The sales profession has evolved a great deal in recent years. Savvy B2B buyers have great expectations with sellers. You need to infuse disruptive technology with new sales training ideas to meet those expectations.
Sales reps today need to put their best foot forward to close deals, which is why your sales training strategy needs to keep up. Long-winded presentations and on-site boot camps aren’t always feasible in the modern work environment.
Besides, these events usually cause information overload and employees forget most of what they learned during the training.
This article, therefore, shares the five most path-breaking online sales training ideas that you can incorporate in your sales strategy.
Here’s the first one:
1. Deliver Virtual Sales Pitch Training
Sales pitch training is an indispensable part of a hybrid workforce training program. Your sales reps get to learn about how to move leads through the sales funnel and ultimately inspire them to buy your product or service.
Using virtual events, you can deliver sales pitch training where you teach them how to pitch the product/service using demos, videos, or traditional sales decks.
For this sales training idea to be successful, your sales collateral should align with your sales strategy. The language, of course, plays a crucial role too. Your employees should be able to speak the same language as your target audience.
2. Host Success & Failure Panels
Honestly is pivotal in sales training.
By hosting an event where experienced sales reps in your organization can share their success as well as failure stories with new hires, you’re facilitating that honestly and increasing the probability of closing more and more deals in the future.
Their stories serve as inspiration and guidance for new sales reps. Next time your employees face the same problem, they know exactly how to handle the situation.
You’d need an online event management platform to host success & failure panels, especially if you’re catering to a large audience.
3. Record & Review Sales Calls
Recording sales calls is of the most powerful sales training ideas there is. The on-the-call salesperson can learn from recorded calls retrospectively. Moreover, it allows you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your teams.
By reviewing recorded sales call, reps can learn about objections raised by customers as well as their appropriate responses.
Apart from that, you can record the sales calls of both new and experienced employees to foster peer learning, which is the subject of discussion in our next section.
But what’s the best time to review sales calls?
Glad you asked!
Following are some instances where you can implement this sales training idea:
- Onboarding new sales reps
- After identifying certain skill gaps
- When you’re looking to determine customer behavior or pattern
- When your sales team needs more insight into customer sentiment
- Understand what your customers truly care about.
Also Read: Top Profitable Ideas For Your Online Business
Since most sales conversations today happen online, you’d need an online event management platform that allows you to record calls, deliver training sessions, and also facilitate one-on-one conversations.
4. Leverage Peer Learning
Peer learning is a perfect ingredient for success in the sales world, and with good reason. Thanks to peer learning, new sales reps get to leverage the expertise of veteran sales leaders – while they’re still in the organization.
Use their experience to create new training material or upgrade the existing one. An online event management platform will allow you to deliver and record sales-related best practices, win stories, tricks, and tips.
For example, you could ask a veteran in your organization, “How do you move a stalled deal forward?” Use their answers to create video responses or incorporate them into formal learning content.
Online sales training material that can be accessed anytime, anywhere is the norm today. Make sure it’s both desktop and mobile-friendly so that your employees (both remote and in-house) can study it whenever they find the time.
5. Diversify Your Training Content
The modern workforce is becoming more diverse than ever before in history. Not only do people willingly travel across the world for their dream job but also work remotely for clients and organizations.
Most businesses today have a mix of in-house and remote teams, which in turn, have people with different skills and capabilities. For example, some sales reps may prefer bite-sized content pieces for online sales training.
Others may prefer a more comprehensive course that they can study in one go. Before you create content for online sales training, make sure you’re aware of your employees’ needs and wants and diversify your content.