Online Sales Training

5 Components of a Great Sales Onboarding Experience

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5 Components of a Great Sales Onboarding Experience

What’s the most important component of a sales rep’s onboarding process? If we measure by time spent, most companies’ inadvertent answer would be company history, product, and systems. In an employee’s first few weeks, that’s where the majority of time is spent.

Outside of company orientation, there are five components of a great sales onboarding experience:

  1. Sales
  2. Acumen
  3. Systems
  4. Process
  5. Product

I’ve put these in priority order, let me tell you why I rank sales first and product last (you probably didn’t see that coming):

Sales 

Sales tactics are the little skills that determine if an employee feels successful in their first 90 days. If you want them to stay, this is critical. Too often young reps quit sales because those first few months are full of calls, voicemails, and rejections. Product training will help them in a few months when they have sales conversations, but we need to focus first on getting them more of these conversations. 

DOWNLOAD: Sales Team Retention Infographic

Focus on skills like how to prospect, how to make an outbound dial, how to write a valuable sales email, how to leave a good voicemail, and how to overcome initial brush-offs. When we focus on these skills with new hires, we see results like 200% more productivity than previous new hire classes (HPE, 2023).

Pro Tip: weave sales training and practice into the curriculum daily. Combine with product training to produce better questions, with acumen information to help identify ICPs and do better discovery. Daily practice builds better recall and confidence!

READ: Quick Sales Voicemail Tips to Build Phone Confidence

Yes! Outsourcing sales training in new hire onboarding can be very successful. License a vendor’s online content for a great virtual experience and then come together in live workshops to tailor messaging and role play. You’ll save time and help reps ramp faster.

Acumen 

This is business, industry, and customer know-how. What do they care about, what are the challenges, what are the trends, and how do I have an intelligent conversation with them? Then, how do these relate to what I’m selling? New reps are afraid of conversations, and helping them get to know their customer and their customer’s business, lingo, questions, and challenges can fix this. 

Use customer testimonials, old call recordings, and lingo bingo to get the voice of the customer. 

Systems

I wish I could put systems last, but just like sales, it takes repetition to get good. Please resist the temptation to teach a system start to finish and start instead with the first 10 things they’ll do on the job. 

Practice system drills DURING sales role plays. It’s not the individual skill that’s hard, it’s using them together. Systems finals should include multi-tasking and be timed.

Systems and sales are ripe for outsourcing by the way. Use your systems provider’s training – just re-organize it from the rep’s point of view. Using outsourced training helps mix it up, cover different learning styles, and infuse your program with expertise. Same with sales – some things need to be customized but don’t rely on professional training facilitators to coach selling tips.

READ: How to Build Sales Confidence During Onboarding

Process

Process is how to GSD (get stuff done). Try organizing this by the top ten questions managers get and customers ask. Teach reps how to use tools to answer their questions instead of giving them the answers. I like a good scavenger hunt for this and it’s easy to do remotely. Reps need to know how to get accounts assigned to them, do research, send info, answer customer questions – do a day-in-the-life study of your last newbies, and your curriculum is written!

Process training can also cross over into acumen practice. Role-play conversations with customers or use recordings with questions and challenge reps to find the answers. 

Product

Finally product. Sure, I overcorrected a hair by putting it last, but there’s such a glut of product training in most programs I wanted to balance it a bit! When we give full-blown product training to new hires, we actually DECREASE their confidence. If you don’t expect a rep to have a conversation about the intricacies of what you provide in the first 2 months, then SKIP THIS. Focus instead on what problems it solves, the customer situations/profiles who love it, and the questions to ask to uncover this situation. Then provide resources just in case to look up answers. Slimming down the product features and functionality helps beef up the “how to sell it” portion. 

Pro Tip: do product training daily just before sales training so you can incorporate the product situation questions into your sales questions and be teaching them how to do discovery right from the start.


We’re talking about unconscious incompetence and it’s important. We can’t have reps making outbound dials feel underprepared and afraid. So lop off half of the training you’re doing in the first month and instead drill the basics. If they don’t know the complexities of what they’re selling in month one it’s a win. We will only retain about 50% of what we’re taught in sales onboarding unless we drill it, practice it, and role-play it, so less info and more practice! Bonus: mix it all up and use it together like they will on the job.

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Sales Training: How to Get Buy-in From Your Salespeople

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Sales Training: How to Get Buy-in From Your Salespeople

Are you having a hard time getting salespeople bought into sales training and ongoing learning? Struggling to get their attention? Unable to get them to try and apply new skills?

