jojo

Account Executive

Catalyst

Valued Contributor

Fire Starter

The Art of Sales Training 🎨

Hi fellow warriors 👋

The challenge: I want to set up a sales training for my 15+ AE colleagues.

The question: How do I make them not suck?

Some context: Sales trainings can be soul-draining. First off, how do I know what my colleagues need training on? How do I make the trainings something they'll look forward to? How do I make them actionable? I welcome any tips, articles, podcasts, real-life experience.

Appreciate y'all 🙏

🥎 Training

🧢 Sales Management

😎 Sales Skills

6 comments

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CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

First of all, kudos to you for caring about your AEs. Many in SE don't give a flying fuck if they give soul sucking boring as hell I want to slit my wrists training classes.

I'd ask the AEs what they feel is lacking. Trust me, they will tell you.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

How do I know what my colleagues need training on?

Three ways to do this:

1) Meet 1:1 with each member of the team to assess self-identified weaknesses and desired areas for improvement. This will take you between 8 and 15 hours depending on how long you want to spend with each of the members of your team.

2) Work with your sales ops or leadership team to assess where there are weaknesses in the funnel. Is it lead generation, meeting booking, opportunity conversion, discount gives, closing?

3) You can do a hybrid of one and two by splitting the team of 15 into small groups, aka cohorts, and build training around those folks. You can group them randomly or by commonly shared weaknesses.

Ok, groups are set. Now how do you construct training?

Hard to set modules up from scratch if you've never done it before. This will be by far the most time-consuming part of this process.

However, you could instead invest in a platform/company like JB Sales. They either offer a tailored training program OR on-demand content. You can pick and choose from that content to leverage for different components of your training program. I'd go with this option, personally, since you are still an AE and not their manager/head of training (according to your role tag on this site).

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Good question, did you ask during the team meet and 1-on-1, if they are facing any challenges that need your attention? I have seen my manager doing it and coming up with a collective feedback that was graduated to next step of actioning.

They are many trainings available, I have done JB with my team and found it to be very useful.

hh456

Celebrated Contributor

sales

sales is not this big 10 lane highway where everyone figures it out on their own. if you have a plan that works, get them on the rails, and then let them be the best version of themeselves they can be, on that two lane road (input/output).

when i built our sales program, it's very defined, the steps are very defined and the results are very defined. it's a science.

we don't micromanage anyone, Chet will be a better Chet then he'll ever be a better me, but there are markers on the road he needs to hit along the path towards a close.

that's the best advice i could give. don't customize the sales solution and don't customize the sales expectations and processes for your AE's. make it all standard and let them be themselves in the boxcar.

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

How to makes sales training not suck: Don't have the sales training.

LordOfWar

Tycoon

Blow it up

I'm doing this now with my team and have tons of experience teaching from my previous life.

I've gone through like 10 sales audiobooks (Libby FTW!) on my daily drives to and from the office and am in the process of filtering down what I think are the key ideas into small, structured lessons for the team.

With any training, the key will be not to overload them with ideas but rather start small and work to actually see those concepts being picked up and become part of their day-to-day before moving on to the next stage.

I also stagger my lessons into various areas of sales like research, prospecting, bidding, negotiating, fulfillment, follow-up. This means we're covering something new each time and giving value to both the newbies and veterans.

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jojo

The Art of Sales Training 🎨

6 comments

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