According to CEOInsights.com, over 48% of inside sales companies surveyed reported that they missed their monthly revenue goals more times in a 12-month cycle than they reached them.
Other sales indicators like time on the phone, closing ratios, percentage to monthly goal and pipeline accuracy inevitably suffered as well, as sales teams struggled to make quota and reach revenue.
In addition to missing revenue numbers, many other companies indicate that the level of training, core selling skills, and overall selling talent of their sales team could be improved as well.
When asked how many companies have a defined sales process in place and a specific training programme to reinforce and teach those best practices, our experience tells us that less than 35% of companies have taken the time to define and implement these processes.
While you would expect an under-trained sales team to lead to under-performance, what is rarely considered is the toll this takes on other factors that contribute to sales decline.
Getting rejected daily and repeatedly missing sales, leads to a lack of confidence which in turn leads to call reluctance. Getting beaten up for missing quotas leads to poor attitudes and these attitudes spread rapidly throughout a sales organisation, creating an environment that becomes toxic and self-perpetuating.
Is Sales Training Enough?
All companies have some form of sales training, even if it just consists of new reps shadowing senior reps for a few days before they ‘hit the phones.’ While sales training can be graded from inefficient to very effective, there are some important points you should consider when designing your own sales training:
1. Train for mastery on components of your sales cycle
Make your overall training not only specific to your product or service, but break your training down to the various parts of your sales cycle and teach best practices for each part.
For example, if your first call is simply to set an appointment or send information to a prospect, what are the five benchmarks your reps need to cover for you to consider this a qualified lead?
Having this kind of clarity all the way through your sales cycle will help not only your reps but will also help your manager coach them through the sale.
2. Give your reps specific, scripted responses to the sales situations they run into every day
This is the best way to empower your reps and it helps them successfully navigate the sale from beginning (getting through the gatekeeper) through to the end (getting the deal in the door).
An example would be to script out and teach them how to overcome the smokescreen objection of, ‘I have to show this to my boss’. Most sales reps don’t know how to deal with this objection so their usual response is something along the lines of, ‘OK, when should I get back to you?’
This simply leads to non-qualified leads that clog up pipelines.
A specific, scripted approach to this objection will teach your reps to isolate this objection to see if it’s a smokescreen or a real objection. Have them use something like this:
‘I understand and I think you should speak to _________. Just out of curiosity, if they say to do whatever you think is best, where are you leaning in regards to using this?’
Again, giving your reps specific tools to navigate through the sale is what is going to help them become successful.
3. Make sales training a daily event
To learn a new skill of any kind you need to reinforce it daily. We recommend running a brief sales meeting every morning to reinforce the skills and techniques that your top 20% are using successfully.
Playing recordings, role playing, and passing out updated scripts are all things that will help your team improve on a daily, weekly basis.