It all comes down to behavior change. Getting people to try new things and change their behavior is one of the toughest things out there.

READ: What Makes Good Inside Sales Training?

That’s why I use a model called BLISS.

If you’re having trouble getting adoption, include each of the steps below represented in your training program.

B – Buy-in – If you want a salesperson’s time – their most valuable resource – you better show them upfront why it’s well worth their time. Show them ROI and results, or prove that they may need some help here. Basically, prove they’re in trouble without using the skill OR prove the benefit of using the skill.

L –  Learning – As training experts, I don’t need to tell you what good facilitation is. I use the CUP model. C stands for “Connect”, U for “Use” and P for “Practice.” If it’s a video, it’s not learning (more on that topic here).

I – Integration – We have to be able to use skills at the same time when we’re in sales. I can’t just have a folder of product training, skills training, and systems training and not integrate them. So, if you want people to use your new skill, show them HOW and WHEN it’s being applied. Help train the triggers of when to grab this folder and practice it integrated with other skills.

S – Synthesis – Make sure you’re practicing with other skills. If this is something that’s just in theory and sort of left on a shelf, it’s going stay on that shelf. Bring it into the real world. At Factor 8, we always make live calls practicing new skills during training. We’ve learned it, we’ve role-played it, we’ve talked about it, now we’re going to go do it and get some feedback on it.

S – Support – Getting busy revenue leaders to support training initiatives is rough. We’ve got to do buy-in for them as well. My tip here is make it FAST and EASY for frontline managers to support these new skills. Bring them into the training but give them tools to use. We have a manager toolkit for every class we teach with easy-to-use activities in huddles, classes, or training sessions to keep skills alive. Things like call coaching forms or call coaching cheat sheets to help them support the newly learned skills. 

Follow the steps in BLISS and you’ll blissfully ensure that salespeople will embrace and apply new skills. Need help? Email me at LB@factor8.com.

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Sales Confidence: How to Build it During Onboarding

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How to Build Sales Confidence During Onboarding

I’ve heard from many sales leaders lately that it’s tough getting the next generation of sellers to pick up the phone.

We all know that no one wants to make cold calls, but the endless email and InMail touches and cadences that your reps are using aren’t working.

And, with the new Gmail and Yahoo email restrictions that kicked in this year, it’s more important than ever to go back to basics and get new sellers to pick up the phone.

At Factor 8, we’re focused on teaching reps tactical phone sales skills to help them build sales confidence (so they’ll pick up the phone AND feel great about it!)

Today, I’m talking about new sales hire onboarding.

When you’re bringing on someone new – especially when they’re remote – one of the most important things you can do in new hire onboarding is use call recordings.

READ: Tips for Virtually Onboarding New Sales Reps

The game has changed over the past few years. When sellers are remote, they can’t just sit next to their peers,  hear what’s happening, and learn the good, bad, and ugly.

If your company doesn’t record calls, or you’re worried about not having a specific rep’s call recordings, toss that – it doesn’t matter. You can learn so much from any call recording.

In fact, at Factor 8 in our Sales Bar, our online sales training platform, we have thousands of user-submitted recorded sales calls from all different industries, organized by skill (i.e. call intro, overcoming objections, call bridging, closing, etc.)

READ: 7 Hacks to Improve New Sales Rep Onboarding

During onboarding, break down the call and let reps listen to what it sounds like, even if it’s not a good call, because what we’re scared of is what the customer is going to say to us (and the inability to think on our feet to respond to them intelligently).

When reps hear different scenarios on sales calls 20 or 30 times, they begin to feel comfortable and that fear starts to go away and the confidence rises.

And that’s the name of the game, folks: confidence. You’ve got to have it to succeed in sales, and building it begins at onboarding.

Need help building sales confidence in your sales reps? Email me at LB@factor8.com. I’m happy to help!

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Why Event-Based Sales Training Falls Short

In the world of sales, the quest for effective training solutions is never-ending. For years, event-based sales training has been the norm, but is it actually effective? 

I’m here to tell you 7 reasons why event-based training won’t cut it, especially for leaders managing large teams.

  1. Lack of Sustained Learning

Concern: Event-based training is like cramming the night before a test. You get a bunch of info all at once, but will you remember it next week? Probably not.

Reality Check: Enablement leaders get that learning isn’t just a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process. Sales teams require continuous skill development and reinforcement. Event-based training, with its one-off sessions, can’t provide the consistent support needed for long-term success.

