The “sink or swim” nature can mean high turnover rate in the sales industry, and that can usually be attributed to burnout. Recognizing burnout is important, and many sales departments try to minimize attrition as best as possible.
Attrition in sales teams is not always due to stress on the job or unhappiness with benefits offered, but rather that they don’t know how to really make the most of sales opportunities. Their commission for example may be entirely fair, but their ability to sell the product will make them feel they aren’t earning enough.
In this article we’ll explore 4 ways to enhance your sales team’s training, so that they can recognize more opportunities and more successfully close deals.
Hold regular meetings and demonstrations
Office meetings are regularly lampooned as being boring and uneventful, but they don’t have to be. Sales team meetings can be spiced up with brainstorming sessions, but demonstrations and roleplaying can hone your sales team’s skills as well.
Salespeople need to be outgoing types who can think and react quickly in conversations. There are many different ways to approach a sales pitch, so your team should be practiced in the different situations they will encounter.
Being able to fluidly adapt between different situations is a learned skill. It sounds like rotary training and some situations just can’t be read or taught, and you don’t want them falling into a script in unfamiliar territory. Don’t think of it so much as sales pitch training, but charisma training, the art of a persuasive personality. Scripted sales can sell a product they’re designed for, but charisma can sell almost anything.
Train them on your software
In a sales pitch every second is ticking as your salesperson needs to keep the person engaged and moving towards sale closure. When your salesperson is making a pitch, and the customer has questions that the salesperson needs to look up in your software, time is crucial as far as how fast they’re able to locate the information.
This is why enterprise sales software can be crucial to ensure proper content management; effectively making all product information readily available and easily found by each salesperson. However it also allows them to automate routine tasks and ultimately focus on providing the best sales experience to potential customers.
Overall it’s vital to ensure your salespeople have a good firm understanding of your sales software and share with them useful tips and tricks, like shortcuts for efficiency and best use cases.
Teach them the tricks of the trade
Some people think it’s best if your sales team is motivated about the product. That isn’t entirely true. What’s important is that your sales team is motivated about selling the product, and know how to sniff out opportunities to pitch a sale.
The sales team doesn’t have to believe in the product, they have to believe that the product sells. This is the important part, and that distinction will be the difference between having a sales team who are enthusiastic about the product itself, and a sales team who is enthusiastic about being able to sell the product.
Let’s take GameStop for example, the retail giant of console video games and accessories. GameStop didn’t build itself by just hiring videogame-knowledgeable teenagers. At GameStop’s height, it regularly employed salespeople with experience in sales techniques.
They weren’t just videogame players that stood behind a cash register, they were trained in selling PowerUp Rewards. Not just selling the rewards cards, but actually guiding existing card members in how to maximize their bonuses, through trade-in values and in-store sales, so that the customer feels like they get more of a deal by spending more money.
Share industry news and trends with your team
A part of sales and marketing is like steering a ship, and you have to feel what direction the winds are going. Having foresight in markets, like predicting high tech startups, is a highly valued skill, and it’s a skill that can be developed. That doesn’t mean consulting a crystal ball, just rather, keeping open eyes and ears for buzzwords and trends that are rising in popularity, not necessarily hot in popularity yet.
When you develop an eye for social trends that could potentially go viral, instead of having already gone viral, you’ll be able to prepare your team in advance for how to navigate these constantly shifting markets.
It’s a bit like meme culture and social media influencers, if you pay attention to certain areas of the internet, you’ll see things before they go viral. If for example, a local streamer channel seems like it’s gaining a bit of steam and traction, keep an eye open and gauge your FOMO (fear of missing out) level.
