Sales & Customer Service Training: Top Topics
It cannot be understated how essential sales and service training is to your staff. A well-trained sales team will directly impact your company’s bottom-line by producing newer and a higher frequency of opportunities.
A sales manager’s responsibilities do not end at the recruiting and hiring stage. Once your company has hired talented sales professionals, it is up to the sales manager to upskill their team and make sure they have every tool at their disposal to be effective sales professionals.
There are several topics that should be covered when any type of sales training is taking place. This will ensure that your sales team is setup for success, with the right knowledge and skills to get the job done.
1. Preboarding – Training new staff before day one
When a sales professional joins your company, he or she might be able to hit the ground running if they have extensive experience. This approach, however, is not the most efficient way to utilize their skills.
Instead, it is beneficial to preboard them prior to their start date. With preboarding, you can have the new staff member learn about all kinds of things such as company culture, values, processes and even make sure all systems and equipment are functional prior to the start date.
With preboarding, your new hire will be much better acclimated to the work environment which will allow them to contribute their sales expertise to the organization sooner.
2. Training on establishing rapport
An important topic to discuss and address with any sales team is how to build rapport with a potential customer. If rapport has been established, it is because the customer has realized that you have listened to their problem/need and are working to address it. Being able to connect and empathize with a customer’s “pain point” can be the difference between closing a deal or never hearing back from them.
There are several ways a sales manager can effectively teach the staff about the best practices for establishing rapport. An example would be to hold a classroom or virtual based training session where the manager can share his or her own experiences about certain situations with customers and how they navigated to establish rapport.
Taking it one step further, the whole team could examine past situations with customers to see what alternative strategies could be utilized to establish a connection more easily with the buyer.
3. Peer to peer learning
As we just discussed the “theory” around establishing rapport, let us switch gears to a more practical topic. You may have heard of some expressions such as “experience is the best teacher” or “practice makes perfect”, well these sayings especially apply to the field of sales.
An excellent topic to examine with your sales team is peer to peer learning. The best way to demonstrate peer to peer learning is to create simulations or “role-plays” between your team members where one team member is the seller and the other being the customer. The manager or even the top sales performers can then examine their colleagues selling techniques and provide invaluable feedback and coaching to more tricky selling situations.
These mock sales situations will result in establishing a more scientific sales process and provide the more inexperienced sales staff with new techniques and confidence in their ability all while improving team morale.
4. Putting yourself in the shoes of the customer
If your company sells a product or service, then as a salesperson, it is imperative that you know as much as possible about what you are selling. That is why putting yourself in the perspective of a customer is crucial to being more effective at selling.
As a manager, you can encourage your team to be more inquisitive in nature, to question for example, why you or anyone needs this product, what its limitations are and how it can be improved. Even if the business is unable to address the limitations of the product or service, being able to think from that perspective will help a salesperson anticipate a customers concerns, get in front of the problem and ultimately control the conversation.
These are just a few topics you should cover with your sales team to bring out their full potential. Remember that training does not end once a sales professional has been brought aboard. Continuously training company members will deliver the biggest return on your company’s investment.
Being an effective Sale Leader takes a lot of effort, and the responsibilities do not end at the recruiting and hiring stage. Upskill your team to make sure they have every tool at their disposal to be effective sales professionals. Ensure that your sales team is setup for success, with the right knowledge and skills to get the job done.
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