Have you trained your sales staff this year? Not product training. Not training in how to fill out their expense reports. Training in prospecting skills. Training in closing skills. If you haven’t, you are missing on an opportunity to increase your company’s performance according to a recent report released by Aberdeen Group. How much of an opportunity? Best in class companies experience:
- Over 80 percent of sales reps meeting their annual quota (compared to 65% for average companies)
- Average deal size/contract value increasing by 7% year over year (compared to average companies which had a flat deal size year to year)
- Average annual revenue increasing 11% year over year (compared to 2% decrease for average companies)
Best in class companies deploy training that focuses on what sales reps say and do to create perceived customer value to create these results. (Not just how to calculate quota or track number of sales appointments.) These companies have processes for:
- Sharing collective knowledge
- Training their internal trainers
- Reinforcing training on a regular basis
- Capturing organizational best practices
- Defining competencies (and training needs) for each sales role
Best in class companies also train often and train consistently, regardless of economic conditions. In fact, they are increasing spending on sales training over the next 12 months. This makes sense. As the economy recovers, these companies want to be positioned to capitalize on the positive changes.
One of the key takeaways of is that training and reinforcement should happen frequently. This doesn’t necessarily mean continuous onsite training. Consider what content you can license, how you can train internal trainers, and how access to training content can continue to reinforce new skills.
For more information, you can read the entire report, Sales Training: Translating Tribal Selling Knowledge into Bottom-Line Productivity.
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