Training sales teams for high performance requires avoiding the above pitfalls and building a training process that is outcome-oriented, well-structured, personalized, and accurately tracked and measured.

Here are some best practices for high-performance sales training:

1. Set the correct goals and align sales training to those goals

Sales training is most effective when it is aligned to specific business goals. One study by Training Industry, for instance, found that among sales reps who rated the training they had received as effective, 89% felt their training was highly aligned to sales objectives. On the other hand, among those who found their training ineffective, only 14% felt their training was aligned with sales objectives.

For setting the right goals for sales training, it’s important to be SMART — goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. A goal is specific when it can be stated clearly in a single sentence. It is measurable when it can be tracked and assessed along a quantitative scale. A goal has to be attainable so that it is actionable and not merely wishful thinking. Relevance dictates how a goal contributes toward improving the sales process and generating desired business outcomes. Time-bound implies that a goal can be achieved within acceptable timelines. When sales goals are so clearly defined, it’s easy to map out exactly what kind of training sales reps require and how it should be provided.

2. Ensure training is continuous, spaced and reinforced

Science tells us that we don’t learn very well when we put ourselves through training binges separated by long intervals. That’s why traditional training based solely on macro learning and courses involving large curriculums are ineffective. Such macro learning does have its place in providing foundational introductions to new domains of knowledge and skill. However, developing upon these foundations requires micro learning, which is structured to deliver bite-sized, modular pieces of content that the learner can easily consume. Information is provided as short, interactive and easily digestible pieces of content focused on specific learning outcomes and integrated into the overall sales process. Moreover, the program can also be structured in such a manner that training content suited to different sales situations can be easily accessed by the reps for just-in-time training.

Micro learning arises from scientific understandings of factors that shape how we learn and retain new knowledge, particularly how learning is spaced to avoid cognitive overload and repeatedly reinforced to overcome the natural processes of forgetting. Research has found that well-timed and continuous reminders go a long way in reinforcing and retaining learning. In other words, memory retention comes from repeated exposure to information.

Efficient and effective sales training requires a combination of macro and micro learning strategies (Figure 1).

As seen in the graphic, ensuring that the training material leads to sustained change in skills, knowledge and behavior requires repeated reinforcement till the point where newly introduced ideas and practices become integrated into the sales process as sustained habits.

3. Make training engaging and participative

Of course, sales training can only be effective if it is relevant and engaging enough for the reps to enthusiastically consume the training content. While learning technologies have advanced, many companies still tend to think of learning materials in terms of the clunky digital catalogs built around early storage technologies like the CD-ROM.

Newer forms of content creation and management allow sales organizations to adopt just-in-time training that drives engagement by being highly contextual and relevant to the different stages of the sales process. Just-in-time training increases retention and effectiveness of learning by providing reps with access to training content in their hour of need, thereby allowing them to practice their skills and reinforce what they’ve learned in time frames connected to the actual selling process. Organizations need to deliver the content on any device so that reps can access it on the go.

Virtual technologies allow for a useful balance between self-driven and collaborative learning, depending on the needs of individual learners. An important criterion of engaging training content is its appeal to the different learning styles of each sales rep.

Video provides an ideal medium that can usefully combine visual, auditory, kinesthetic and textual elements to appeal to all kinds of learners. The power of the visual medium in grabbing attention and in learning is undisputed; a recent study indicates that 69% of employees prefer to learn a new skill from video as opposed to a written document. Videos improve comprehension; when someone hears information, they remember about 10% of it three days later, but, when a picture is added, retention increases to 65%.

Finally, content formats focused on reinforcement such as quizzes, checklists and tests, combined with gamification, can tap into the natural competitive spirit of salespeople and drive engagement. Quizzes also benefit trainers by helping them in assessing what the team has learned and what still needs to be taught.

4. Integrate knowledge, tools, strategy and skills training

One common mistake many sales organizations make is to focus predominantly on some types of training over others.

For instance, a survey by the Association for Talent Development found that organizations are most likely to provide knowledge training most frequently, offering it more often than quarterly. By comparison, tools training is often only given at the time of hiring, while strategy and skills training are most often provided only annually (Figure 2).

However, such distinctions between different training types can be counter- productive, leading to unintentional gaps in sales reps’ repertoires. Instead, it’s important for training to take an integrative perspective, so that sales outcomes are driven by the power of product knowledge, evidence-based research on markets, data-driven insights into customers, sales skills, and technology-driven process efficiency and effectiveness measures.

5. Customize training content to sales reps

One of the key realizations about learning is that the spray-and-pray approach of indiscriminately dumping training content on sales reps can be counter-productive. Instead, McKinsey Research offers another simple prescription for ensuring high sales-force performance: Treat sales reps like customers. Just as companies have realized the value of customizing and personalizing tools, techniques and content to each customer’s journey, top-performing sales organizations have discovered the value of customizing training to sales reps’ learning journeys.

The study found that top-performing companies are much more likely to map out the needs of different sales teams, roles and individual reps, and to leverage that knowledge to better target and customize talent development and coaching resources. Such targeted training, the study found, leads to consistently higher ratings of the variety of different skills required for high-performance selling (Figure 3).

6. Leverage peer learning and best practices sharing

One of the major consequences of the explosion of digital content is the growing recognition among millennials and the post-millennial generation of the value of collaborative knowledge-building. In sales, peer learning has been used in less formal ways for a long time, particularly in mentoring partnerships between new recruits and sales veterans. However, formal training programs are often conceived in unidirectional forms, focused on instructor-to-learner knowledge transfer.

A recent survey, however, suggests that peer learning is the preferred way to learn for 68% of sales reps. Peer learning offers several useful advantages: bringing together the collective knowledge and perspectives of different generations of salespeople, providing examples and experiences that salespersons can readily understand and accept, and building interpersonal and team connections that further encourage knowledge sharing and learning.

Incorporating peer-to-peer learning in a formal sales training program can improve the sales team’s productivity. 73% of managers have noted that they experienced a high ROI on peer learning investments. Peer learning is an effective way to utilize the resources and knowledge within a team to share best practices. For instance, trainers can record their top sales performers in a role-play and use the video as a reference for the other members of the sales team to emulate and learn from. Such recordings can lead to the creation of a large volume of useful data for analysis and discussion.

Organizations can encourage colleagues to coach one another and point out people who have specific skills that others could benefit from learning. Sales reps can reach out to their peers to learn about various buyers and the tools and resources they used in any given situation to close a deal. If reps know where to find information within the organization, they will spend less time trying to find answers on their own.

7. Accurately track and assess training

Decoding training impact and effectiveness is difficult if sales organizations only focus on lagging indicators such as win rates and quota attainment, as multiple factors influence these metrics.

Accurately assessing impact and optimizing training requires a more granular view in order to isolate the contribution of training from the many other factors that contribute to deal success or failure. This requires closer tracking of sales reps’ activities (number of calls made, appointments obtained, etc.) and tracking changes within and across different stages of the pipeline.

Similarly, it’s important to track performance shifts among different groups of sales reps, rather than holding all of them to the same universal standards.

After all, sales training is not likely to turn laggards into star performers. But shifts of a few percentage points within each group of sales reps could add up to greater gains in overall revenue. Tracking gains across different groups will also help fine-tune the training process to bring in iterative gains over time.

By tailoring training to suit the individual needs of reps and by instilling a culture of learning within its people, organizations can look forward to reaping the significant benefits that training and coaching offer. A good sales enablement and training platform can provide organizations with the technology and framework required for implementing such a program. Check it out how MBS Program can help you and your organization.