  1. Limited Application to Real-World Scenarios

Concern: Event-based sales training can feel like it’s all talk and no action. It’s theory-based and detached from real-world sales situations.

Reality Check: Enablement leaders know that the sales landscape is dynamic and challenging. To thrive, teams need training that is directly applicable to their daily tasks. 

  1. Poor Skill Retention Rates

Concern: Sales reps can struggle to retain the vast amount of information taught in a single training event. (That’s why micro-learning over time is critical to ensuring skills stick!)

Reality Check: Enablement leaders recognize that skill retention is the key to performance improvement. Event-based training can overwhelm participants, leading to lower skill retention. This leads to less effective training that fails to drive tangible results.

  1. No Skill Reinforcement

Concern: Event-based training typically lacks ongoing skill reinforcement.

Reality Check: Just like learning a new language, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Skills deteriorate over time if they’re not regularly practiced and reinforced. Enablement leaders need training that includes coaching, mentoring, and opportunities for reps to apply what they’ve learned to their daily work life – something that’s missing in event-based learning.

  1. High Cost, Limited ROI

Concern: Event-based training can be expensive, and the ROI may not always justify the investment.

Reality Check: Enablement leaders are under pressure to deliver results and prove the value of their initiatives. Event-based training’s high costs and questionable long-term effectiveness can make it a tough sell when trying to show ROI.

  1. Challenging for High Attrition

Concern: High turnover is a common challenge for large sales teams, making it difficult to keep everyone up-to-date through periodic training events.

Reality Check: Enablement leaders understand that training should be agile and accessible. Event-based training struggles to accommodate the rapid onboarding of new hires or the need for ongoing training when turnover rates are high.

  1. Inadaptability to Change

Concern: The sales landscape evolves rapidly, and event-based training can’t keep pace with these changes.

Reality Check: For those at the helm, it’s crucial that our teams are prepped and ready to tackle the ever-shifting industry trends and customer needs. Relying solely on event-based training might not give us the flexibility and swift adaptation we genuinely need.

A More Effective Approach: Continuous, Virtual Training

Event-based sales training has its merits. However, for those leading large teams with a notable churn rate, it might not be the optimal choice. The better route? Ongoing, virtual sales training. It promises consistent, deep learning, techniques that align with real-world challenges, enhanced skill retention, ongoing skill reinforcement, cost efficiency, and the flexibility to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape.

READ: Why You Need a Sales Training and Enablement Budget

Ongoing learning fosters a culture of proactive growth which improves employee retention. This continuous approach ensures that every team member, whether a seasoned sales pro or a new rep, is armed with the most current strategies, insights, and best practices. In a landscape as competitive as sales, staying updated isn’t just recommended—it’s imperative.

Are you looking for virtual sales training?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


good inside sales rep training

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Inside Sales Training: What Does Good Training Look Like?

Whether you’re shopping around for external inside sales training vendors or working with your internal training department, knowing what good inside sales rep training looks like is the first step to ensuring your training is checking all the key boxes.

We’ve outlined a few of the most important considerations to keep in mind when choosing an inside sales training partner.

Decide What Good Inside Sales Training Looks Like

This shouldn’t be a surprise to any sales leaders out there — but what makes good inside sales training is results. You’ll be able to know whether or not sales training worked simply because it moved the needle.

These “results” look different depending on your company, team, and goals. It’s important to go into the sales training and decide on what those goals are to you — whether it’s sales units sold or market share gained.

READ: How to Measure Sales Training ROI

This is even more important when partnering with an external sales training vendor. The vendor should understand your goals as well as your sales process, product, customers, industry, and competitors. There is so much specialization in the market today, don’t let a vendor bring SDR training to your team of AEs.

In order for sales training to be considered “good”, it must achieve your goals. Outlining what these goals are, and what success looks like, beforehand is a surefire way to get what your team needs out of their training.

We recommend identifying metrics, behaviors, KPIs, and overall results that you expect to shift during and after the training. Metrics and behaviors should lift immediately showing you’re on the right track, and KPIs are early indicators that the results are on the way. Identifying metrics or results only can lead to a miss.

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5 Characteristics of Good Inside Sales Training

After the goals are set, here are a few more tips to ensure you’re maximizing your training investment:

1. The Sales Training is Customized

Really great sales training is customized to your industry and product/service.

