This week we are analyzing the effectiveness of traditional sales training strategies. We look to determine why these strategies are no longer effective, and how sales enablement can enhance training to ensure effectiveness.

Why Current Sales Training Isn’t Cutting it Anymore

Sales enablement software is a relatively new tool that is changing the way that salespeople are learning, retaining information, and selling. Until recently there generally have not been a lot of technological tools on the market that help sales managers maximize their training efforts (Source: Selling Power, 2014). Traditional training strategies typically meant using ongoing coaching efforts to help sales professionals retain the required information and skills (Source: Selling Power, 2014). Arguably, this process has become taxing and exhausting on both sales managers and reps.

We discuss our sales enablement definition for 2015. In case you missed it, you can find it in our post, “What is Sales Enablement? A Sales Enablement Definition for 2015”.

Understanding the Empowered Buyer

Why is this strategy no longer effective? One of the biggest reasons that your current plan of action is ineffective is due to the fact that information being given to salespeople during training is too descriptive and not as focused on customer information as it should be. If a sales rep doesn’t properly know how to identify the needs of a buyer, it’s unlikely they will make the sale. As buyers are becoming more empowered, it is becoming increasingly important for sales reps to understand what customers expect from them.

The empowered buyer can best be described as a customer who seizes control of the buying process and actively pulls information towards themselves. (Source: Mckinsey, 2009) This means that customers are more commonly doing their own research before contacting a salesperson. With the help of their research, many buyers complete 67% of their decision journey before engaging with a sales rep (Source: Open View Labs, 2015). For many buyers, contacting a sales rep means that they are close to making a decision, however, there are a few holes in their research that they need to fill in before they do. At this stage, customers expect to have more engaging conversations with sales that specifically help them to determine how your company or product is going to benefit them and their unique needs.

Would you like to learn more about the impact empowered buyers have on the sales process? May I suggest reading our post, “How an Empowered Buyer Impacts the Sales Process”, found here.

Lack of Motivation

Traditional sales training tactics can be taxing on a sales reps motivation to learn and sell. According to ASLAN Training, only 33% of sales professionals are engaged and motivated at any one time (Source: ASLAN Training, 2014). Being unable to connect with a buyer because they lack the training to understand them means that the sales rep won’t see results and in turn, can have a great impact on their self-esteem. In fact, as many as 40% of salespeople lack the necessary skills to have customer empathy and understand customer pain (Source: SalesForce, 2013).

If you’re interested in learning more about keeping your sales reps motivated, I highly suggest taking a look at our post, “Applying the Science of Motivation for Real Sales Enablement”.

Setting a sales rep up for success from the beginning will not only make them feel more confident in their ability to sell but will also provide them the skills they need to be successful.  According to Sales Force, top sales organizations are 2x more likely than underperformers to say that the importance of their salespeople’s satisfaction is key to successfully selling/ servicing prospects and customers (Source: Sales Force, 2015). If your sales professionals don’t feel happy or satisfied with their ability to do their role, it will reflect poorly in your company’s sales.

Traditional sales training strategies are costly, offering little to no value to reps. The cost of bringing together sales teams and training can add up quickly (Source: Axonify, 2015). When it comes to retention, companies are actually losing money through traditional training, as research shows that people lose almost 90% of what they learn within a month (Source: Axonify, 2015).  As a result, salespeople are only retaining about 10% of knowledge (Source: ASLAN Training, 2014).  So where are sales reps getting the rest of their knowledge? According to ASLAN Training, the remaining 90% of sales knowledge comes from sales tools, marketing collateral, and internal experts (Source: ASLAN Training, 2014).

Want to learn more about how you can measure your sales reps performance? May I suggest taking a look at our post, “5 Quick Tips for Sales Performance Management Among Reps”.

(Source: East Cobber, 2015)

Common Mistakes Sales Reps Make

We’ve established that traditional sales training just isn’t cutting it anymore, however, your sales training strategies cannot be held solely accountable for a sales reps lack of knowledge or skills. In fact, we see time and time again that salespeople commonly make the same mistakes when it comes to the sales process including having ambiguous sales conversations, being too product focused, not doing their own research, and not being prepared for customer questions/objections.

