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Sales Team Development Plan and Sales Training Budget Guide

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Ultimate Guide to Building Your Sales Team Development Plan and Budget

Building your sales team development plan and sales training budget for the next year can be daunting. That’s why I’ve compiled tips from my 20+ years in the industry to help make this as painless as possible!

Table of Contents:

The Current State of Sales Training

Every year Training Magazine releases its Training Industry report. I read it cover to cover and then pull out some important nuggets of information. 

Here are a few that stood out to me:

  1. Training payroll was down 9% last year – Big shock, right? We’re all in this economy together. We all know people who have lost jobs.
  2. Training hours/per employee was down 8% – Makes sense, we have no one left to train the team.
  3. External vendor spending was up 20% – We cut headcount and realized we still needed training so we hired external vendors.

In today’s sales world, training isn’t just important – it’s critical. We’re short on reps but not on quota, low on training and resources, and everyone’s working from home without role models to learn from. And let’s face it, customers expect more while the flood of (terrible) outreach makes it harder to stand out. 

A buddy of mine who used to be the head of sales at Outreach said it used to take 5-7 touches to get a prospect talking, and now, it’s more than double. The noise is real, selling is harder, and ramp times are stretching while tenures are shrinking. So, stop skimping on sales training. It’s tough out there, and our teams need every advantage.

Why Sales Team Development is Critical

Another reason not to skip out on sales training is these staggering numbers…

  • 98% of reps would stay indefinitely with a company if they received ongoing development. (Ambition)
  • Forbes reported that “Development Opportunities” ranks #1 when Millennials are considering companies.
  • #1 company benefit able to RETAIN top talent = training and development (Factor 8 Retention Survey)
  • #1 company benefit to LURE AWAY top talent = training and development (Factor 8 Retention Survey)
  • Only 50% of reps feel they get the training they need to be successful (Emblaze)

sales team retention

TIP: If your team offers ongoing training and development, make sure your HR/recruiting team incorporates that into your job postings!

Why We Need to Build Skills Faster

Ramp time is everything. The reality today? We’re training a lot of fresh-out-of-college sellers (or non-college grads), and the timeline isn’t working in our favor. It’s taking them 6 months just to hit quota, and by month 14, most are already heading for the door. Think about that, over half of our reps don’t make it past 14 months. That’s a huge investment in time and money that we’re throwing away.

So, how do we change this? We need to get reps to quota faster, plain and simple. When they hit quota sooner, they stick around longer. I’ve built new hire programs throughout my career, and I can tell you, sales training works:

  • At IBM, improving our new hire program cut churn by more than 50%
  • At SAP, our inside sales reps were ramping up faster than the field reps, contributing to a 90% retention rate
  • At Waste Management, it used to take 6 months for reps to make their first sale, we got them their first sale in a week.

Training is the game-changer. When reps feel that early success, they stay. It’s as simple as that.

Seasoned sales leaders know what it was like when we first started out. We didn’t have hand-holding; we figured it out as we went. We manually dialed phones, pressed the record button ourselves, and learned by trial and error. That mindset makes it easy to underestimate how much help today’s reps need. But the truth is, investing in development fixes so many of the issues we see with our teams: from new hires trying to find their footing, to field reps adjusting to virtual, to the small groups left standing after layoffs.

Bottom line: sales skill-building isn’t just nice to have, it’s the key to retention and performance. Let’s start ramping our reps faster and watch the difference it makes.

Top Sales Skills to Train
  1. Call Goals – Reps need help mapping out each step and knowing exactly what the goal of every call should be to keep deals moving.
  2. Running Online Sales Meetings – Virtual meetings are here to stay, so reps need to know how to run them in a way that’s engaging and keeps prospects hooked.
  3. Demos That Don’t Suck – Let’s be real, most demos are a snoozefest. Reps need a game plan for delivering demos that grab attention and close deals.
  4. Planning for Prospecting – Most reps dread prospecting, but training them to prep smarter helps them work faster and get more done in less time.
  5. What Customers Care About – Reps need to know what makes buyers tick and tailor their approach to what matters most to their audience.
  6. Stopping Deals Going Dark Between Calls – Deals tend to go dark when reps don’t know how to keep the momentum. Reps need strategies to stay top of mind and keep deals alive.
  7. Having Engaging Conversations – Every conversation should build trust and move the deal forward. Reps need the skills to make that happen.
  8. Day/Time Management – Most reps spend way too much time not selling. Training them on day management helps them stay out of the weeds and focused on revenue-driving activities.
  9. Gaining Referrals – Referred customers close faster and stick around longer. Reps should be pros at asking for and leveraging referrals.
  10. Voicemails – Great voicemails can boost callback rates by 3-5x. Reps need to know how to leave ones that get results.
  11. Intros – Reps have only seconds to make an impression. A killer intro is non-negotiable.
  12. Value Props (AKA the Pitch) – Too many reps pitch too soon or miss the mark on value. They need to know how to craft and deliver a value-driven pitch at just the right time.