This ensures your reps aren’t left trying to figure out how to take a broad theory and apply it to their job, customer, or service.

While it’s true that customized sales training is more expensive, the ROI is up to twenty-fold when you consider how much your reps are actually retaining, and how much they can apply immediately to their practices.

Use public seminars and events to help someone get a tip or two. Use custom live training to move the needle on results.

2. Get a Professional Sales Trainer

Aberdeen reported that 85% of the sales teams that are considered “best-in-class” utilize professional sales trainers or resources.

Don’t try and turn your managers or reps into trainers. Let’s face it, they’ve got enough on their plates. Plus, even really good managers and reps have no idea how to train — it’s just not their job! They might be excellent at sales, but they have no expertise in training.

Even worse, don’t let your HR department teach sales. They’re great at training and professional facilitation in many areas of your business, but their bailiwick is in company orientation and sexual harassment training — not sales and selling. They may be excellent at training but have no expertise in sales.

See where we’re going with this?

Make sure to bring in someone who is an expert at both training and sales. That’s the secret to good inside sales training, and it’s what the best in class are doing.

3. Make Sure the Training Has the Right Focus

If you’re training your inside sales reps, make sure they’re attending an inside sales training. It sounds simple, but oftentimes well-meaning sales team leaders are duped into thinking “sales training” is enough. Shoe-horning your company’s existing field training for your inside team may actually do more damage than good.

Most popular sales books and training curricula deal with a very narrow view of selling: The conversation between Person A and Person B. Anyone who has been working in inside sales for a while can agree that the true issue lies in getting that interaction in the first place.

If your reps are struggling with connecting with decision-makers, getting callbacks, finding the right people, figuring out who to call, and capturing attention at the top of the funnel, then conversation selling and overcoming objections will miss the mark.

Make sure that your inside sales reps are being coached on topics like:

  • Leaving compelling voicemails that will be returned
  • Capturing a prospect’s attention in the first 30 seconds
  • Leading with value
  • Creating engaging conversations vs. script reading
  • How to get a callback or bridge to the next call
  • Finding more decision-makers in the company
  • Dealing with gatekeepers

It’s important to make sure other aspects of the strategy are covered as well, so the reps can rely on their managers less for questions such as:

  • Who should I call first?
  • How often should I call?
  • Should I leave a voicemail message?
  • How often?
  • Now, what do I do?
virtual sales challenges
4. Sales Training NEEDS to Be Hands-On

Theory stinks.

During the training, make sure reps are getting on the phones. There’s no reason that training shouldn’t be stopped so that the reps can go try out the skills they’re learning, and role-plays don’t really tell the whole story, do they?

Live calls to live customers using the training guarantees that these training methods are going to be applied. Live calling in a safe space leads to more rep buy-in and builds confidence. When reps see the tactics work in real-time they adopt, apply, and try more often. Training fall-off (the forgetting curve) has the odds stacked against it now!

Make the training stick by actually making calls and building pipeline during training.

5. Make Sure Your Managers Get Involved in Sales Training

Put managers in the reps’ training, and when possible make sure they have their own version of the training class tailored for their needs. Managers need to learn how to recognize the new skills in action, when to coach, how to coach the new skill, when to celebrate it working, and how to keep the momentum alive when the trainers leave. Behavior change lives and dies with the management team, and their buy-in, involvement, and use of the new skills are critical to success.

Ask your vendor how the managers will be involved in retaining the new skills.

READ: Tips for Enablement Leaders to Increase Sales Coaching Focus

Good Training is Ongoing Training

You got it, training is a process, not an event. Reps reported a “Lack of Development” as a top 5 challenge every year for the past five years as reported by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. Aberdeen also reported missing development opportunities as the number one rep-reported reason for leaving companies.

Deciding to invest in rep development is a smart choice, but be sure you don’t assume that it is “one and done.” Your teams want ongoing opportunities to learn, grow, and advance their careers.

READ: Why Event-Based Sales Training Falls Short

Training Magazine reported an average number of development hours/year/employee at about 48 hours – or four hours/month. Is your internal training team ready to provide this? Most corporate training teams get quickly maxed by providing new hire orientation and onboarding. Manager coaching can fill some of the gaps, but if you’re talking with learning vendors, check their ongoing offerings as well.

Ongoing training will often nurture and advance skills taught onsite – helping check the box of retaining new skills and providing the ongoing development reps crave.

The easiest way to accomplish this is with vendor-provided online skills training or inside sales training courses after their session to brush up on their skills, hone in on their weak spots, and keep skills in practice.