Ambiguous Conversations

One of the most common mistakes that sales professionals make is that they have too many vague and ambiguous sales conversations (Source: Inc., 2015).  Salespeople that make this mistake often do so when they don’t know enough knowledge about the product or company and are unable to add value to their conversations with buyers. Some sales reps do this without realizing by asking vague questions or by accepting obscure answers from buyers (Source: Inc., 2015). Doing so will only lead to generalizations, deals that don’t close, and ultimately unfulfilled sales quotas. (Source:Inc., 2015)

Too Product-centric

Sales reps can also fall into the trap of spending too much time and focus on a product instead of discussing with the buyer how the product can minimize their pain points. Starting off a conversation with a product-centric view can diminish your positioning in the buyers mind (Source: Inc., 2015). Keeping in mind your buyer personas and the way empowered buyers shop today will help salespeople form more engaging and valuable conversations for buyers. Buyer personas are defined as a conceptual representation of your ideal (and current) customer, based on market research and data about your current customers. (Source: Hubspot, 2014)

Lack of Research

Having buyer personas in place also makes it easier for sales professionals to research their prospect. Another common mistake that is often made is that salespeople fail to research their customer before contacting them. Doing research beforehand can help sales reps understand their problems faster. Reportedly, only 61% of salespeople feel good about their capacity to identify and overcome customer problems. (Source: Sales Coach World, 2015) Getting to know your customer beforehand is important as the more relevant you can make the conversation, the better chance you have of capturing their attention. (Source: Hubspot, 2015) For example, 57% of email recipients consider a message to be spam if it isn’t relevant to their needs, even when they know the vendor well. (Source: Scripted, 2015)

If you aren’t using buyer personas and would like to know more about them may I suggest reading our previous post, “What is a Buyer Persona and How Does it Influence Digital Content”.

Doing research before meeting with a prospect means that sales reps are also prepared to answer any objections or questions that a buyer might have given their specific situation. According to Hubspot, every second that a salesperson hesitates after an objection presented by the buyer will result in a loss of credibility (Source: Hubspot, 2015). Training or giving them the research tools that they need to be successful can reduce this. Salespeople should constantly be up to date on current market and industry trends, as well as what competitors are up to. Doing so will enhance their stature as subject matter experts that can be trusted.

If you’re interested in learning more about why sales reps should act as subject matter experts, I suggest checking back in with our blog on Thursday as we discuss this in more detail. I’ll link that blog HERE when it’s posted.

Understanding How Your Reps are Learning

If you’re considering re-evaluating your current training strategy, it is important to take the time to understand how your sales reps learn. Retaining large amounts of information over a course of a few days isn’t effective for anyone.  In actuality, it takes ten months or more for new salespeople to be fully productive (Source: The Brevet Group, 2014). Using techniques such as spacing and repeated retrieval allow for an ongoing reinforcement of material (Source: Axonify, 2015).  Repetition will help sales reps retain information better, which in turn means that they will remember more information long term (Source: Axonify, 2015).   Arguably, “continuous training gives 50% higher net sales per employee” (Source: The Brevet Group, 2014).

Did you know that 42% of sales reps state that they lack the necessary information needed before cold calling a prospect? (Source: Lattice Engines, 2013) Training sales reps through confidence-based learning strategies can reduce this number. Confidence-based learning teaches sales reps how to carefully consider whether or not they are correct, thus improving their confidence in their knowledge (Source: Axonify, 2015).  Buyers can see if a salesperson isn’t confident in their selling skills from a mile away. Strong confidence will lead to stronger sales presentations, and in turn stronger sales.

Lastly, training should be personalized to the sales rep. This means that sales professionals learn what is relevant to them, in a way that makes sense for them, on a platform they prefer (Source: Axonify, 2015). The result is a learning process that’s easier for your salespeople, and a lot more engaging (Source: Axonify, 2015).  Relating information to sales reps will also make retention a lot easier to accomplish.

Still not convinced that your current sales training is a bust? I suggest checking out our previous post, “The 2 Reasons that Sales Training Fails to Improve the Sales Process”, found here.

[RELATED CONTENT] Empowered buyers and digital content are but a few of the many trends and challenges we uncovered in our first chapter of the Sales Enablement Success Series. If you're interested in learning more about the trends, challenges, and recommended tactics for enhancing sales and marketing, may I suggest downloading the free eBook below. 

