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When it comes to training your employees, sales training can pose a number of challenges, especially for small businesses that can't afford to hire a specialist provider or have internal time to do it themselves.
However, sales training isn't rocket science. A successful sales team will have a great sales training program at its core. If you are a sales manager or training professional and are looking for ways to make your team more productive, then you might be interested in using a sales training template.
Using a sales training template is a great way to keep your sales team up to date with the latest knowledge and skills that are required to achieve success. You just have to start with a good sales training template. This blog will help you understand how to create a sales training template along with breaking down the sales training process from the time of hire till complete onboarding.
By the way, you can follow the same sales training plan for regular sales training check-ups.
We won’t be getting into what sales training is and how you can leverage the sales training platform in this blog, as we have already covered that extensively in our previous blogs and guides. Just click below to find out about the sales training platform.
Sales Training Platform by Convin
So now, without further ado, let's get into creating your sales training and sales onboarding manual.
Creating sales manual
Sales training does not just start from the day they join, but like onboarding, it starts from the time they agree to become a part of the sales team.
The more effective the sales onboarding process is – the stronger becomes its foundation for ramping up.
For new hires, sales training should carry on for 4-6 months minimum, and post that; skill evaluation should be conducted to bridge the skill gap. So let’s start.
Before the new sales hire joins
Nothing captures the attention of new hires quite like a taste of what your business does and where they’ll be spending their first days.
Consider having them spend the first few hours before their official first day on company onboarding material along with the sales onboarding stack. This way, new hires will immediately be able to pursue their own goals better by learning from seasoned pro calls and strategies which can show them the ropes!
The dreaded or exited first day
Set up your new sales hires emails and other accounts that they will need for communication. You can even do this before the first day so that the new hires can talk to seasoned employees and get a layout of the office working.
During the first day of work, get to know the employee and make sure that they're comfortable and understand what is required of them. At this stage, there will be a lot of paperwork for new hires, and it won't accomplish much if their processes are not streamlined in advance.
Make sure you have gone over their checklist with them so that you can double-check everything is set up, such as equipment repair or purchasing from tech and office shops.
Then comes the boring orientation.
Use the orientation for teaching your new hires all about the situation at hand and how things work. Take care of describing all of the details regarding benefits and arranging their work environment, as well as teaching them what is required of them over the next three months so they can get up to speed with their daily responsibilities on time.
Apart from this assigning a buddy post, the orientation can help them feel at ease.
Now that is out of the picture, now comes the actual sales training.
First-month sales training
The first month of the new sales hire training is all about knowledge transfer along with learning and understanding the
- Product
- Customers
- Competitors
- Sales pitch
- Sales process
- Sales call handling, etc.
Let’s break down each of these:
Product Training
Just as your salesperson must be trained about your product or service and its value, to continue a fluid sales process, a product manager needs to learn how to ease their rep into the process as well.
You want to ensure that both of you are on the same page when it comes to how you will effectively convey your vision and capabilities of the product.
Market and competitor Intelligence
Provide your new hires with market and competitor research that you may have and how your product stands out in the market.
Help them understand different competencies messaging, and sales strategies before you educate them about your sales process and methodologies.
For this you can use the data available on the internet, along with social listening and using your own sales calls data.
Sales processes and sales script
If you are in sales, you must have heard of the BANT framework if you are in sales. It is one of the most followed sales frameworks. It signifies:
- Budget: This is pretty much straightforward – the budget assigned for hiring sales members and adding sale stacks. This also signifies the pricing and negotiations of your product.
- Authority: To build authority with the prospect, the sales team must be well versed with the product's value proposition and the company’s stand in the market.
- Need: The agent should be able to convey effectively the products and services and how it adds value and eliminates the challenges associated with their current process.
- Timing: Understanding timing is integral to sales for various reasons, ranging from gauging a prospect's intent to knowing when and how many products to produce based on peak demand.
By taking this approach, businesses can determine which customers are more likely to buy and then adjust their strategy accordingly. The key has processes in place that offer flexibility and allow the business to adapt easily to changing circumstances.
For creating an effective sales script, it is crucial to know how top performers are tackling the calls– the customer questions, the rep's responses, and engaging strategy.
Sales stack and CRM tool training
Empower your sales staff members to become adept at using your CRM and other sales stack-like call recording solution by giving them thorough instruction on its use as well as including hands-on training.
This can be done in the form of a certification exam, which is usually offered by the software company that made the CRM and sales stack, or by informal practice tests and homework assignments.
Note: Give access to your sales call library and see how your sales reps learn all the above and see them come up with their strategies.
Second-month training
Now your employee is pretty much settled and is aware of working of the sales team and processes, and has complete knowledge of the product he needs to sell.
So what comes next, according to you?
If you are thinking of call shadowing and initial intro in the sales calls, then my friends, you guys are absolutely right!
One of the best ways to get the new hires' feet wet is by making them shadow seasoned sales reps' calls and making them hear their all-call recordings. They should also be introduced in new calls so they can start building confidence, and slowly you can let them lead the call as well.
Set up their performance reviews, so you can start providing early feedback, and reps can start working on their skill gaps.
Third-month sales training
Now that your new sales hire has reached the third month of their sales journey, then you can assume that they are pretty much well versed with the training material and are ready to apply their training practically.
You as managers should keep in mind that the sales reps are still pretty much new; hence set up achievable sales targets and KPIs, so they don’t get overwhelmed and start thinking of looking for another job.
Help the new hire in building relationships with prospects and guide them in the prospecting process while conducting regular performance reviews.
Apart from this, it also conducts a skill-gap test to see where the employees are still lacking so that you can enable personalized sales training to bridge the sales skill gap.
As the famous sales trainer Grant Cardone says,
“Regular sales training can mean the difference between just selling and closing”
Check out his video here!
Sales training is an ongoing process.
We hope you enjoyed our article on creating a sales training manual. We know now that you can use this as a guide to creating your own sales training manual. This can help you to provide your sales team with the information they need to be successful, and it will help you to manage your salespeople better.
If you have any questions or concerns about creating a sales training manual or about sales training, please contact us anytime at contact@convin.ai. Thank you for reading; we are always excited when one of our posts is able to provide useful information on a topic like this!
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