Digital Selling and Sales Training Journal

Sales training topics that actually get results can be challenging to nail down. There is the hard sales skills V soft sales skills debate not to mention social selling, customer profiling, outreach tactics and all the steps in the sales process. Still, research shows that expertise, talent, and the sales experience remains the top reason buyers choose a supplier. So, industry knowledge and a good cultural fit take on renewed significance. When planning out sales training, consider what customers are looking for, what they are trying to avoid, and what tips the scale in favor of the winning supplier. Then most aspects of sales training become clear: build the program around deep industry insights and sales force expertise. Training that gets salespeople to effectively solve the customers challenge at hand. This is what customers are seeking and what converts them into clients. The challenge is always for salespeople to be able to po

Today digital sales as the main route to customer engagement is growing rapidly. Remote working, data, technology, and buyer preferences are some of the things driving this change. While digital in the sales process is exciting, it can also prove to be a hurdle in how sales leadership map out a sales growth strategy to encompass this new reality. The carrot is that digital is a game changer for sales organizations that embrace it. Research shows that organizations who champion digital channels in their sales programs are growing by a factor of 5 over their competitors and have almost a third better customer acquisition results. To win in digital sales, leadership will have to rethink the use of traditional selling channels alongside reviewing the customer experience across every touch point for the buyer and the salesperson. These digital implications are now critical in how any sales organization goes to market. Add into the mix that analytics, AI, and machine learn

  There is value to be found by marketing your products on social media. With eCommerce becoming more popular in the wake of COVID-19, more people have grown comfortable with purchasing items via social media. Based on   CMS Wire , 40% of customers have purchased items via Facebook, with 13% doing so via Instagram and 12% via Pinterest in 2021 alone. But how do you write product descriptions which social media users will find captivating enough to follow through on your sales pitch? Different Social Channels Require Different Types of Content Depending on the social media platforms you promote your products on, you will need to adapt your content strategy. Some platforms are friendlier to visual content than written blog posts or status updates. The right type of content will be required for different platforms if you want to differentiate your marketing strategy and reach more people. Here’s what you should keep in mind as you start writing your product descriptions: Facebook   – This

What are the benefits of sales training online when measured against classroom or in person instructor lead sales training? Today (and probably into the future) there are millions of salespeople working remotely and will demand sales training delivered online. The delivery of training programs which were traditionally delivered in-person, like many other things, has transitioned to the web. More and more sales managers plus learning and development managers are pleasantly surprised by the many unexpected benefits of sales training online, as it grew into the main delivery channel in the past year. These benefits of online learning support the widely held belief that impactful sales training does not have to be confined to classrooms. Research from Harvard shows that engaging with online learning enables the learner to connect in new ways, beyond what w

 Learn how to create sales prospecting emails that will get read and generate responses from prospects and customers as part of your sales tactics. The role of sales prospecting emails in the sales process gets questioned from time to time. Well, we do live in a fully digital age, we make online purchases; we communicate with family and friends via texts and social media posts. Any business engaged in marketing and sales must use all the digital means at their disposal, from stunning websites, engaging, and compelling blog posts, social media promotions, online advertising, and more. All of these are designed to keep existing customers and to attract new ones. How About Email? One primary method of finding prospects is through emails. In fact, if done right, research shows that Email marketing has a high ROI of all marketing activities and tools. For every dollar spent, marketers can expect an average return of $42. The question becom

Online sales programs are growing in popularity as more and more sales professionals self-educate. Today, salespeople have to be the link between the digital world and the real world by having the sales skills to engage customers and close sales. Yes, there is (and probably will be for a long time) the need for person to person dialogue in the sales process. The major difference is the skills deployed and the timing of when conversations happen. Selling is about conversations, commitments and problem solving. The modern buyer wants more than the value of the product or solution, so, If you salespeople want to be valued by their customers, they must fully understand their problems. Online sales programs can provide the knowledge so a salesperson can uncover what the customer is missing or needing, then analyze that problem. The skill to get to the root cause of what causes the problem and then to propose what could solve the problem.

Soft skills sales training is becoming just as important as the hard skills training, we are most familiar with in the world of training. We know we live in unprecedented times but most of all, when it comes to the sales profession, these are times of profound change. And this change in the buyer to supplier relationship is affecting everyone. Salespeople may have the technical knowledge, the hard sales training, the product knowledge, the sales presentation skills plus the functional skills to work through the entire sales process. However, today to be really successful in a sales career, salespeople will need something else to succeed in selling. No matter how advanced their technical and hard selling skills are, they will need soft skills, too. Today, a Google search or social media has put product and service information at a customer’s fingertips. They are able to access reviews, download product sheets, compare solutions, and l