Many companies train their sales teams in certain sales techniques. Some regularly, others once in a while.
Very often, these sales trainings do not achieve a measurable impact. Why is that the case? Based on our experience, these are the most common mistakes you should avoid:
Sales leaders are not engaged or not trained to strenghten and re-inforce the behaviour of their team members that has been trained. Therefore, most of the trained topics are quickly forgotten and not embedded into the daily work.
Sales trainings are conducted as an isolated activity. Achieving impact requires trainings to be part of a greater initiative with clear goals, e.g., winning new customers, developing accounts systematically, approaching new market segments or launching new products. If it is just a training, it will not have the impact that it could have.
Saving money at the wrong place. eLearning is great to teach facts, but it fails to drive behaviour change. The contents of one or two day sales trainings will very soon be forgotten. The solution are learning journeys stretching over a certain period of time, covering teaching and applying new sales techniques until they become a habit.
One-off efforts. Top sports teams train every day. Why do we often think that this is not necessary in sales? Great sales teams improve their abilities regurlarly, combining sales training, coaching and best practice exchange by their team leaders.
Not measuring impact. Sales trainings are basically an investment into sales productivity and into achieving certain goals. Therefore, their ROI should be measured.