If you're planning or revising your sales training program, you'll want to check out these five tips to effectively train your team.
Your sales training program should be built around achieving a desired outcome, like a specific behavior change. When your learners understand why you want them to learn a new skill, they'll be more likely to change behaviors.
Many trainers are hesitant to provide honest feedback out of fear of hurting a learner's confidence. When your goal is to help your learners succeed, constructive feedback is the best way to foster change. Praise your learners when they implement their training. If your learners don't understand a message, address the shortcoming by providing helpful feedback.
Training reinforcement programs can help learners measure their performance via microlearning platform instead of directly from their manager. This can help managers avoid awkward conversations while still guiding their learners toward achieving the desired behavior change.
To emphasize teamwork, encourage your team to provide feedback for each other. This creates bonds among employees and shows you their progress.
Your sales team will increase their performance when they know their peers are supporting them. A live leaderboard encourages friendly competition and shows your learners how they're performing against their peers.
Feel free to get creative with the things you measure on your leaderboard. For example, measure the response time, the length of the answer, and the overall quality of the input. To incentivize participation, set up a reward system where you reward the highest preforming person at the end of each day and at the end of the reinforcement program.
The perfect training flow moves from basic principles to more complex and challenging lessons. Shift from individual to group work to accommodate introverted and extroverted learners. Read your audience and switch things up as you need to.
If your training is too predictable, your learners will get bored. Trust your learners and avoid the temptation to over-explain every part of the training.
Microlearning exercises allow learners to figure out the best approach to a problem under a time constraint. Even if the approach they take isn't the right one, it increases skills under pressure and gives them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Run through scenarios to keep the training fun, let your learners be creative, and make an effort to engage everyone. When you organize your training this way, your learners will benefit and your business will thrive.
Learn more about how to create your sales training goals and determine reinforcement objectives in our step-by-step guide: 10-Step Guide to Determine Your Reinforcement Objectives.
This post was originally published on December 5, 2019.