When evaluating sales training software, look for interactive resources such as:

  • Recorded call libraries
  • Sample scripts/messaging starters
  • Interactive micro e-learning modules
  • Printable cheat sheets
  • Manager coaching
  • Team activities
  • Videos
  • Sales certifications

Reps want skills on-demand. Learning should be easy, fun, interactive, and flexible. The old days of long-form narrated slides and sales training videos are over. Anyone who has clicked their way through to the final test (or let it run in the background while doing email) can attest to the fact this isn’t engaging or effective.

Again, look for sales training software to engage your management team as well as the learners. New skills and a culture of development live and die on your front lines. Does the software provide manager resources?

How about fast-reference cheat sheets, coaching guides, or contest ideas? Is it nimble enough to allow quick reference before a big call or team meeting?

Get your sales managers involved in testing your top choices.

Are you looking for the best inside sales training programs?

Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps and managers.


sales training and enablement budget

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Why You Need a Sales Training and Enablement Budget for 2024

Tons of amazing sales trainers and enablement folks fell victim to RIFs because of this year’s slow economy.

It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, right? We all know that when companies cut spending, training is one of the first things to go.

I’m here to talk to the progressive leaders who are seeing things turn around and planning for next year.

I beg you, please budget – or over budget – to bring your trainers and enablement people back so you can focus on reinvesting in your employees.

READ: How to Budget for Sales Training

Before the economy went south, we were fighting for talent (hello, Great Resignation). 

And what were these people looking for? Hint: Not just a paycheck.

  • They want career growth
  • They want learning opportunities 
  • They want a chance to do good
  • They want a boss they don’t hate
  • And, of course, they want more money 🙂

Then, we cut their learning.

Oh, and then we left them at home on an island with a swamped sales manager drowning in Slacks and emails and without the ability to listen to peers to learn how to do their jobs.

Folks, we have a crisis ahead of us.

DOWNLOAD: Sales Team Retention Survey

That’s why I’m here to offer you the chance to get ahead of the problems that are coming.

  • Plan ahead for 2024 training budgets
  • Bring back your trainers/enablement folks
  • Do more than buy video-based learning (it doesn’t work, trust me)
  • Buy reputable training content (check out The Sales Bar)
  • Train your managers (they’re the key to motivating reps)

Sellers are struggling. Our close rates are going down, our engagement rates are going down, and satisfaction rates are going down, this isn’t a coincidence. We quit training them and put them on an island with busy managers (who can also use some skills).

Do your future self a favor, and get back on track with enabling people to succeed. They need that investment so they can get these wins, be successful in sales faster, hit quota sooner, and stay longer.

Not sure what you should budget for sales training? Email me at LB@factor8.com and I’ll share some stats in the industry that will help you hit goal and be best-in-class. 

Are you looking for sales training?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


sales training technique

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Associative Learning: Why It’s the Best Sales Training Technique

Last week, I soapboxed about how videos aren’t training sellers anything (read that post here).

So today, I’ll share a learning strategy that ACTUALLY works if you really want to use a new skill (or want your team to try it)…

“Associative Learning” – wait! Don’t go to sleep!

This theory is why everyone says, “Oh, you’re like Sandler” to me about my training company.

It’s also the reason your college lectures were SO BORING:

Adults learn by relating new knowledge to older knowledge and to experiences.

That’s it. The whole magic.

We’ve got to talk about it. We’ve got to know where to “file it” in our brains.

  • Early call rapport-building is like when you met your freshman roommate
  • Late call bridging to the next call is when you asked her out again before the first date was over
  • Getting a decision-maker on the phone is like getting to first base 😉

Your amazing new software with zero competitors – “OH, so it’s like Ambition had a baby with Gong.” Don’t be offended, at least they’ll remember what you do.

Here’s why it works (for my fellow training nerds):

The “Associative Learning Rule” is the theory behind the phrase “Synapses that fire together, wire together.” It explains that brain cells grow stronger by sending off impulses at the same time, therefore, connecting them and overall growing stronger. When connections grow stronger, learning has taken place.

It’s why your video-based “learning library” is a waste of money. I get it, they’re easy, cheap, repeatable, and scalable – but nearly worthless when it comes to helping your team retain knowledge – let alone use it on the job to pick up the phone and sell something.

