How to Build a Sales Training Program

Sales training is one of the best ways to prepare your sales team for success. With an effective sales training program, you can turn your newest reps into experts and you can help senior reps iterate on their strategies and freshen up their best practices.

More importantly, knowing how to build a sales training program will ensure consistency in your sales team. When everyone on your team has the knowledge and access to best practices, top strategies, and the best ways to connect with buyers, you’ll see them reach their sales goals and targets more easily.

In this blog, we’ll talk about how you can build an effective sales training program that gives your sales reps the resources and skills they need.

 1. Engage Internal Stakeholders and Define Goals Collaboratively

First, talk to the members of the team your training program will affect. Engage with internal stakeholders and collaborate on what you want out of a comprehensive training program. With your goals outlined, you can create a more customized training program that will help your business. It should never be a copy/paste approach. Your reps are going to need specific attention and will need a unique program that is designed to enhance their skills and help them reach their sales targets.

With team and stakeholder goals in mind, you can start thinking about the outcomes and KPIs you want to measure during and after the training process.

 2. Identify Desired Outcomes and Key Performance Indicators

Make sure you have outcomes and key performance indicators laid out and identified. You should be basing your training program off the results you’re wanting. You can create training materials and put together specific workshops and sessions that focus on the KPIs you want to improve.

As mentioned, it’s good to see how these metrics progress throughout the training process, but make sure you’re also measuring results after training. This will prove your process and show you areas that could use optimization. Without measuring your success from training, you won’t know if it’s working the way you want it to.

 3. Establish Clear Goals for Your Team and Track KPIs

Similarly, you need to clue your team in about your goals and KPIs for your training program. You need to clearly outline your process, so they understand what they should be gleaning from it. With clearly established goalposts, your team will know what to shoot for and what is expected of them.

Remember to talk to team members to figure out what their individual sales goals are. This can help you customize training for their specific shortcomings and enhance their strengths.

 4. Create a Formal Performance Evaluation Process

A formal training program should always have a formal performance evaluation process to go alongside it. As mentioned, you can’t just implement training measures and hope they stick. You need to make sure your efforts are worthwhile and that you’re hitting the goals you set out in the beginning.

Determine the best way to analyze performance based on your desired KPIs. Pull historical data about your key metrics if possible, and compare those to post-training results. Continue to track these metrics so you can see if improvement happens over time. Also, make sure you’re doing individual evaluations with your sales reps.

An evaluation with your sales reps can help you determine what they’re getting out of training and if they feel it’s working for them. This kind of feedback can help you optimize your training program and make sure it fits the goals of your team. If you never iterate on your training program, then your team isn’t going to be able to keep up with changes in the market. Evaluation is just as important as the program itself, so make sure to take your time creating a thorough and comprehensive evaluation process.

 5. Consider the Sales Onboarding Process for New Hires

Your training program should consist of at least two different segments — a program for new hires and a program for current team members. These two groups will have unique training requirements, so it’s worth laying out separate programs to provide each group with the maximum benefit.

For your new hires, you need to make sure that your sales onboarding process is optimized. This means getting new hires integrated into the team, teaching them about the product or service, showing them how to sell that product or service, answering any questions they have about their role, getting them set up with your system, teaching them about the software and tools you use, and much more. Starting your sales reps off on the right foot will ensure future training is easier for both them and their sales coach. It also ensures that they feel comfortable in your company and that they’re ready to start selling sooner than later. 

 6. Consider the Sales Coaching Process for Current Team Members

When it comes to current team members, you’re going to want to focus on the sales coaching process. The sales coaching process will help them to sharpen skills they want to work on, learn the best techniques for selling your product, keep up with updates in the industry, and much more. Sales coaching isn’t easy by any means, but it’s necessary.

Another way to improve your sales coaching is by implementing peer-to-peer learning. Peer-to-peer learning adds another dimension to your training program, allowing your team members to learn from each other and utilize the most successful strategies and techniques. Combining consistent sales coaching sessions and resources with peer-to-peer learning is a powerful mix. It maximizes wins for your sales team and it takes some of the workload off sales managers and sales coaches, allowing them to focus on improving their coaching strategies.

 7. Equip Your Team with the Best Sales Enablement Resources

Once you have your sales onboarding and sales coaching processes in place, you’ll have a complete training program. However, it doesn’t end there. You need to make sure to continually improve your process and provide your team with the resources they need to learn and succeed.

One way to give your sales team access to all of the training materials, best practices, and resources is through sales enablement tools. Sales enablement tools can help you develop and perfect your training program. They also help to foster peer-to-peer learning. With proper training, you can give your team more tools that lead to more wins.

Flockjay Gives Your Team the Training Tools They Need

Flockjay is the ultimate Sales Elevation Platform for sales teams everywhere. Our platform can give your team the training tools they need. And Flockjay works for sales teams of any size. Whether you’re operating at a small scale or international level, Flockjay can provide your team with easy-to-use training tools that will help them achieve better results.

Our training tools put all of your sales content, training videos, training resources, and coaching resources all in one hub, that your employees can access from anywhere. Get in touch with our team today to learn more and to add Flockjay to your stack.