In this article, we show you how to decide on the best sales training company for your team – and it only takes five simple questions.
It’s a nervous time for every sales leader when the clock resets back to zero after the financial year. It also leaves you with an important choice to make for the next 12 months.
The decision on the right sales training providers to develop the professionals in your team can have a huge impact in the year ahead. It could mean the difference between hitting your sales targets and falling short.
It can be tricky to navigate the market with so many options available from one-on-one coaching, sales training courses and a whole plethora of similar sales training solutions to choose from.
However, there are some key questions to ask sales training providers that helps unlock the decision to choose the right training company for your sales team.
Here they are:
Question #1 – Do you use professional sales trainers or working sales professionals with the capability to train others?
Your team learns faster and more effectively if they feel those leading the training are credible and have something to offer beyond their existing knowledge and experience.
Many sales training and team development companies are led by professionals trainers who are good at delivering content, yet don’t have the experience of working in live sales environments. A working sales professional has an understanding of the challenges facing sales teams today and can help relate through relevant, recent experience.
Question #2 – What are the size and value of the deals won by those who would be training our sales team?
If you want your sales professionals to be the best, they need to learn from the best. While awards for teaching are useful, it is more useful assessing the value of deals won each year by the very people training your sales team.
For example, at The Win Academy, our team is responsible for bringing over the line over £1bn in sales each year for clients in various industries.
The key point here is that is you want to achieve sales excellence in your team, you have to learn from sales trainers and coaches who know what sales excellence looks like.
Question #3 – Do we want an off-the-shelf programme or something tailored specifically to our needs?
For some types of training an off-the-shelf course or programme may be the right option. If you’re looking to keep your team focused on their day-to-day roles with limited time, online delivery at their own pace may be appropriate.
For a more transformational approach to sales performance, an in-person coaching experience may be more beneficial.
Even better, however, is an approach that uses key principles and best practices to tailor the experience around the kind of live opportunities your sales team is currently working on.
At The Win Academy, we design programmes around the needs of the organisation and deliver the programme through a blend of live coaching and online learning for better outcomes. For example, our Pitching To Win programme blends immersive pitching practice with online tools.
Question #4 – What methodologies and practices do you use as part of your training programmes?
Many training providers will adhere to a well-known methodology or will have developed their own proprietary approach to delivering their training programmes.
Knowing where their training approach, practices and principles originate from is important to understanding whether these are right for you and your team.
Those developed in real life sales environments over many years will offer greater practicality and use, rather than more recently developed approaches which may offer a new way of working but are unproven over a longer period of time. In person training helps develop your team’s skills during sales meetings, presentations and other sales environments, while also building confidence and belief.
Our 10 Principles of Pitching developed over decades of experience is designed to highlight the fundamentals that great sales professionals master on their way to a higher win rate and more sales.
Question #5 – How do you guarantee you achieve exceptional results and a strong ROI on your investment?
Sales training is pointless if it doesn’t deliver better outcomes for your team. Developing knowledge, while worthy, is only the stepping stone to the desired outcome of more opportunities, more sales and better results for you and your team. Getting clear on how a sales training company will deliver on that promise is key.
At The Win Academy, our approach is to offer the most intense and thorough sales training environment through which to put sales teams. This may involve role-playing scenarios multiple times to test the capabilities of each sales professional and allow them to demonstrate their sales skills and abilities under stress. It’s important to do the hard work and make mistakes in the training room rather than in the spotlight of live opportunities.
This approach has helped deliver strong outcomes and, according to our clients, positive return on investment higher than other approaches they’ve used.
Need help choosing between training providers? Let us help. One of our expert team members will be able to talk through your requirements and offer helpful suggestions. We’ve worked with sales leaders at organisations of all sizes, in all sectors and can offer an insight that may be useful when choosing your next sales training programme.
Call us on +44 020 3303 0415 or email us at info@thewinacademy.co.uk.