How to Win More Quality Sales Opportunities with the Right Sales Performance Platform
Efficiency is tightening up most revenue engines: CRMs are eliminating manual admin work; automated marketing tools allow for better timing and personalization; team-wide communication tools are more practical and intuitive than ever. But training remains trapped in conventional systems and processes. This is bad news when your organization already knows the value of shifting to fast, remote, technology-enabled protocols.
But sales training has even worse achievement statistics than many businesses know. According to a Gartner report, “sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training, and 87% will forget it within a month.”
Tactics, promotional details, and product information all slip away over time, and that means reps can’t help leads when they need it most, leading to a severe loss in sales opportunities. Here we’ll examine how better sales training can solve this gap in your revenue processes and how it can be used to win more business.
Better Sales Training Is Non-Negotiable for Today’s Companies
Consider just a single recent stat: 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone.” Does your sales training align with that? Most programs don’t truly assess and grow the skills sales reps need most. Here’s why:
Sporadic Training Doesn’t Lead to High Sales Conversions
When sales managers are sporadically training sales reps, it’s a poor learning environment. Fine details get lost, skills can’t be practiced except on leads, and there’s no curriculum. Sales leaders simply don’t have the time to train their teams in monthly or weekly sessions that build on each other, let alone provide personalized coaching.
Management and Individuals Need In-Depth and Objective Assessment Reports
Subjective assessments leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths. But manual, conventional training sessions are based on the instructor’s interpretation of the session. They may be using outdated strategies, guessing at what a rep should have done to improve a situation, and basing assessments on uncertain criteria. That’s demotivating for reps and doesn’t give leadership the insights they need about performance, growth, or eligibility for promotions.
Personalized Training Focuses on Conversational Strategies and Tactics
Group-based training or static curriculum plans are a necessity for traditional training sessions, but they’re inefficient. Experienced reps will be bored, new reps may receive the training they’re not ready for, and no one receives the targeted assistance they need to excel. AI-powered sales coaching software, on the other hand, can individually assess each user to create an objective foundation assessment. Then the platform can create personalized lessons based on the rep’s unique skills and needs. It’s a better approach to learning, and that translates to more wins.
Related: Statistical Evidence of the Value of Practice for Pharma Sales
How to Use a Sales Performance Platform to Win More Quality Sales Opportunities
But how does a sales performance platform take your sales team from lessons to sales? Here are the steps your organization should see:
1. Assess sales reps where they are
Great training starts with a pre-assessment. What do your reps already excel at? Where do they need to focus most? While group lessons can’t provide this level of consideration, individualized coaching platforms can — and to great effect. Your reps can know where they stand, what they need to practice, and which of their approaches work best.
2. Provide personalized training lessons and assessments.
Once your platform has that baseline, an AI-powered tool can create a personalized curriculum. This helps reps focus on the skills and concepts that will actually make the biggest impact on their performance. Over time, their performance in simulations and assessments will refine the curriculum more and more until every lesson provides exactly the right push. This is especially crucial for conversational skills since so many interactions are over the phone. The right platform will measure each rep’s conversational IQ (C-IQ) and focus on pushing that score higher and higher.
3. Streamline the learning process with bite-sized lessons and instant feedback.
Long seminars and hour-long lectures aren’t good learning experiences, and they disrupt business. Instead, choose a platform that offers instruction in small “chunks” that sales reps can focus on when they have a free moment. It’s better for both learning and maintaining their daily to-dos.
Related: How to Get a Behavioral Baseline of Your Sales Reps Through AI
Quantified Measurably Improves Sales Team Performance
Personalized instruction powered by AI software that assesses, records, and teaches is the missing piece in your revenue engine. It slots into place with your CRM, your marketing automation, and your analytics tools. Contact the Quantified team today to request a demo and see how the right sales performance platform will fit into — and enhance — your organization.