virtual sales challenges

Download: Top Virtual Sales Challenges

Why Budget for Sales Manager Training

Only about 30% of companies invest in training for their managers, and it shows: 60% of managers fail out of their role within the first year. Shocking? Maybe not. Here’s why budgeting for manager development is so crucial:

  • They own every rep
  • They own every customer
  • They own every deal

Most companies pour their resources into reps because that’s where they see immediate ROI. But here’s the thing: while you might have 100 reps, only 5-6 managers oversee all those reps, customers, and deals. And these managers are BURNT OUT, nearly 50% according to LinkedIn.

I learned just how tough it is when I ran into an old colleague who’s now a Sales Director. At a wedding, I joked, “Hey, Chris, you must love this virtual work setup, right? No commute!” He sighed and said, “Virtual is great for everyone except sales managers. It’s rough.” And he’s right. I’ve had every job in sales and I now own three companies, sales management was my toughest role yet.

Burnout is real, and we expect our managers to be like Ted Lasso, coaching, motivating, and making magic happen. But here’s the difference: Ted spends hours on the practice field, with a 10:1 practice-to-game ratio. Your managers? They’re lucky if they get a 1:50 ratio, squeezing in 5 hours of daily calls and maybe 1 hour of weekly training. And that’s without factoring in new hires. My friend Dave said it best: “We give them about 3 weeks of systems training, then they practice on customers.” Yikes.

Ted lives on the practice field; your managers are stranded on an island. And they’re coaching teams of entry-level reps who lack business acumen and are terrified of the phone.

Moral of the story: budget for manager training. Give your managers the support, skills, and development they need to thrive. They’re the key to getting your teams to quota.

DOWNLOAD: Critical New Manager Skills to Master

Building a Better Partnership Between Revenue and Enablement

If you need to partner with enablement or revenue leadership, alignment is key. Early on, I learned that my superpower is the whisperer who can translate between revenue and enablement. That’s why I put together the cheat sheet below. Use it to bridge the gap, get aligned, and make sure you’re speaking the same language to get what you need for your reps and managers.

DOWNLOAD: How to Partner with Busy Sales Leaders

Training Before Tools: The Conversation We Need to Have with Sales Leaders

When talking to sales leaders, emphasize training before tools. Show them the spend, analyze the processes, and start there. Leaders tend to pull one of three levers when tackling problems: people, process, or tech/tools.

  • Process is all about consistency—repeating the right things, the same way, over and over.
  • Tech/Tools focus on efficiency and speed.
  • People are about quality and skills—that’s where we, as enablement leaders, live.

Here’s the issue: leaders are spending double on AI-based tools compared to training. They’d rather buy a shiny new tool than invest in building their team’s skills. Just look at the average number of tools per rep (5-10) and the flood of automated, AI-generated, subpar emails we all get daily. We’re bypassing quality and going straight to consistency and efficiency.

Reps today come with less experience, fewer skills, and more to learn to meet rising customer demands. They don’t have the fundamental selling and communication skills to truly benefit from AI. We need to sit down with our sales leaders and have this conversation: tools are great, but training is essential.

virtual sales challenges

What to Budget for Sales Training and Development

In general, industry standards say you should budget 1-3% of your total annual budget for employee development. But let’s make it easier: budget 2-5% of your employee’s salary for training. And remember, these numbers cover every industry (from forklift drivers to CEOs).

For your sales training budget, we need to be on the higher side—expect sales training cost to be around 3-6% of your reps’ salaries.

Here’s the quick math:

  • Average Sales OTE Salary = $90K x 3% = $2,700 per rep
  • Average Sales OTE Salary = $90K x 4% = $3,600 per rep
  • Average Sales OTE Salary = $90K x 5% = $4,500 per rep

(That’s about $50 for every $1K of salary)

Overall Internal Training Budget

If you’re new to training or enablement budgets, here’s what to ask for based on your company size:

  • Large company average training budget: $16M
  • Medium company average training budget: $1.5M
  • Small company average training budget: $500,000

This is your total training budget, not just for external spend. For external training, most companies spend 10-15% of their total budget.

