Hey friend!

Are you ready to connect with a revenue

productivity expert?

Connect with sales

Be Ready Blog

10 Sales Training Topics to Help Your

Team Get (and Stay) Sales Ready
By Nick Salas

MAY 10, 2022

Sales training and coaching are often reserved for new hires and low
performers, with the rest of your team getting a brief refresher during your
annual sales kickoff. But according to the Sales Management Association,
only 30% of sales managers rate their sales training as “effective” for
improving low performers.

A study from the Sales Readiness Group Training Industry found that 45%
of companies only cover two to five training topics with their sales
professionals, but “those with effective sales training tended to offer a
wider variety of topics ”
 wider variety of topics.

To improve the effectiveness of training, you need to cover a full range of

sales training topics on a continual basis. This will help all your reps build
the skills and knowledge required for any selling scenario.

Sales training topics

1. Pipeline management

2. Prospecting and outreach

3. Qualifying leads

4. Call planning

5. Building relationships with customers

6. Identifying customer needs

7. Presenting the value of your products

8. Competitor knowledge

9. Managing objections

10.  Closing deals

1. Pipeline management
Your sales reps need to be able to build their pipeline, prioritize leads and
prospects based on lead quality and sales urgency, and measure their
results. McKinsey found that pipeline management is the sales skill with
 y pp g
the biggest difference between high- and low-performing sales reps. This
research suggests that effective pipeline management is closely linked to
rep performance.

Training in pipeline management can set junior team members up for

success. They’ll be able to keep track of all their deals in your CRM, know
what pipeline stage their deals are at, and determine whether they have
enough conversations in progress to hit quota.

2. Prospecting and outreach

Sales prospecting and outreach are two competencies that go hand in
hand. Business development reps (BDRs) need to find and identify good-fit
potential customers and then craft compelling messages to engage them.
According to Crunchbase, “top sellers spend an average of six hours every
week researching their prospects” to ensure they’re reaching out to good-
fit t th t fit id l t fil (ICP)
fit prospects that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Cold calling and outreach emails are essential skills for BDRs to master if
they want to bring new prospects into their pipeline. You can provide
training and coaching via verbal and written role-plays to help reps practice
these core skills. In fact, we found that learning to prepare cold email
intros is the top use case for written role-plays by BDRs in the Mindtickle
platform.

3. Qualifying leads
Nurturing or repeatedly contacting bad-fit leads is a waste of your reps’
time and energy. According to Oracle, following up with a prospect they
know isn’t interested is one of the top five frustrations reps have with their
jobs. And if a lead is a bad fit, they’re more likely to book time with your
reps but never show up: 37% of prospects ghost sellers because the
prospect was a bad lead or not a good fit.

One way to cover this in sales training is to share bite-size quizzes to test
reps’ ability to qualify leads and their familiarity with your ICP. Then, if you
identify knowledge gaps that may be affecting their lead qualification
capabilities, you can follow up with AI-driven coaching.
4. Call planning
Your sellers need to know how best to prepare and plan for a call with a
prospect at every stage of the sales cycle. For initial calls, sellers need to
make a good first impression. For later calls, they need to build rapport
with prospects and become trusted advisors.

Oracle found that 11% of prospects ignore sellers because the seller
wasn’t properly prepared for their conversation. Call planning is essential
for all sellers, but just 37% of companies provide reps with pre-call
checklists to help them plan and prepare for calls.
You can create training materials such as pre-call checklists or run
practice calls for product demos, discovery calls, or closing calls. These
will allow your sellers to appear professional, knowledgeable, and
trustworthy to prospects.

5. Building relationships with customers

Relationship building is another essential skill because, even in B2B sales,
you’re still dealing with another person. Buyers rated “trust in the
relationship with the salesperson” as one of the top five factors influencing
their buying decision, so it’s essential that your reps get training and
coaching to help them develop this skill.

Use tools like Mindtickle’s Call AI to record and analyze calls with
prospects. It looks at reps’ confidence, talk time, clarity, and sentiment to
understand their behavior on calls. It then identifies areas to improve. You
can use these insights as a starting point for your coaching sessions or
share dedicated training exercises to help them further develop the
necessaryskills.