Using Sales Enablement to Create a Stronger Training Program

Using sales enablement as a training program not only gives sales reps the information they need, but also allows them to sell. Sales enablement can best be described as a tool designed to equip client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with buyers (Source: InsideView, 2010). Using sales enablement as a training tool gives salespeople the ability to sell, which in turn is more beneficial to them than simply learning how to sell (Source: InsideView, 2010). Learning about a concept or skill is one thing, but actually applying that concept or skill can be a whole other ballgame. Sales enablement helps you to teach sales reps through experiential learning.

Whether you want to believe it or not, sales training does require sales and marketing alignment to some extent. An effective sales process involves the collaboration from marketing and sales, so why doesn’t your training? Using resources, support, and other departments in the training process that could produce information or content for the sales team is one of the ways sales enablement tools help to enhance sales training (Source: InsideView, 2010).

The ultimate goal of your sales training should be about giving salespeople the power to engage the buyer (Source: Topohq, 2015). Making the buyer’s experience the foundation, sales rep software allows you to provide the tools to ensure success for your salespeople (Source: Topohq, 2015).

Sales and Marketing alignment is becoming more necessary everyday. Interested in learning how you can achieve this? May I suggest looking at our post, “Achieving Sales and Marketing Alignment for a Viable Sales Strategy”.

Power of Content

Sales enablement tools are a great way to deliver content to sales reps (whether it be for training purposes or as marketing collateral for selling). Having access to this content can also be a learning tool for them. Since empowered buyers look to blog posts, white papers, and other online content to get product information, sales professionals should also be up to date on the knowledge coming from these sources. Using sales enablement allows a large number of salespeople to deliver a lot of valuable information to buyers in a scalable and controllable way (Source: Topohq, 2015).

When it comes to content, 67% of sales reps hate that it is too generic (Source: Lattice Engines, 2013).  Meanwhile, 40% of salespeople argue that content is not relevant enough to the buyer (Source: Lattice Engines, 2013). Sales enablement solutions give them with the ability to customize presentations and content using materials provided by the marketing team. This allows for presentations that are more relatable to the client’s interests, and creates more engaging conversation.

Reportedly 20% of sales reps avoid using content from marketing due to the fact that it is out of date (Source: Lattice Engines, 2013). Not having access to current content impairs salespeople from doing their job as they are not up to date on current information, which means they probably aren’t informed or don’t have the knowledge they need to be successful at conveying information to a customer. Using out of date information can also make the sales rep look unprepared to buyers. Sales enablement tools allow easy access and updating of content at the touch of a button. Through the software, marketing teams even have the ability to choose when content should be made available to salespeople.

Find the topic of content management to be of interest? May I suggest reading our post, Content Management & Digital Sales Success Through Social Media.

Visual Learning

So what exactly is the best way to teach sales professionals? According to research, more than 60 percent of people are visual learners as we tend to process visuals 600,000 times faster than text (Source: Selling Power, 2015).  With the help of sales enablement solutions, providing visual training tools has never been so easy. Having access to all types of content including PowerPoint Presentations, PDF’s, and videos gives sales reps visual training material that they can process at their own pace.

At the end of the day, the success of your salespeople begins with you. Starting sales teams off with the tools and the skills they need to be successful will ensure overall success for everyone. Using sales enablement solutions as training tools can help them by allowing visual learning, repeated enforcement of content knowledge, and help them to learn by doing.

Actionable Insights

Finally, as we explained above as many as 42% of sales people felt that they lack the necessary information before cold calling a prospect. No amount of product-centric training can fool an empowered buyer looking for a value-added conversation. Buyers are looking for sales reps to address their pain points and help guide their decision journey along the way to close.

Marketers play a big role in helping sellers understand the needs and objectives of MQLs being passed to them, and this insight comes from inbound data about the interactions that leads had with content. The challenges of ambiguous questioning and obscure answers stem directly from an inability for sales reps to understand the intentions of buyers through the conversations they have with them.

Sales enablement works similarly to marketing automation for digital content consumption monitoring. Sales reps can see which buyers continued to engage with content, how they interacted, which areas were of particular focus, and how this all occurred.

The outcome is a sales rep who is empowered with the insights needed to guide a decision journey, the tools to better understand and utilize training collateral, and the capability to improve content over time.

Explanations only go so far, and if you're intrigued by the potential of sales enablement software for your sales process, feel free to request a demo and allow us show you the future of selling and sales training.