External Sales Training Budget

Here’s a quick look at what companies are spending on external sales training vendors:

  • Large companies: $1.2M
  • Midsize companies: $120,000
  • Small companies: $75,000

Top External Spends

  • 12% on management training
  • 11% on onboarding
  • 7% on sales training

Other spending usually covers tools, learning management systems, and instructional design.

DOWNLOAD: How to Partner with Busy Sales Leaders Checklist

What’s Being Outsourced?

  • 59% of instruction is outsourced—vendors come in and do the training.
  • 41% is delivered in-house with a vendor-provided curriculum.

And this isn’t changing anytime soon. According to Training Mag, 89% of companies expect these numbers to stay steady.

What Skills Are We Training?

Since the shift to remote work, communication skills have been the big focus (no shocker there). Other areas getting attention include:

  • Business skills
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Gamification
  • Course design
  • DEI initiatives

DOWNLOAD: Sales Training Vendor Partner Checklist

Top Challenges for Training and Enablement Leaders
  1. Lack of resources
  2. Low learning engagement (cue gamification!)
Sales Training Budgeting Tips
  1. Make It an Annual Line Item. You’ve got a budget for recruiting and tools, so why not training? Your managers need this to keep their teams engaged.
  2. No Budget? Get Creative. Re-route spiff funds or tap into your tools budget. I know sales leaders who took a rep headcount and turned it into a coach/trainer role, making every rep better—and they saw higher ROI.
  3. Budget MORE. If any of the following apply to you, plan to budget 1.5-3x:
    • Major GTM, strategy, or channel change (e.g., going virtual)
    • Big competition, industry, or product change
    • No training in over a year
    • Teams have gone hybrid or remote
    • Increased or new goals
  4. Hire a Development Resource. If you’re a startup wondering when to hire a trainer, aim for when you have 25-50 employees.
  5. Remember, Good Training Takes Time. It can take someone at the manager or director level 6-18 months to build a solid onboarding program (consider outsourcing for sales, systems, etc.).

How to Get Approval for Your Sales Training Budget

If you want to secure budget for sales training, the key is to show ROI or projected ROI. Here are some powerful stats to back you up:

  • 2x Profit per Employee – Companies that prioritize training see double the profit per employee compared to those that don’t (HR Magazine). 
  • 2x Income per Employee – Companies that offer thorough training earn double the income per employee compared to those that skimp on training (ATD). 
  • 50% Faster Time to Quota – Good training can slash onboarding time to quota by 50% (Training Magazine). 
  • 63% Improvement in Manager Performance – Teams with managers who receive development see an average of 63% performance improvement (CSO Insights). 
  • 353% Sales Training ROI – Sales training delivers an impressive 353% ROI (Highspot, NH University). 

Use these stats to build your case, and don’t forget to show how investing in training impacts the bottom line, whether that’s shortening ramp time, boosting rep performance, or improving retention.

sales team retention

Maximizing Your Sales Training ROI

If you’re investing in sales training, make sure you’re squeezing every drop of ROI out of it. Here’s how:

  1. Go Beyond New Hire Training – A lot of places crush it with new hire training but stop there, which means reps are out there struggling and figuring it out solo. Space it out! Even if you have limited training time, don’t pack it all upfront.
  2. Train Managers First – This is huge. Why? Because better-trained managers mean better interactions with reps. Remember, reps join companies but leave bosses. When managers understand what good training looks like, they engage more, coach better, and partner with you to drive development.
  3. Get Custom – Find the sweet spot between speed and personalization. Off-the-shelf training is fast, but built-from-scratch takes too long. Go for custom solutions that let you tailor without sacrificing speed.
  4. Slow Your Roll – You can’t pour everything into their heads at once. Just-in-time training is key. Trim down your new hire program, so reps don’t feel overwhelmed. Bring them back for more at months 1, 2, and beyond. This keeps them confident and builds skills over time.
  5. Use Interaction, Not Video – Videos alone won’t break habits or change behavior. True training needs interaction and real practice. Read more on why video training isn’t real training here.

READ: How to Measure Sales Training ROI

What Does Good Inside Sales Training Look Like?

Most companies are training internally for only 4-5 hours a month, and that number has dipped from 5 to closer to 4 over the past year.

