How to Retain Top Talent and Drive Productivity with Sales Training

In today’s world it can feel impossible for sales managers to stay on top of their day-to-day assignments: from the groundwork of producing reports, to the pressure of meeting sales targets, all while managing, motivating and fulfilling the sales training role for a diverse team of salespeople with their own motives and methodology to meeting this quarter’s goals.

A sales manager plays a unique role in the success and failures of a business. They play a pivotal part in making sure that their team is motivated, focused, and on-page with the companies’ weekly and quarterly targets.

When the ways that sales take place to change, sales managers need to change with them. Covid-19 and social media have forever shifted what the future of sales interactions will look like. In-person meetings used to be the core of business-to-business sales. Now, in the digital world, digital communication is ingrained in every aspect of the business. According to Gartner 80% of sales interactions will occur via digital channels by 2025. It is up to sales managers and sales training programs to understand this.

The question becomes, how can sales managers energize hybrid or fully remote sales teams, in order to get the most out of everyone from 20-year veterans to fresh out of school newcomers? Such unity and understanding of the individuals on your team from top to bottom is key to achieving sustainable results. The answer is proven, tailor-made, and enjoyable sales training.

The last two years have been tough on many businesses. The economic pressure created by Covid-19 was brutal and especially unkind to small or newer businesses. However, not everyone was crippled, in fact, some businesses even took advantage of the opportunity and flourished.

Value Selling Associates surveyed 256 sales leaders who said they saw high revenue growth during the pandemic to figure out what focuses their sales training may have had. They discovered that excellent sales training focuses on and reaps benefits in a business far beyond its sales function.

They discovered that high-quality sales training played a part in improving these five aspects:

 

• Employee Satisfaction: Strong sales coaching teaches people to identify their weaknesses and master them. This, allows employees to break the barriers on what they can achieve in their job, which can greatly improve the sense of achievement they feel at work.
• Employee Motivation: “Birds of a feather flock together.” It is up to sales managers to create an environment of motivation. If you are a lazy leader and cut corners on your work, they are going to view it as okay to do the same on theirs.
• Employee Retention: Invest in your employees. Be willing to go above and beyond to deliver them the sales training that they deserve. If you don’t display confidence and support in your employees, they’ll find someone else that will.
• Company Culture: Building a shared set of values and goals starts in a company starts from the top down. How you treat your employees is how they will treat their coworkers. Strong sales training can build an environment of empathy and compassion while still maintaining determination.
• Adaptiveness: High-quality sales training helps build sales professionals that are comfortable and confident in their ability to navigate unexpected obstacles.

Sales managers, think of yourself as the coach of a basketball team. Every good basketball team has its stars, there to take the biggest shots and get the team a basket when it needs one most. It has its veterans, who don’t play the same amount of minutes as the stars, but are there to provide veteran leadership and a strong voice in the locker room. It has young guns, who can provide a youthful spark of energy and creativeness. No good basketball team is complete without its role players, guys that know their job whether it be the defensive specialist or the rebounder. Role players aren’t good at everything, but they’re excellent at one particular thing. The team can’t win unless it has every player on board and aware of their role.

As the sales coach of your team it is up to you to identify the role of each of your team’s members. Each member is different, yet the team must have them all to function at its best.

Getting everyone on the team onboard is not easy, but is necessary to building a satisfied, motivated, and confident group that can come together to achieve the companies’ goals. High-quality sales training is the best way to help everyone get on the same page, while establishing a common understanding and methodology to how you as the leader want to run the team.

Invest in your team, get them the sales training that they deserve. Then you will be rewarded by meeting your goals quarter after quarter, no matter what obstacles may arise.