Big takeaways:

  1. Don’t think that telling or showing a video will result in behavior change
  2. Create opportunities for your team to talk about what they’re learning and tell their stories
  3. Use your LinkedIn Learning budget to hire a trainer or a training company that can interact, workshop, and actually help sellers apply new skills on the job

(Now, if only I knew a great sales training company… Seriously, if you’re looking for sales training techniques that actually work, contact us here.)

Want to learn more sales training techniques?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


video sales training

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Why Sales Training Videos Don’t Work

Calling All Leaders Training Sellers! 

There’s something wild happening in the sales training industry right under our noses, and it’s severely impacting the skill level of your front-line sellers. Truth: Sometimes I’m part of the problem.

Riddle me this, my friends:

If it takes 8 meaningful interactions for a buyer to take action (Salesforce) or 900 digital touches before a major purchase decision (Google), then…

Why do we expect sales reps to try a new skill after watching one video? 

Video learning is as passive as it gets (not that anyone ever checked email while playing a training video) and yet we’re “training” sellers with this single touch (not even eight touches like SFDC says we need. Video alone should take hundreds, right?)

Getting a seller to try a new skill = getting a buyer to make a purchase. 

And a 30-minute training video = a single commercial.

In other words, sales training videos alone don’t work – they’re not effective in teaching skills. In fact, I’m going to climb up a little higher on my soapbox and say… 

Video-based sales training is NOT ACTUALLY TRAINING.

It’s entertainment. “Edu-tainment” at best. In our marketing vs. sales analogy, training videos would be the equivalent of content marketing. Its purpose is to brand, to “passive touch”, and to warm a prospect. 

READ: 10 Signs Your Sales Team Needs Sales Training

Unfortunately, not a lot of leads convert from content alone. Especially from a single blog or ad. This is where marketers share the stat that it takes eight “meaningful interactions” before someone will take action. And sales leaders get that “meaningful interactions” are best driven by the sales team – things like asking the right questions, qualifying, customizing the pitch, applying the solution to their world, showing value, etc.

Training works the same way. What we’re selling is a behavior change – the breaking of one habit and the installation of another. Let’s say the goal is to stop sellers from prematurely pitching as an example. We want to replace the habit with a new one like asking prospects 5 questions before delivering a custom pitch.

A great webinar or video on the subject will at best introduce this concept or maybe passively gain some attention or buy-in to the idea. Great first step!

READ: What Makes Good Inside Sales Training?

But as leaders, it is irresponsible of us to leave it there. We left off the entire rest of the learning cycle!  If your training is only (or primarily) video-based, then your learners are missing:

  1. If and how the idea applies to them
  2. When in the sales cycle it’s happening
  3. Which behaviors they do today that they need to stop
  4. How to write better questions
  5. When to ask new questions
  6. What to do when they get the answer
  7. How to ask the questions confidently
  8. How to bring up the pitch
  9. When to bring up the pitch
  10. Practice and support doing this over and over until it’s a habit

The most important parts of training to gain behavior change are missing. Don’t even get me started on maintaining that behavior (heard of the forgetting curve?)

Here’s the hard truth: If your training does not include an opportunity to try the skill, customize the application of the skill, share examples of the skill being done in different situations, practice using the skill, or feedback on the execution of the practice, then I’m sorry to tell you that you’re not training. You’re entertaining.

READ: How to Level Up Your Team with Sales Training

It’s gotten harder to influence buyers to take action with all the “noise” out there, right? Your sales teams are right in the middle of all that noise, and the younger generation is accepting video training as complete. It’s up to us to do it better. It will be a competitive differentiator for those who do.

Please do yourself, your managers, and your salesforce the favor of checking. Here are some questions to ask your training/new hire/enablement team:

  1. What percent of our new hire (or ongoing/career path) training lessons are video-based? 
  2. What do we do after the video?
  3. When do they customize and practice the skill?
  4. Who gives feedback on the execution of the skill?
  5. What actions are being done to keep it alive?

Sales enablement leaders and trainers, I know you feel me. You’ve been preaching this for years, and you could chart out where video lands on Bloom’s taxonomy and how much real estate is between a video and the confident application of the skill. Need some buy-in? Send this blog, and then go ask your sales leaders these five questions:

  1. What are you doing to teach new hires basic selling skills?
  2. How much of their training is video or webinar/zoom-based (aka a “talking head”?)
  3. What percent of their time in training is spent listening to live calls or practicing the skill?
  4. What tools do the managers use to reinforce the training?
  5. Have you taught managers how to coach and reinforce the skills?

