Did you know that 46 percent of salespeople originally didn't intend to go into sales as a profession? This means that almost half of your sales team might not have the educational and professional background necessary to meet sales quotas right away.

You can support your sales team by providing a training program that prepares them for the scenarios they will encounter during cold calls, meetings with clients, and product demos. A company with a training retention plan aimed toward salespeople will typically see 31 percent more sales representatives reaching their sales quota during their first year with the company. This translates into yearly revenues that are 10 percent higher than the revenues of companies that don't implement a sales training program.

How to Develop a Sales Training Program That Yields Results

The most efficient training programs are built with a specific purpose in mind. You can utilize your learning management system (LMS) by creating engaging e-learning content and base your training program on boosting sales.

Your goal should be to develop training resources that are accessible, impactful, and based on the real-life scenarios your sales team will encounter. Keeping training modules short and to the point is the best way to help sales representatives learn crucial skills and practice sales pitches without taking up too much of their time.

Evaluate your sales training program regularly and compare performance during training with sales. If your training program isn't helping salespeople reach their sales quotas, rethink your approach to training.

Leverage Your Learning Management System

Learning management systems can become a powerful training tool for your sales team. Tools like Moodle or Totara Learn are designed to provide you with everything you need to deliver courses to your team.

You can rely on existing training material or develop your own training modules. Sales representatives will benefit from e-learning because this is a training tool that can be easily accessed on the go. They can engage with short, focused, and impactful learning modules to learn about sales techniques or for product training. You can also easily integrate resources such as videos, interactive elements, webinars, podcasts, and other learning resources.

You can combine an LMS with built-in analytics solutions such as Zoola Analytics to keep track of engagement with the different training modules. You can also measure performance if you decide to develop quizzes and other assessment tools for your sales training program. You can then compare this data with actual sales numbers to get an idea of the impact your training program has on sales.

Introduce Learning With Creative Game Concepts

You can either develop digital games for your e-learning system or combine your LMS training modules with games that sales representatives can play as a team.

Here are a few concepts for introducing games that will motivate sales representatives while offering them valuable training:

• Create a deck of cards with random objects on them. Have sales reps pick a card and create a pitch for a product they know little about.

• Create another deck of cards with sales techniques or buyer personas. Have sales reps pick a product card and combine it with a strategy or persona card and develop a unique pitch.

• You can adopt a board game such as Candy Land. Have players answer a few questions about sales techniques or come up with a good sales pitch to earn the right to move on the board.

• The game Cranium is very easy to adapt as a team-building activity. Create your own cards and turn cold calls and other tasks into games where teams have to meet specific objectives.