7 Rules for Corporate Sales Training You Should Never Break

Corporate sales training is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. Most well-known training firms do a good job and deliver significant value to their customers. However, some miss the mark –usually unintentionally through lack of experience.

We’ve put together a list of 7 cardinal rules for corporate sales training that should never be broken if you want to maximize your return on investment and performance improvements.

Thou shalt not be boring

Rule number one is to entertain and engage. Your corporate sales training instructor doesn’t have to be a stand-up comedian or juggle a flaming bowling ball, but he or she does have to ignite enough spark to hold interest, or people literally go blank or start doing something else — and there goes all the information you were trying to teach them!

Thou shall always include role play

If you want salespeople to actually apply the techniques taught at a corporate sales training session, role-playing is a must. And then pile on another serving of role play at every sales meeting for good measure. It’s the best way to increase their reality of the material and connect it to active deals in the pipeline.

Thou shall test everyone before training them

Save your training investment for those that can really use it – those with natural sales ability as demonstrated by the APQ sales aptitude assessment. Your bean counters will thank you, as will your CFO as he or she counts the new revenue.

Thou shalt not neglect your managers and executives

Speaking of C-suite executives like the CFO, it helps when your execs and managers take the same sales training as your salespeople, at least once, so they a) get a refresher and b) can hold salespeople accountable for applying the methods and processes learned.

Thou shall provide an interesting keynote

A great keynote sets the tone for the rest of the corporate sales training session. A presentation with impact and emotional content wakes everyone’s old brain up and gets them primed to learn.

Thou shall park all questions until the right time

Some people just like to hear themselves speak. Use Post-Its or some other tool to park questions until later. In addition to allowing the training session to flow without frustrating interruptions, it gives your staff time to get the correct answers researched and ready.
Failing to do this wrecks the pace of corporate sales training, angers the faster students who don’t need clarification, and ruins the schedule.

Thou shalt not neglect to follow up with refreshers or coaching

Don’t flush your corporate sales training investment down the drain. Retention problems are a real thing and cost American businesses a lot of money. The way to reinforce learning so your salespeople truly remember and apply the new information is to follow up with online refresher courses or personal coaching. This way can you avoid the 90-95% memory loss most of us experience after one month of learning new facts.

There you have it, the seven rules which ensure your corporate sales training program is a success. Happy learning!