READ: How to Find the Best Inside Sales Training Company

Let’s all do this better. There are too many young salespeople failing out of sales. Very few get to sit next to a rockstar to soak in how it’s done. It’s up to the sales and enablement leaders to demand better skills training! I’d LOVE to share how we built 10-15 interactive touches into our training at Factor 8. If you have teams of front-line digital sellers or managers, please let us show you our methodology and our results.

Want more information on why sales training videos don’t work?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


Top Virtual Sales Training | Good Virtual Sales Training | Factor 8

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What Is Good Virtual Sales Training?

Now more than ever the world needs good virtual employee development. Enablement leaders are scrambling to take face-to-face employee training programs online and sales leaders are stretching themselves thin plugging holes to engage their people, coach, and level up. But we’re all circling around a central problem:

Most e-learning sucks.

If you’ve ever let a recorded PowerPoint play in the background while doing email…

If you’ve ever clicked forward ten times to get to the quiz…

If you’ve wished that the “Fluff Narrator” could be set to 1.5x speed…

You get me.

For ten years I resisted moving Factor 8 curriculum online for these very reasons. It’s boring. It isn’t interactive. It doesn’t pertain to me and my job. And here’s why:

It isn’t how adults learn.

Even if you aren’t a training geek, you’ve probably heard of adult learning principles. In short, it means that as grown-ups we want to participate in our learning. We need to relate new information to past information and share our experiences. We want the Subway model (“more lettuce, no mayo”), not the Burger King model (“#1 please”).

If you are hunting for great virtual learning or building it yourself, allow me to share best practices I learned while converting our sales and sales leadership curriculum from face-to-face workshops to our virtual offering The Sales Bar.

#1 – Go Micro. “Microlearning” is a training geek term that means small bites or, “If I can’t participate in the learning, for God’s sake, keep it short.” Fifteen minutes should be the maximum time for any module (or learning chunk).

#2 – Vary the Modalities. The modality is the learning format. We use interactive e-learning (more below), video, activities, reading, cheat sheets, and actual skill demonstrations using audio or video. There are different types of learners out there and recorded PowerPoint and video don’t address them all. Kinesthetic learners need to touch it, type it, write it, sort it, and more. This is where most training fails. (BTW, everyone’s favorite feature is the real calls that show the good, bad, and ugly in real (redacted) sales calls.) Here’s a screenshot example of all the different modalities in just one module:

#3 – Make E-Learning Interactive. The reason we can let bad training play in the background is that it doesn’t require us to be present. Interactive training means the learner is choosing his own adventure and touching the content. At Factor 8 we never go more than five pages without interaction. For example, learners click to see more or hear a sample, drag and drop, slide the scale, make a choice, or type in an answer. Interactivity not only keeps learners present and engaged, it is the only way to achieve higher-level learning objectives (read on dear friend…).

#4 – Go Higher with Objectives. Bear with me and my training hat for a moment, but there’s a taxonomy or ranking of learning objectives called Bloom’s taxonomy. If you want learning to be applied on the job, you must get past “remembering and understanding” and get into analyzing, evaluating, and creating. This starts with good learning objectives/training goals and is achieved by getting learners to interact with the data. Don’t just recall it, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with it. (that last part may not be a technical term as much as my term). This is why a company selling you a series of videos as e-learning misses the mark.

#5 – Layer in Live Interaction. The interactive e-learning goes to the next level when you layer in live interaction. Here is where you customize, apply, practice, and role-play. We do this after every 1-2 online modules with a live virtual instructor course. We also do it by assigning activities before and after this live session. It might be to write their own sales messaging, record a good call, or count successful outcomes trying a new skill. It bridges the gap between theory and reality and it’s the only way to get learners to own applying and using the new skills – giving actual behavior change a real shot. Bonus note for trainers: this is how you can make your “generic” virtual training customized for different internal clients.

