do.

To start with let’s look at the large buckets that constitute sales training in an organization:

For Individual Contribution Roles

Individual contribution roles: as the name suggests, are roles where sales representatives are directly selling to clients themselves. Initial training: Every organization has a set of training sessions done with a sales representative when they join the organization.

Sales basic training: Some organizations hire fresh graduates or candidates without sales experience in previous roles. In such cases, they conduct training on sales basics for these first-time sales representatives.

Refresher training: Periodic training sessions are done with the sales team to keep them updated on changes in product or other sales elements.

Skill enhancement training: Specific interventions to improve skills in existing often tenured sales representatives. These interventions usually focus on one specific area of the sales cycle eg. Negotiations, Discovery, Closing skills, etc.

For Team Roles

It’s hard to define specific training sessions for team management roles, these are the broad buckets where new skills are required:

Team management: Newly promoted individual contributors need training on how to handle a team, set & monitor performance, how to deal with low performers, how to train the team etc.

Lead management: Team roles require individuals to distribute & manage leads amongst the team in an efficient manner.

Escalation management: As a sales manager, you’re expected to handle escalations arising out of your team and resolve them effectively

Upskilling & coaching: Sales managers need to continuously upskill and coach their team members.
Data analytics: Sales managers need to be capable of analyzing basic sales data to arrive at areas of improvement.

For Sales Leaders

A sales leader should be able to drive his team to achieve the goals set. This is a highly complex role that includes hiring & training, designing the organization, identifying lead sources, targets & incentives, designing sales conversations, pricing and promotions etc. Needless to say, this can’t be addressed by merely trainings and we need a different approach to mentor sales leaders.

As you must have realized, this is a vast gamut. In the following sections we’ll focus on understanding the initial training for individual contribution roles. We’ll look at the key components of each sales training type, objectives and our recommendations on how organizations should go about this.

For Individual Contribution Roles

Initial training

These are training sessions that are essential to urge a new sales person in your organization market ready. Unless these training sessions are done well, it's difficult for a sales representative to do his job effectively. Any organization with a sales team should have these in situ . There are often very little debate on the effectiveness of these; they are necessary & provide basic tools for a sales person.

Induction & onboarding

All sales & non-sales employees undergo an induction & onboarding process when they join. This training helps employees to know basic details about the organization:

Company history, vision, mission
Key company policies
Key verticals, departments & functions
Key portals & internal SOPs ( leaves, reimbursement,

For sales employees, these could be slightly tweaked to include specific sections relevant to them ( travel, reimbursement, incentives, etc.).

This training is typically conducted by HR and is fairly standard in organizations.

Product Training

Product training is held for salespeople within the organizations to understand the product they have to sell. aside from being able to explain the product, salespeople should be ready to clearly articulate the advantages & benefits of the product, also as answer questions that clients are likely to ask about the product.Sales representatives have to have two important takeaways from the product training:

Understand the merchandise end to end in a way that they can explain it and answer any questions
Have belief/pride within the product that they can sell it to the customer.

The trainer should be approachable and be ready to draw questions from sales representatives. She should even be able to create excitement and pride about the product in the sales team.

Sales (“Pitch”) training

Sales representatives are taken through the pitch deck and therefore the common sales pitch. this is often typically done by someone from the sales team. Usual mode involves an experienced sales person giving a mock sales demo to the new joinee followed by a series of mock sales pitches by the new joinee with feedback and improvement areas shared after each attempt. These sessions are best done by either the reporting manager or by a high-performing sales representative.

Buyer persona segments

Some organizations have specific training to elucidate the buyer segments and persona that a salesperson is likely to encounter. In our view, this is often the most important piece of information that a salesperson should have before he hits the field. If your organization doesn’t have training specifically on buyer persona, we propose you get that one first.

Internal & external tools

Salespeople have to familiarize themselves with the tools an organization uses. These include internal tools like CRM, video conferencing, list portals, Knowledge sharing portal, Invoicing and accounting software, etc. These are best conducted by a tenured salesperson.

Recommendations for Initial Training Sessions

How important are initial training sessions?

These sets of coaching should be standard in any organization. they're necessary to get a new salesperson's market ready.
If these aren’t done well, you either have one among the scenarios:

Infant churn: Sales people exiting the organization early

Long build-up time: Salespeople

Organizations should examine fixing initial training before considering any other kind of training.

How should one examine organizing initial training?

These are very specific to the organization and need a lot of context to be effective. These should ideally be done by an indoor resource.
In case an internal resource isn’t available, it’s best to possess one external agency do this consistently over time.
Even when external agencies are involved, they have to work closely with the existing sales team to develop collateral and understand.

Enterprise sales training landscape.