Sales Training Techniques

In order to ensure that a salesperson continues to grow and perform better at the workplace, the management needs to be approachable and it should try and create a symbiotic environment. Promoting experimentation and creativity will help a salesperson view his/her job with a renewed sense of interest.

This in turn will ensure inspired performance rather than the usual lack luster approach to mundane targets. Sales training sessions should not be confined only to novices. A seasoned salesperson also stands to gain a great deal from these sessions, since knowledge has indeterminate boundaries. The following techniques may be helpful in increasing the productivity of a salesperson.

The trainees need to be made aware of the strengths of the competitor. Every trainee needs to know at least as much as the competitor, if not more. The willingness of the trainees to adapt to new, innovative ways of marketing can be gleaned by asking them to fill out a questionnaire that tests them on their level of comfort, with new marketing and sales techniques.

The importance of upgrading their knowledge, in order to remain competitive, should be impressed upon the trainees. This is especially true while conducting a training session where most participants have been with the company for a reasonable length of time. The importance of adopting ethical practices should be suitably impressed upon salespeople, who during the course of work may have unwittingly compromised on their ethics.

The training session should focus on the following points:

• The ability of the salesperson to assess the needs of the prospective clients.
• A detailed understanding of human behavior and the motives that drive people to buy certain products.

• The ability of the salesperson to tap into the latent desire of the customer and accordingly propose sales.
• The importance of making recommendations and giving suitable suggestions to convince the buyer to purchase the desired product or look for a better alternative.

• The importance of greeting customers, making them feel welcome, and developing good customer relationship management skills should also be impressed upon the salesperson, who in the course of time may have forgotten to appear enthused for the sake of the clients.

Interactive session helps trainees to come forth with ideas and activities that may be genuinely useful to them. Since every salesperson has an idea about his/her shortcomings, a self-directed learning session, where the trainee is allowed to reflect on his/her shortcomings and the ways to improve upon them, can be a particularly useful training technique.

A seasoned salesperson may not realize the importance of a professional sales training program and may fail to remain motivated during the session. Unless the salesperson is sufficiently motivated, the whole session will be of no use.

A way of working around this problem is to engage the salespeople in interactive sessions that professes to help the trainer as well as the trainee.

A trainer needs to be approachable despite having to project a professional image. Addressing trainees by their first name and being cordial can go a long way in helping the trainees bond with the trainer.

The above list of sales training techniques is not comprehensive. An experienced salesperson, who has considerable expertise in conducting training sessions, can easily adapt to the needs of the trainees and conduct a session, the efficacy of which will be observed in the form of better sales performance in the days to come.