Thinking About a 1 Day Sales Training Course?

Think again.

A 1-day sales training course sounds like a great idea when you need to re-energize and motivate your inside sales team to pick up the phones. But do the statistics agree?

After taking a 1-day sales training course, salespeople seem to always fall back into their bad habits and old routines just a few days later. Why? Because too much information crammed into a short timeframe is NOT the best way to learn – or get an ROI.

The Research Institute of America concluded that eLearning boosts retention rates by 25 to 60%. Traditional Training is only 8 to 10%.

The solution? eLearning.

eLearning – The “1 a Day” Sales Training Course

Using eLearning as a training tool, inside sales teams can go at their own pace, learning and implementing each step of the sales process on the phones, getting real-world experience and results and feedback from their sales managers, before moving on to the next learning step.

Any sales training program aims to improve results by learning and using best practice sales skills and techniques. eLearning allows each student to learn and master each step before moving on to the next. Some may grasp the concepts quickly, while others need a little more time. eLearning allows each student to go at their own pace, ensuring you get a higher % of sales reps learning and implementing new sales techniques on the phones.

The Forgetting Curve

If new learning isn’t applied, sales teams will forget approximately 75% of what they learned within 6-days of the training session.

Flipping the 90/10 Rule

Traditional 1-day sales training courses are 90% learning, with short break-out sessions before moving on to the next learning module. Therefore, it’s unrealistic to expect your team to remember, let alone master, each new sales technique with the 90/10 rule.

When students invest 10% of their time learning and 90% doing, they dramatically improve their chances of making new sales techniques part of their day-to-day process.

We at SalesBuzz recommend one hour a week of sales training, for 8-weeks. This formula allows students to learn, implement, analyze results and make necessary adjustments before moving on to the next training phase.

Ineffective Training Costs Money

According to a Harvard Business Review only “25% believed their company’s training improved performance”. So do we keep training the same way and expect different results? That does not sound like a wise solution. Switching from the traditional 1-day sales training event to the eLearning module makes more dollars and sense.

When is the Best Time to Train?

According to Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, people learn best when they have to learn. In sales, that’s an easy one – if your team didn’t hit last month’s quota, the perfect time for them to learn better phone skills is now. Why? The Theory of Motivation. Missing quota and being held accountable is a requirement for business growth. And a motivated employee is more productive, and a more productive employee is more profitable. This is the win/win at Training at the right time, rather than when it’s “convenient” to a corporate schedule (I.E., a company retreat, etc.)

How to Fail w/Sales Training?

Easy – teach them the wrong things. Salespeople have the attention span of a squirrel. Start talking about “brain linguistics” and “psychology of sales” and watch their eyes glaze over and their heads bang against the desk.

However, show them exactly what to say after “Hello” that gets the prospect willing to have a conversation, and you will have your sales team’s full attention and eagerness to get on the phones to put to practice what they just learned.

How to Succeed with Sales Training?

Here’s the formula:

1. Learning the core of what you need to understand, in short lessons
2. Immediately applying it to real-world situations
3. Have managers give immediate feedback; refining understanding
4. Repeating the cycle

SalesBuzz.com’s online sales training course teaches the techniques your team needs to know to succeed at selling by phone and in a way that will deliver ROI that won’t fade.