6. Identifying customer needs

LinkedIn found that 43% of buyers feel it’s an “immediate deal killer” when
sellers don’t understand their company and its needs. Sellers need to be
able to identify customers’ pain points so they can show how your product
will solve them. If they can identify customer challenges and needs, they
can tailor the conversation to address those challenges and focus on the
features and use cases that are most relevant to the customer.
You can listen back to call recordings or view call analyses, then score reps
based on their ability to identify customer needs. If reps struggle with this,
you can run training exercises such as practice calls or role-plays to give
them more opportunities to develop their abilities in a low-pressure setting.
Manager-led coaching helps provide personalized coaching to all your
sellers, targeted to their individual needs. Learn more about Mindtickle’s
manager-led coaching solution.

7. Presenting the value of your products

Sellers not understanding their own product or service is another deal killer
for 44% of buyers. Your reps need to be able to provide effective demos
that illustrate how your products will save buyers time, money, or effort.
They need to be able to show the value of your product and not just run
through a list of features.

You can provide different training formats for this:

 Short quizzes to test product knowledge

Practice demos and virtual role-plays

Dedicated training sessions from your product team when you roll out
new features

Product training will help your reps learn how to use your product and
ensure they’re able to accurately present its value to potential customers.

8. Competitor knowledge
Prospects won’t just be speaking to your sales team. They will be
comparing different product options, so you need to be able to show how
you measure up against your competitors. Familiarity with other products
in your space is essential knowledge for sales reps, as 34% of buyers say
“not understanding their competitors’ products and services” makes them
unlikely to continue with a specific seller.
Train your reps on your competitors’ products by creating battle cards or
in-depth instructor-led training sessions to go over the key differences and
where your product excels against the competition. Then, test reps’
knowledge with quizzes that go over the material covered in the training
session. Spaced reinforcement helps improve information retention, so
your reps can speak confidently about your competitors months after their
training session.

9. Managing objections
Our research found that 63% of sales calls contain “more negative
sentiment than positive,” with negative sentiment “including anger,
uncertainty, hesitancy, competitive mentions, objections, disappointment,
and tentativeness.” Managing objections is an important skill to master
because no buyer will say “yes” right away. Your reps need to be able to
confidently address concerns to reassure prospects that they’re making
the right choice with your product.

Dedicated training will help reps improve their ability to handle the most
common objections faced in the sales process. You can have reps
complete practice calls or virtual role-plays to practice this essential skill.

10. Closing deals

If an account executive can’t close a deal, they won’t last long in sales.
Fortunately, research has identified some of the most important selling
behaviors when it comes to closing deals: 56% of buyers say “maintaining
relationships with existing customers” is essential, while LinkedIn identified
 p g
five factors that consistently influence buyer behavior:

Trust in the brand

Price

Return on investment

Trust in the salesperson

Salesperson’s industry knowledge

If you’ve already worked the nine previous topics into your sales training,
then you’ll be well on your way to addressing all of these, but you can also
provide specific coaching to help your reps master conversations around
pricing.

Help your reps improve sales readiness by

covering a wide range of sales training topics
Sellers face constant change, so the more frequent and varied training and
coaching you can provide, the better equipped they are to adapt to
different selling conditions, buyer needs, and market changes. Don’t limit
sales training to just onboarding or a couple of topics during sales
kickoffs. Create a culture of continual learning and improvement to help
your sellers excel.

Updates, webinars and guides to create winning

sales teams

RELATED ARTICLES
Vlog: Game-Changing Revenue Enablement at Juniper
Networks

By Helen Waite
How to Measure the Impact of Your Sales Training Program

By Helen Waite
 How Digital Sales Rooms Help Reps Win More Deals

By Christian Pieper

We’re proud to be recognized as an industry leader, view our full list of

honors to learn more.
Get free access to the best sales-readiness content.

Sales Readiness Platform 

Sales Enablement & Training 

Sales Content Management 

Sales Readiness Index 

Conversation Intelligence 

Analytics & Dashboards 

Sales Coaching 

Integrations 

Services 

Request A Demo 

Solutions 

Sales Onboarding 

Continuous Learning 

Manager-Led Coaching 

Account Strategy & Review 

Sales Kickoffs 
Partner Enablement 

Sales Certification 

Voice of the Customer 

For Sales Enablement Pros 

For Sales Leadership 

Frontline Sales Managers 

Sales Operations Managers 

Customer Stories 

Customer Stories 

Customer video testimonials 

Resources 

Be Ready Blog 

Events 

Company 

Culture 

Careers 

News 

Contact Us 

© 2023 Mindtickle Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Trust Sitemap Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

  