How do you train, develop and motivate your sales team so that your message sticks? If you’re like most sales leaders I work with, you were promoted and tasked with training others to be as successful as you have been in sales. This promotion, most likely also came without offering you the essential training and mentoring skills to help you be successful.
Transferring your years of knowledge and expertise to your team requires you to learn some new skills—specifically, how to train and mentor your sales team to be successful.
There are four pillars to producing a successful results-driven training program: education, entertainment, facilitation, and coaching. David Meir describes these pillars perfectly, “Just like legs in a chair, or links in a chain, removing one or weakening one will sabotage any attempts to achieve your desired result.”
Here are a few tips to help you be more successful in each of these four areas as you develop your sales training program:
- Education: The information that you are giving needs to be delivered in small, bite-sized chunks. Include guest speakers to offer a different perspective and to say the information that either you can’t say or would be more powerful coming from someone else.
- Entertainment: Be creative in using the five senses, metaphors, stories, and humor. And be intentional about getting them involved. Remember, people are not bored when they are talking, just when you are.
- Facilitation: Encourage your team to learn from each other, it builds your credibility and increases their willingness to adopt new ideas and learn from others’ mistakes.
- Coaching: Be intentional about creating a system of feedback where your team can self-critique first and then participate in dialog with you and/or the team.
Start upgrading your training and development program today!
Shari Levitin has an unwavering commitment to improving people’s lives through education, scientific research, inspiration, and experiences. She is an international Sales Strategist, Bestselling author of Heart and Sell, Keynote Speaker, and founder of Levitin Group and Levitin Learning online sales training.
