5 Insider Secrets to Help Your New Salespeople Sell Faster

The success of your salespeople is rooted in one major thing: motivation.

Without motivation, your hopes and dreams of your sales team achieving sales goals and bringing success to your company will forever remain hopes and dreams, and never transform into reality. But, as you likely already know, motivation is not as simple as it may seem.

In fact, according to a recent Gallup poll, 51% of the workforce in the United States is disengaged from their job. Sure, a brand new salesperson fresh off of training may not be quite as jaded as some senior sales reps, and may be filled with great gusto to knock their sales out of the park. You may be highly optimistic about their abilities, and they too are optimistic about what they can bring to your company.

However, regardless of how stellar your training is, and how stellar your new sales rep is, chances are good that the freshman of your sales team did not retain everything that was just thrown at them.

To be fair, no one really could − it is often too much new information. As a result, many new salespeople may end up struggling to successfully make sales for quite some time. And you just do not have time for this.

Thus, in order to better prep your salespeople for the world of sales, you need to make your sales training worthwhile.

Sales training needs to be more than just a whirlwind of information thrown at reps in the hopes that they will remember parts of it − you want to structure your training so that it establishes a base. From that base, your salespeople can work to build their knowledge.

With a strong foundation, their chances of success increase exponentially, and you will find yourself saving a great deal of time and money on overwhelming initial training that goes in one ear, and out the other.

Below are the best things to keep in mind when re-vamping your new employee training.

The 5 Secrets to Better Sales Training & Faster Selling

By training your new sales reps more effectively, you will be training them faster and getting them out on successful sales call much sooner.

1. Keep CRM Training Basic

There is no denying the major role that CRM has in a salesperson’s work. Without the knowledge of how to navigate your company’s CRM system, your new sales reps will not be able to reach the superstar status everyone is after.

However, software training is one of the biggest culprits in slowing down your employee’s launch into sales.

Many companies tend to overdo the CRM training, causing their new team member to miss out on the basics, and end up remembering the most recent parts of CRM system that they learned (which tend to be the more advanced aspects).

Without a grasp on the basic knowledge, everything that comes after will be wasted.

You can handle this issue a couple of different ways:

1. Simple CRM. Ensure you are using a CRM that is user-friendly and intuitive. Implement a CRM that cuts down on data entry time, and allows your salespeople more time to sell.
2. Hire data entry people. If you have the budget to do so, hire data entry clerks to input your salespeople’s information into the CRM, as opposed to wasting your sales reps’ precious potential sales time on simple data entry.

2. Utilize all the training time

Some companies give their new salespeople 3 months to learn the ins and outs of the business. And, as a sales manager, it is your job to make sure that they use all that time wisely to learn what they need to know.

Rather than stuffing the majority of the training into the first 1-2 months, and then taking things down a notch for the last month or two, spread out the training evenly over the period of time you are given. This allows the new salespeople to have an easier time absorbing, learning and retaining the information.

Moderation is key here − by giving new salespeople time to fully understand the information as it is provided to them, they will build more confidence that will be a great help in boosting their sales.

3. Start with the basics, and then build

When you studied math in school, you began with addition and subtraction, then slowly worked your way up to more complex topics such as algebra, and then eventually calculus.

You were not just thrown right into calculus and expected to figure it out.

Well, the same should go for your new salespeople’s training.

Start with the essential information − the products and services they absolutely need to know about to get started on selling as soon as possible.

Once both you and your salespeople are confident that they have that information down, you can move on to training them on additional products and services.

4. Teach the sales process

Your new salespeople will need to be equipped with information on a variety of company tasks such as the products and services, how to make a successful sales call, and how to input information into the CRM, just to name a few.

However, all of this information will fail to make sense until your new salesperson understands the entire sales process and how things fit into the bigger picture.

This is especially important if your new hire comes from sales at a different company. Every company has its own sales process, and it is vital the sales reps understand your company’s specific way of going about things.

5. Emphasize the importance of the sales team

Regardless of how many presentations your new salespeople sit through or how many books and pamphlets they read in training, it is going to take seeing the sales process in action for them to truly put everything together.

The best way to do this is to pair them up with someone who is more experienced − someone that they can tag along with on sales calls and that will be there to answer questions that the customers may have, and that your new sales rep just does not know yet.

Your new team members will likely have more confidence in their abilities if they have an advanced salesperson with them on a few calls.

Rather than suffering through an awkward silence when a lead asks a question that the newbie does not know the answer to, the experienced team member can chime in and avoid an uncomfortable situation.

By strategically approaching your sales training, you will find that your new salespeople are ready to hit the ground running in the right direction, more quickly than ever before.