#6 – Involve Leaders. A Training Magazine study a few years ago researched deeply into what makes training stick or not. Answers #1 and #2 had nothing to do with the quality of the training and everything to do with what the learner’s boss said before the training (#1) and after the training (#2). “Forget what you learned, here’s how it really works…” is an example of this not going well. Involve the leaders not just by making them attend, but try having them partner to kick off the training, give input in the needs analysis to build the training, and by assigning them work after the training. We built Leader Toolkits to accompany every module that includes call coaching forms to grade the skill in real calls, a coaching cheat sheet to help them ask the right questions during call coaching, and even activities and an implementation guide to help them roll it out and keep skills alive afterward. Here’s a sample:

Ok, my top 3 tips turned into six, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. In the end, I’m enormously proud of what we built in The Sales Bar and I hope it’s helped you picture a new level of good for virtual instruction. If you’ve seen something here you like and you need virtual sales training for sales reps, sales managers, or sales leaders, click here to learn more about The Sales Bar for your team. It took us two years to build this and we’re not done yet. If you’re just starting, you can save time by outsourcing the sales curriculum to us and focus instead on getting your product, process, and new hire orientation curriculum online internally. 

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Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


10 Reasons to Be Excited About The Sales Bar

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10 Reasons to Be Excited About The Sales Bar

If you haven’t heard yet, we’re telling you now! We at Factor 8 have officially launched a brand new e-learning platform where your reps and managers can practice and refresh those skills they learned in our Factor 8 onsite advisor training sessions! And, we couldn’t be more pumped to share it with you.

“Okay,” you’re thinking, “But why do I care? My teams are already receiving Factor 8’s training.” We’re glad you asked.

Here’s why The Sales Bar could be a big deal for you.

1. Effective and Convenient

Our learners are seeing immediate results. Tom, an SDR leader, says: “Historically, our team gets almost zero callbacks on voicemails. After taking the Factor 8 online course on effective voicemails, we received 25 call backs last week alone!”. Plus, there’s no complicated scheduling. Reps train at their pace whenever they’re free – at home, at lunch, in a box, with a fox…you get the idea. Our anonymous testers are calling it “Easy Online Flexible Training”, and that’s the goal – to make it easier to learn more!

“Historically, our team gets almost zero callbacks on voicemails. After taking the Factor 8 online course on effective voicemails, we received 25 call backs last week alone!”

2. Boosts Engagement and Rretention

Our testers think it’s “Friendly and Fun!” Learners are exposed to multiple styles of learning and have more fun completing training. Because we think learning only one way is boring (and so do your reps and managers!).

3. Measurable Comprehension

Because everything’s recorded digitally, leaders and managers can see exactly which reps are excelling and which need support and where. It’s like your own secret spy cam!

4. Refreshes Skills (Forgotten or Underdeveloped!)

Sales Bar supports the learning that goes on in our onsite training sessions by breaking down the same skills and offering diversified practice activities to keep them up to snuff long after the session has ended. Studies show that regular reinforcement of training is critically important to protecting your training investment.

5. Provides Ongoing Development

You can’t just do training once and expect your reps to continuously improve forever. They need practice and repetition so they can actually see daily improvement at their desks and on the phone. Diane Abraham, Sales Director at RedVector says, “…To me this is what it takes to coach up a team. Not just 4 days in a room but ongoing courses/content with a mix of self guided and manager assigned tasks. We call that blended learning in our world.”

6. Offers Real Results

You don’t want to waste time and budget on a product that doesn’t work! The Sales Bar ensures you experience more growth at end of month. For example, Mike, Director of Telesales, tells us, “We had a significant lift, +19% across the entire team on topline growth for the month of May [1st month using the Sales Bar]” And we like those numbers!

“We had a significant lift, +19% across the entire team on topline growth for the month of May [1st month using the Sales Bar]”

7. Developed by Factor 8

The same award-winning company you trust for all your inside sales training can also provide support when they aren’t there! (Hey, that’s us!) The Sales Bar is designed to supplement our onsite sessions, not work against them. You know us. We know you. You’ll get the best ROI because of it.

8. Easily Updated to Keep with Best Practices

You know as well as anyone how quickly the inside sales industry is changing (Overnight, it feels like). Newer, more effective techniques are being developed all the time, while others simply fall out of fashion. The Sales Bar ensures your employees are always on the cutting-edge. So, your teams are always given accurate information.

9. Offers Dozens of Reference Materials

Psst…it’s okay to cheat sometimes! We know those 3-second, handwritten notes won’t get your reps very far past the onsite training session. So, we’ve decked out The Sales Bar with great cheat sheets, guides, and script samples your teams can use everyday while on the floor!

10. Provides Consistent Information Delivery

Once the onsite training has passed, your sales reps are often on their own to practice and seek out feedback. And the quality of that feedback can vary manager to manager. With The Sales Bar, your entire sales team will receive consistent feedback and reinforcement, so everyone is best equipped to succeed.

The best part? You can try it out for free to see the difference for yourself!

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