Corporate Sales Training | How do You Make it Effective?

Today, having a skilled sales team isn’t just an advantage, it’s a necessity. Hiring top talent, while essential, is just half the job. Sales require constant training and updates, considering shifting customer perspectives and needs. 

In this article, we will take a look at what you need to know about corporate sales training. It will cover everything from what it is to why and how to implement it. So, let’s dive right into it. 

What is corporate sales training?

Corporate sales training is a program designed to improve the performance of the company’s sales team. It improves the team's overall skills, helps to address the challenges they are dealing with, and creates effective strategies to manage those. 

A typical sales training program is designed to 

• help sales professionals understand customer needs, 
• communicate the value of the company’s offerings more effectively
• learn how to build relationships
• handle objections and close deals with confidence. 

Why implement corporate sales training? 

Corporate sales training isn’t just a fancy new training program for your employees; you should offer it as a modern company. It is a strategic investment in your company and team to improve their job performance.

First of all, sales training helps your team improve sales performance. It focuses on developing sharper communication skills, better prospecting techniques, and more effective closing strategies. A solid background in psychology, tricks, and other tools your sales team can use will help them show confident results. 

As far as consistency is concerned, corporate sales training will also improve consistency across the sales team. When team members clearly understand what they’re selling, who they’re selling to, and how to apply the latest techniques alongside their strengths, they can align around a shared goal and perform more effectively.

A good sales training will allow your team to adapt to changing buyer behavior faster. Buyers are informed, thus more selective. Regular training helps the sales team to stay ahead of buyers and their defenses by teaching them how to build trust and engage modern customers. 

Finally, let’s not forget about one of the most essential benefits of corporate sales training, which is higher employee retention rates. Investing in professional development shows employees they’re valued. A well-trained salesperson is more confident and more likely to stay with the company long-term, reducing turnover and preserving institutional knowledge.

Why do most corporate sales training fail? 

While essential, corporate sales training can be ineffective and fail for multiple reasons. The main ones include the following: 

• Training is not personalized to your company’s sales processes
• You mix corporate sales training with compliance training
• You do not make the training process easier and accessible for sales reps. 

Let’s break down each of those reasons. 

Sales is an area where one-size-fits-all is not applicable unless it is about basic things. The corporate training program must match how the team sells the product, be adapted to the buyer personas & target audience, as well as tailored to fit the sales cycle. 

Another mistake that fails corporate training is when it is mixed with HR or compliance training. If you mix training programs, bundling up unnecessary information and irrelevant topics, then none of your employees will learn what they should learn. Onboarding checklists, compliance, and everything else should be a separate program. You should maintain the focus of the sales training on sales. 

Finally, the accessibility. Salespeople are busy, so if training is extremely hard to access, long, or overly theoretical, consider it a failed program. The training must be enjoyable, engaging, and practical. Successful programs are built around how reps actually work, with bite-sized content, mobile access, interactive modules, and immediate takeaways they can use in the field.

How can you make your corporate sales training more efficient? 

It’s time to delve into the practical section of this guide and review actionable steps on successfully incorporating sales training into the workplace. 

Tie the learning outcomes to the sales rep’s challenges 

First, make sure to tie learning outcomes to the sales rep’s challenges. To do this more efficiently, you can interview reps to identify common objections and knowledge gaps. For instance, pricing objections, process inefficiencies, or otherwise. 

Then, build training modules around real-life pain points and goals. Make sure the sessions are designed around solving the challenges with practical techniques. This will allow us to connect learning objectives with the teams' needs closely. 

Finally, when presenting learning outcomes to the employees, show how each learning outcome connects to their performance and success. You can do this by writing a good copy for the description or even creating a fun infographic. 

Create opportunities for peer-to-peer learning  

The next step is creating opportunities for peer-to-peer learning. You can do so by: 

• Create a space for top-performing reps to share their winning strategies and tactics.
• Incorporate team-based role-play and deal reviews to foster real-time feedback.
• Encourage informal mentoring relationships within the sales team.

Many companies, including names like AffPapa and SoftConstruct, do these types of activities to build stronger and winning teams. 

Keep the training formats diverse 

Diversify your training formats to fit the needs of your employees better. Think about the fact that some people are visual learners, while others love the audio format, and others learn with practical exercises. 

Here is how to diversify the training formats: 

• Combine microlearning videos, live workshops, case studies, and self-paced content.
• Rotate between solo learning, team exercises, and on-the-job applications.
• Regularly refresh the content to keep it engaging and relevant.

Make the training interactive.

