Online Sales Training Can Free Up Time

Online sales training can
free up a sales professionals time during peak selling periods which
reduces any impact on productivity. Every sales person thrives to be
successful, part of this success is to learn what it takes to engage
customers and close more sales. We all want to be masters of
our own destination, to learn the art of persuasion, how to be really
effective at lead generation,  how to do sales prospecting really well
and how to maximize the return on every sales call and gain more meetings with qualified buyers.

sales-training


Anyone with even the minimum exposure to selling already knows that
there is allot that goes into sales success. Everyday tasks like filling
the pipeline, driving conversations, using sales intelligence to better
engage buyers, planning on how to win that important customer or
growing existing accounts need to be learnt and improved. The Digital
Sales Institute has created a business school level online sale training
solution that is assisting progressive sales professionals and sales
managers to build new skills and significantly increase sales in the
world of the digitally connected buyer.


The reality is that both the B2B and B2C buyer’s journey is changing
how we sell and attract their attention. How to engage buyers using
social media as a sales technique has been around for over five years
now however lots of sales people still struggle to master it. Without
sounding fatalistic Forester projects that over the next four years, 1
million B2B sales people will be replaced by self-service e-commerce.
Those of us who plan on having a long term career in sales will have to
up-skill and move away from “push selling” and learn to embrace new
approaches and sales processes that add real value to today’s social
engaged buyer.


Online Sales Training Works


Online sales training will show you how to interact with the ever
increasing number of B2B buyers who prefer to research solutions online
prior to ever engaging with a sales person or process. How many of us
sales people still focus on interruption sales meaning have to do cold
calling or other low returning sales activities.  Survey after survey
shows that the Number.1 challenge in the sales engine is lead generation
yet we are taught the same old sales tactics.


Here at The Digital Sales Institute, we believe it is about time that
sales leaders transform the old historical sales models to one which
facilitates a highly social, intelligence lead buyer engagement strategy
which puts the individual sales person back into the heart of
attracting buyers.


Sales teams need to learn where and how to add value in the buying
process, when and with what should they engage buyers so it improves
their journey. As buyers self educate and self discover there are lots
of critical questions coming down the line in how in win more business.
Sole reliance on “Inbound Marketing” to bring in leads for the sales
teams, where we then commence the process to qualify the prospects (a
cold call or email) based on some internal criteria in order to narrow
down to the most likely converting customers is disappearing fast.


If we have better sales training, we will sell more

sales-training-online


We have to wake up and smell the coffee as it just simply does not
work like that anymore. Buyers are not taking a journey prescribed in
some sales manual written about 10 years ago; thanks to social media
information they are plotting their own buying journey and leaving
outdated sales models in the rear view mirror. The key message I wish to
convey is not about sales catching up (more vanilla sales training
anyone) with the buyer’s journey but where along the road can sales
people add real value. New age selling is about understanding that the
buyer needs information, resources, guidance, advice and help before any
selling happens.


Don not worry, the sales event has to happen, but intelligent high
performing sales people now know when how to socially engage the buyer
prior to triggering the sales process.


Online Sales training is also not about an outbound V inbound
argument, outbound sales will always have a critical place in selling,
but smart sales leaders know it is about where to place it! The time
when cold calling and mass interruption tactics were the only way for
sales to talk to buyers is long gone. The advent of Sales 2.0 along with
social media has flipped this on its head.


To put this article into perspective, an Aberdeen Group report, they
found that on average, the most successful sales firms got 60% of leads
from outbound activity, while forty percent came through inbound
efforts. However the inbound leads converted at a higher rate. The
lesson here is these firms invested in sales training for their sales
people to use the digital channels, social selling and digitally
connected sales prospecting to attract the buyer, regardless of whether
it was outbound (proactive selling activity) or inbound (SEO, article
sharing etc). The real lesson for online sales training is for sales
professionals to focus on becoming a trusted, helpful resource to the
buyer along the journey and not interrupting them is the way to get the
attention of the modern buyer.


digital-selling-sales-strategy


Ongoing and regular online sales training
builds the knowledge and skills that when combined with other sales
enablement initiatives help build really effective sales people. So
without the access to ongoing sales training programs, I believe any
strategic sales initiative is likely to end up another top down directed
activity with limited sales improvement and no free time for the sales
teams to learn.













Online Sales Training Can Free Up Time

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