The Best B2B Sales Training Investment You Can Make
So you’ve landed here because you’re thinking about investing in B2B Sales Training.
Before you leave, make sure you read this entire page as it may just save you a bundle of time, energy, and money.
Some of the most common questions that often comes up from sales management, CEOs, and Presidents of midmarket businesses when looking to invest in B2B Sales Training are things like:
“What will it take to get results?”
“How quickly can we expect to see results?”
“Will it boost their confidence?”
“We need to increase our sales pipeline! Can you teach that?”
“How much is it?”
“They just need some coaching”
Does any of this sound familiar?
Companies want to invest in training to equip their sales teams and sales rep with the best skills possible to excel at their jobs – and most importantly, to drive revenue to the bottom line.
But not all training is created equal.
As a sales professional, you’ve probably sat through training before, with a well-meaning trainer who gave great examples, was highly engaging, but totally unrelatable to your work.
Needless to say, it was a good day out of the office, but there would be no levelling up of skills, no behaviour change, and likely no return on investment.
Therefore, both owners, leaders, managers, and sales reps alike must demand that training makes sense.
As Noah has famously said, there’s a 99% chance (and $5M bet on the line) that your business doesn’t need more training. Training is only one component, but performance improvement and process improvement are a whole different set of key areas.
What Type of Sales Training Program Do You Really Need?
Here’s the thing…
As you start to research ideas about sales performance improvement, you’ll realize there are a gazillion options available.
Programs like:
- Sandler Training
- Hubspot Sales Training
- SPIN Selling
- Richardson Sales Performance
- Sales Success
- Selling with Stories
- Driving to Close
- Sales Readiness Group
- The Challenger Sale
- Full-Funnel Sales Training
- Sales for Life
- Prehired’s Science-Based® Sales program
We could list dozens more.
You’ll find individual coaches, firms, and the pick of the litter of sales coaches around the globe. The list goes on and on and on. But they often miss the most critical elements of why we’re even considering training in the first place.
Organizations say things like:
“Revenue is down! Sales are down! We’re missing potential customers! We just need more training!”
But is that really the problem? A good sales trainer is supposed to deliver results to his/her client that will improve overall sales performance, sales results and the entire sales cycle.
Organizations need to see measurable, observable improvements, visible within the salespeople (and your bottom line!).
The Problem With MOST B2B Sales Training
I’m sure you’ve invested in sales training before and felt it was a big waste of money.
Most trainers or training sessions make the mistake of picking a program that fits all industries. Such programs end up using generalized sales training examples.
If you have a company dealing in management consulting, you don’t need a B2B sales training with a case study on medical or pharmaceutical sales.
You don’t need generic closing skills and phone techniques. As mentioned above, these might not even be your real problems.
For your reps, there’s a lack of relevance caused by presenting irrelevant materials and content that’s framed as “sales training.”
It’s the wrong approach.
More importantly, the training lacks any significance, and in turn, causes decreased credibility towards your management team.
The next time you tell your team you’re bringing in a B2B Trainer or Coach, what do you think they’re saying and thinking behind closed doors?
No salesperson wants to sit in a classroom all day long doing exercises that don’t make any sense to them!
How to Avoid Cookie Cutter Sales Training Programs
If you’re going to pick one of the “cookie-cutter” canned training programs, at least make sure they’re going to spend the time to use relevant examples, exercise, customers, stories, role-plays, current sales environment, and more tailored to your specific industry or very close to it.
Basically, the program needs to address the types of specific challenges faced by someone in a sales position in your organization. That’s for it to be marginally useful.
However, we’re going to show you why your people already have enough experience. You likely have hired superstar salespeople.
The $5M Cash Test (And the Proof Your Sales Team Doesn’t Need More Training!)
At the end of the day, any investment into your sales efforts is about improving your sales techniques, the skills and performance of individual salesperson, and your processes.
We start with your process first, because most organizations we’ve worked with already have great salespeople, what they don’t have is a strong sales process.
Here’s the thing…
Whenever somebody asks me about doing sales training with them, we tell them about the $5M cash test.
And what we learn is that 9 times out of 10, it becomes apparent you don’t really need more sales training or more sales trainers coming around.
So what is the $5M Cash Test?
Here it is:
Imagine you have a team of sellers and you want them to double their results in the next 30 days. Could they do it?
Better yet, what if you offered them $5M in sweet cash 30 days in the future. Could they do it then?
Imagine! Your company puts a $5M cash bounty on the table if your sales team can double their results in 30 days. Quite the situation.
Here’s the kicker.
If you think they could, what would they be different over the next four weeks from what they’re doing now!?
If it’s just a matter of making more calls, polishing their pitches and sales skills, being more diligent with follow-up, building relationships, or anticipating and handling objections, then they could probably do it, and then retire comfortably.
And this here is the reason why your B2B Sales Teams don’t need more basic training (skill, product or otherwise).
Basically, if they can do it with a HUGE reward on the table, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it now.
But what if they didn’t know what you were selling, and are only closing the (few) deals per month they currently do through sheer luck and numbers.
If they legitimately don’t know how to position your product in a way that’s appealing; if they legitimately don’t understand how poorly they’re presenting themselves to prospects and existing clients; if they don’t know that you can’t ask prospects for the order before you demonstrate value; if they’re doing the best they can and they’re working 12 hours a day without slacking off right now.
If they don’t know the mechanics, in other words–then there’s no way that your sales organization is going to walk away with that sweet $5M in cash.
Now, we want to be clear here–we’re not suggesting that the only options are “Train them or tell them to stop being lazy and perform.”
Instead, we want you to consider the fact that 95 times out of 100 when a company believes they need more training (in online sales training, customer service, marketing, sales strategy, sales plans, etc.) what they really need are better ways to support their staff.
Instead of the issue being that salespeople need more skills, it’s often the case that they’re being asked to do too much, with too little. They need better processes, better structure, better tools, and a better culture.
If your company hasn’t addressed these issues first, then training is a waste of money. People may be learning some fun new tactics, and there may be a temporary uptick in sales, but without addressing the root of the problem, there’s no way to maintain higher sales numbers (Well, we suppose you could put $5M on the table every month?)
The flip side of that is that when you create a better sales environment by ensuring you have the right tools are in place, and there are a consistent selling culture and set of expectations, then your people will often do wonderfully even with no training.
And, of course, any training that they do get will be so much more effective because you will be able to ensure that it aligns with your values, culture, tools, and processes.
So you can do one of two things.
First, you could try the “$5M Cash Test” or the equivalent for your business.
Put a serious reward on the table and see if it’s really a training issue or a strategy issue, or a process issue.
Next Steps
Or, you can spend 30 minutes with Noah and figure out what really going on.
Book a free sales assessment call with Noah now.
Click here to contact Noah and schedule a 30-minute call. Learn why your next investment should not be in more costly sales training.