To make training efficient, make it interactive. One of the ways to do this is replacing lectures wth simulations and interactive role-playing based on real sales calls. For instance, one of the employees can act as a customer while another one handles the sales process. During this simulation, give specific instructions to each participant to make the process more challenging and stimulating. 

Another way to make sales training more interactive is by using platforms that allow quizzes and games to be offered to trainees. For instance, with Uteach, you can create interactive training programs and offer participants options to take tests, participate in polls, and take quizzes. 

You can also incorporate live coaching during the training sessions for immediate feedback. By this, we mean don’t just give the instructions and sit. Take an active part and guide trainees throughout the process. 

Use your real sales data

Leverage sales data to improve the effectiveness of the training. For instance, you can: 

• Integrate dashboards or CRM metrics to show what’s working (and what’s not). This will also allow you to analyze real customer interactions and deals as case studies during sessions. 
• Use data to personalize training paths based on individual or team performance to identify skill gaps and tailor content accordingly. 
• Track post-training performance to refine and personalize future training. 

Segment the corporate sales training by role 

The sales team is not just sales representatives; typically, it includes business development representatives, account managers, AEs, and others. So, make sure to personalize the training program further by developing tailored tracks for each role. 

By doing so, you can address the specific goals, tools, and communication styles each role requires. For instance, BDRs must focus on top-of-funnel activities like cold outreach and lead qualification. Thus, they need more training on understanding how to use CRM tools, identify buyers, qualify leads, handle objectives, etc. 

While account managers, on the other hand, need to nurture existing client relationships and dive into upsells and renewals. The training for them should focus on building long-term trust and rapport, identifying growth opportunities, and cross-selling/upselling techniques. 

Involve your sales managers

When building training for the sales team, make sure to involve the managers as they know firsthand what their teams need. You can: 

• Survey managers to understand the teams' challenges and adapt training to solve these. 
• Train managers to reinforce learning through regular 1:1 coaching.
• Have managers set goals tied to training takeaways and review progress weekly.
• Encourage them to lead by example by participating in and supporting training sessions.

How corporate sales training helped other companies

To understand the importance of corporate sales training, let’s review a few case studies and see how it helped companies such as Google and PIMCO. 

Google Cloud

Inside the sales team, Google Cloud was experiencing rapid growth and faced ambitious targets in a very competitive market. The complexity of their products and customer base required junior sellers to establish credibility with senior prospects quickly.

The company's approach was to observe current processes and create a training program to solve challenges. The AP team started listening to customer calls and observing existing selling practices. Then they identified key areas for improvement. These included:

• Encouraging sellers to engage senior leads by focusing on business questions before technical ones
• Developing tactics to build more credibility in the conversation 
• Shifting the focus from product features to communicating its benefits. 

Right after the company develops customized training and coaching modules to ensure relevance. The outcomes achieved from implementing sales training based on current sales data and challenges the team faces were: 

• Consistent sales practices among sellers.
• More strategic interactions with clients.
• A globally scalable program used daily by sellers and leaders.
• Accelerated onboarding for new sellers.
• A consistent coaching framework for managers.

A sales leader at Google, Kristina Hahn, even highlighted that the training was one of the best ones she has ever attended at Google, mentioning its relevant and actionable nature. 

This case study clearly showcases the importance of incorporating relevant sales training for the teams based on the challenges they are dealing with. 

PIMCO

Another case study is the training program that PIMCO implemented. PIMCO is a global asset management firm aimed at growing in new product areas and geographies amidst volatile markets and organizational changes. They needed a more consistent client approach that considered diverse teams and regions. 

Since 2006, Accelerate Performance has partnered with PIMCO to: 

Study top performers to identify transferable best practices.

Develop customized training programs reflecting PIMCO's culture and tools.   
Deliver training across various teams and regions, including retail, institutional, and internal teams.

The outcomes show up quite early on. PIMCO's assets under management grew from $600 billion in 2006 to over $2 trillion at its peak. Key results include:

• The UK team achieved 200% of their asset-raising target and exceeded revenue targets by 55% through opportunity-focused coaching.
• Enhanced recognition in new areas like Alternative Investments.
• Maintained high client service scores and positive internal feedback on training resources.

Once again, this case study highlights how crucial it is to identify key areas of improvement and develop action-focused sales training to achieve measurable results. 

Corporate sales training is easier with Uteach.

If you plan to offer corporate sales training to your team, you are in the right place at the right time. Uteach is an all-in-one training platform that comes in handy with everything you need to create training programs that actually deliver results. 

The platform supports multiple training formats, offers website & course builders, live functionality, marketing features, and multiple customization options to fit your company's needs. Request a free demo with our team and learn more about how Uteach can support your company’s success.