Direct Sales Team Training Game For Fun Meetings

January 5th, 2012 Filed under: Business Sales Training — Negotiation Author

Direct Sales Games For Fun Meeting

One activity that is part of running a direct sales business is to hold regular team training meetings. As the owner of the business, you would hope that your team would be motivated to come to the meetings just to take in the helpful information that you will be offering. But the thought of a team sales meeting can work to de-motivate sales people if they are not fun.

Making sure that your team meetings are fun so that the consultants continue to come back is essential. If there is one thing that your team will not tolerate is a boring team meeting.

That is why you should consider using themes for your next meeting.

When you use a theme for your team training meeting, you build anticipation for the meeting among your sales people. Preparing for a theme can also make the meeting more fun for you. When you send out the invitations to the team sales meeting, use that moment to plant the seeds of anticipation for your upcoming training session.

“Fight the Tumbleweeds” Meeting Theme

Generating revenue during traditionally slow parts of the year can be a challenge. If you want to put together a training session that helps your sales professionals gather business in the off months, then use an Old West theme.

Put the picture of a tumbleweed on the invitation and let your sales people know that your training session will help them clean up their one-horse town and bring income back to their wallets. The tumbleweed represents the prospects of low sales and the solution is your training session.

“The Buffet” Meeting Theme

In the direct sales business, it is important that each consultant maximize revenue at every event. Use the image of a buffet as the line of products laid out for the customers to choose from. Your training session will show your sales people how to use add-on sales to increase revenue. It is like someone piling on items at a buffet. The more interested the customer is in the products, the more she or he will want them. You could even hold the meeting at a buffet restaurant to drive the point home.

One of the ways that you can entice your sales team to attend a training meeting is to tease them with a theme. When you use a training meeting theme, it can be easier to grab your team’s interest and help them to remember the material you are teaching. Stay focused on one topic per meeting, and create a theme that your team will never forget.

7 Steps for Effective Sales Training

December 23rd, 2011 Filed under: Business Sales Training — Negotiation Author

With a great product, must come great education too! Your product won’t be any good if the sales team is not given adequate sales training. It is an important aspect of the sales process and helps in generating new leads, developing and achieving sales targets, and acquiring new business. Did you know retaining a loyal customer base is 7 to 10 times less costly than acquiring new ones?

However, a recessionary period and a plethora of options available to customers have made the sales process demanding one. You need to invest in it through training to reap the profits of increased revenues.

How to go about sales training? Here are 7 steps which will help you in doing so:

1. Develop a strategic plan

You need to establish what you need the training to deliver. For instance, according to research, 92% of communication with clients is telephonic in nature. If your sales are seeing a drop, you might want to conduct a training session highlighting basic telephone etiquettes as well as sales skills such as fact finding.

2. Develop targets

With sales targets in place, you will know what to achieve out of the sales process. You want your sales to increase and know that 80% of your sales team contributes to less than 20% of your sales objectives, you know which non-performers to weed out.

3. Sales training schedule

Instead of investing in one or two day seminars, go for regular sales training. There is a limit to what a human brain can absorb in one day seminar. Learning schedules which are shorter and more regular as well as consistent will deliver you greater results. They will engage the sales force and improve their skill set.

4. Attitude improvement

More than lack of knowledge, it is poor attitude which leads to dropping sales performance. Successful training should not only build on the knowledge of the sales force but also build positive habits in them.

5. Sales training curriculum

Adapt sales training curriculum to your industry, organization and product strategy. Make use of interactive tools such as team building exercises. Successful training will be rounded off by an experienced facilitator.

6. Communication

Communicate your expectations from the training to facilitator as well as the team. Your sales force will be more engaged in training if they know it is an investment on them and is playing a crucial role in the success of the company.

7. Commitment

The sales team will take some time in forming, norming(resolving issues) and then performing. It needs to stay on track for extracting the most out of training. Time and motivation is needed for sales training to deliver great results.

Secure Your Career With Online Sales Training

December 21st, 2011 Filed under: Business Sales Training — Negotiation Author

As the global economy is heading for yet another financial crunch, companies have already started to look for ways aimed at cutting their overall operational costs. The austerity measures being taken by companies not only include cutting down on the expenses of the support functions, but also include pink slips to various employees. Now, if you are in the sales team of your company, unless you are one of the best performers, your name could very well be on the next pink slip released by your company. This is the reason it has become more important than ever to be on the top of your game.

Though nothing is certain about the global economy, you can definitely safeguard your position by taking apt measures. When we talk about the sales department of an organization, there is a continual need for the employees to keep meeting their number. To accomplish this, we leave no stone unturned, but it is not really the efforts put-in that the company cares about; rather, it is the result that matters. This is the reason it is extremely vital for every sales profession to go for a specialization in their field by the virtue of an online sales training.

Online sales training programs are being offered by a number of sales training companies, to let you enhance your sales skills in the least troublesome manner possible. You can simply use web based training material to brush up your sales skills as per your own convenience. These programs are offered using several online education tools such as walk throughs, slide sharing, e-mail lessons, on-demand videos, and other similar tools. As all these are web bases, there is no restriction on the trainees to adhere to a particular schedule and compromise on their daily activities.

Since it is undeniable that sales professionals at different hierarchical levels need different types of trainings; firms offering online sales training programs offer different courses for different sales professionals; for executives, there are executive programs; for associates, there are associate programs, while sales managers can go for sales management training programs. Thus, it is safe to say that sales training companies offering online training have a perfect solution for sales professionals from all organizational level.

To sum it up, every sales professional who is looking to safeguard their job against the oncoming recession or for that matter any organizational turbulence, must go for a professional online sales training program.