As a sales trainer, I will be the first to say that sales training should come internally from your leadership team. Noticed I said leadership team and not management, though they can be one and the same if you hired correctly. Not all sales managers are leaders; certainly, they’re not all trainers. Recognizing the irrefutable value of training, dealers must assemble a leadership team of trainers. These leaders can be managers, owners, training directors, directors, and even salespeople capable of mentoring. You need to bring in a sales training company if you do not have employees who stay abreast of the best practices or can influence others.

5 Sales Training Techniques

Once your sales training team is assembled, there are 5 certain steps you can take to make professional sales training techniques stick.

Consistency Creates Culture

Whether you schedule your team’s training daily or weekly, it needs to be a mandatory and regular aspect of their work life. Your dealership’s leadership team must curate and follow a predetermined calendar to prepare valuable, real-world, interactive lessons for the sales team.

Review Real Scenarios

Listening to recorded sales calls is simply not enough. (If your management team even listens to them. While reviewing CallRevu dashboards with a client today, it showed that no one was listening to their calls except our DealerKnows team). You must review the calls with the salesperson, coaching them upright on the spot. In addition to calls, you should do live audits, together, of real leads and walkthroughs of all follow-ups to identify where improvement could be had. Training for the rule is just as unnecessary as training for the exception. Train on the live example.

Individualized Sales Training Plans

While your team is training regularly without fail, they should also identify individual learning opportunities for each agent. Not everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses, so your leaders must recognize where each person can improve. This way, beyond the training being performed, leaders can deliver steady feedback in a one-on-one setting.

The Mentorship Method

For some reason, most new hire orientation consists solely of shadowing a senior salesperson. This is one small aspect of a smart orientation process, but why does that mentorship relationship stop after a week of shadowing? Identify who has strengths and where others have weaknesses and assign each employee a mentor. Yes, even managers. Developing this level of internal support within the ranks is key to building trust and teamwork.

Celebrate Successes

In an industry where the term “brain damage” is used far more often than “positive reinforcement”, it stands to reason that celebrating both team and individual wins can build pride in the company. Validating people’s efforts goes a long way toward reinforcing the training you are instilling in them. Everyone deserves a pat on the back from time to time, so acknowledge the application of their training as a genuine part of the process.

Training, and all that goes with it, is the greatest way to grow your team and improve its performance. Identify your leadership team, develop your personnel, prepare your lessons, and do it consistently. These are the steps you must take if you want a culture of training to be met, not with contempt but with enthusiasm. Sales training, when done properly, pays dividends.

If you ask questions such as “What are the different types of sales training?” or “How Can I Improve My Sales Training?” it’s time for you to take action!

Don’t cost yourself money by passing up on your chance to provide your team sales leadership training.