Corporate Sales Training Has to Cover These 5 Tips
Corporate sales training can cover a wide range of topics. The basics, such as how to make a successful presentation, to advanced concepts, such as mirroring the tone and body language of the prospect to better connect with them. There are literally thousands of things which can be taught.
With so many possible things to cover, I decided to make a quick list of 5 tips corporate sales training should be emphasizing due to either their timeliness or because they are basics which are being neglected.
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Use LinkedIn to research, not sell
With the speed at which technology advances, we all might be using another social platform instead of LinkedIn in a couple of years, so this tip is at risk of becoming dated. But as so many of today’s professionals are trying to get sales from the service, it is important to address it.
LinkedIn is best used for finding out “who’s who?” in a company. There is so much spam and InMail that I recommend avoiding pitching through that platform directly. Chances are your message will be ignored.
Instead, search for the title most likely to correspond to buying authority, and see if you have any common connections who can provide an introduction. Otherwise, use a service such as Zoom Info or Google to track down their contact info outside of LinkedIn.
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Test everything
A/B testing is absolutely vital in an age of digital marketing. Fortunately, it is also extremely easy to do thanks to numerous plugins and vendors such as Optimize.
From your email subject lines, to calls to action, to button color, testing two or more versions of emails or web pages against each removes hunches and intuitions from the equation and replaces them with cold hard data as to what people are responding to – which you then reinforce.
You can apply A/B testing to non-digital selling tools as well. Make up two versions of a cold calling script, and see which one gets more appointments after dozens of calls. Distribute the winner to the rest of the salespeople, and your appointment rate should improve quite a bit.
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Don’t reinvent the wheel
Just because you are testing and learning new things, do not throw away what has worked to drive revenue thus far. Keep existing practices and workflows in place while you implement new things in a methodical fashion.
Only once you are sure the new methods are worthwhile, through testing and real world data, make them part of your operating base.
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Know your buyer
In a fantasy world, everyone would buy your product or service and you would be rolling in dough due to having a customer base of approximately 8 billion people. In reality, only a small segment of the market will be interested and qualified in what you offer. You need to know their characteristics so you can design your sales and marketing efforts to appeal to them.
Spend time developing one or more target buyer personas so you save time talking to them only, rather than pitching everyone. A persona doesn’t need to be an individual – you could target “mid-sized businesses with revenue above $10 million and at least 100 employees.”
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Continue learning
Education as a salesperson must continue past the corporate sales training seminar. The best salespeople become lifelong students of sales by reading books, attending other seminars, and hiring coaches.
There is always some new close to study, or a new piece of technology which can make life easier. Never stop growing and learning!
Top sales training programs and seminars which cover the above 5 tips are well worth attending.