  1. NOT Just Company/Product Training – Product and systems training isn’t enough. Focus on tactical skills that help reps build their careers.
  2. Professional Trainer or Curriculum – Don’t keep it all in-house. Bringing in a pro adds credibility and expertise.
  3. Training AND Coaching – Know the difference and make sure both reps and managers are part of it. Training is learning new skills; coaching is applying and reinforcing them.
  4. Learners Love Certifications – Give them something to show off and add to their LinkedIn. It makes them proud and keeps them engaged.
  5. Go Beyond the Classroom – Spice it up with huddles, meetings, and contests. Make it fun!
  6. Involve Your Leaders – Manager buy-in is crucial for making training stick. When leaders are part of new hire training, onboarding, and coaching, reps take it more seriously.
  7. Make It Easy for Leaders to Coach – Fast and simple is key. That’s why we built The Sales Bar at Factor 8. Managers who spend their weekends creating training content don’t have the bandwidth. They’re already juggling too much, and half of them are burnt out.
  8. LinkedIn Learning (Alone) Doesn’t Count – Watching videos isn’t training; it’s edutainment. People forget 50% of what they hear by the end of the day and 90% by the end of the week. True training requires practice, application, and reinforcement to make skills stick.
Forgetting Curve
Smart Spends vs. Money Wasters

Before you drop money on sales training, make sure it’s going to the right places:

Where to Spend Your Money:

  1. Customization – If you’re using an external training company, check how much they customize. Have them show you what’s tailored and how.
  2. Measure Baselines First – Always know your starting point to prove ROI. This protects your budget. If managers aren’t giving you data, go straight to Ops.
  3. Ongoing Reinforcement vs. Events – One-time events create a short buzz, but everyone reverts back afterward. Invest in long-term partnerships to keep training from becoming just a “flavor of the month.”
  4. Manager Training – Managers are key to keeping rep skills alive, but they need to be trained on how to do that effectively.
  5. On-Demand Tools – Make it easy for managers with tools like coaching guides and activities.
  6. Live Interactive Sessions – eLearning can be boring when it’s just talking heads. Make it engaging with real interactions, live call reviews, and fun elements to keep energy high.

Where Not to Waste Your Money:

  1. Not Involving Managers – Manager buy-in is essential to make sure they reinforce what reps learn.
  2. Managers Owning All Training – Most managers aren’t great trainers (I know because I was one!). It’s not their core skill, so don’t leave training entirely to them.
  3. Talking Head Video e-Learning – Videos alone don’t change behavior. You can’t just tell someone what to do and expect it to stick.
  4. One-Stop eLearning Libraries – More content doesn’t mean better content. Massive libraries may seem like a bargain, but they often lack impact.
  5. SKO Training – SKOs are great (I’m here for the speaking gigs!), but they’re mostly edutainment. They inspire and motivate, but real training? Minimal. Use SKOs for hype, not skill-building.
  6. Training Before Changing Expectations – If you haven’t adjusted expectations, comp plans, rewards, or systems that might block behavior change, you’re throwing money away.
Virtual Sales Training Checklist

If you’re investing in virtual training specifically, make sure it checks these boxes for maximum effectiveness:

  1. Interactive – Get Hands Dirty Every 5 Slides
    Don’t let your training turn into a snooze-fest. Make sure there’s interaction at least every 5 slides. Whether it’s a poll, a Q&A, or a quick discussion, keep it engaging. Videos alone don’t cut it—videos are not training!
  2. Micro – Nothing Over 20 Minutes
    Break it down into bite-sized pieces. Reps lose focus with long, drawn-out sessions. Keep each module under 20 minutes to ensure attention stays sharp and retention stays high.
  3. Mid-Level Bloom’s Testing – Scenario-Based Interactions
    Test more than just knowledge. Use interactions that challenge reps to apply what they’re learning. Scenario-based questions are perfect for this—they show how well reps can use their skills in real-world situations.
  4. Multi-Modal – Engage All the Senses
    Use a variety of formats to keep reps interested and involved. Incorporate call samples for listening, scripts and templates for reading, and hands-on practice for doing. This multi-modal approach ensures reps learn through different channels and retain more.
  5. Fun & Casual – Make it Entertaining
    Training doesn’t need to be serious 24/7. Add some humor, informality, and competition to the mix. Gamification, leaderboards, or friendly contests make training more enjoyable and motivate reps to stay engaged.
  6. Involve Managers – Provide Toolkits and Tailored Paths
    Your managers need to be part of the training process. Equip them with toolkits and separate training paths to help them reinforce what reps are learning. Include live sessions that focus on coaching and skill reinforcement. And don’t forget success measurements—tracking progress helps keep everyone accountable and shows the impact of the training.

Crafting a sales team development plan and a sales training budget is no small task, but with the right approach, it can unlock your team’s potential and set them up for success in the year ahead. Ready to take the next step? Let us help you create a winning plan and budget! Schedule a call with us today to get started!

Is sales training included in your budget?

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


sales training budget

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How to Budget for Sales Training

Sales Training Budget: Getting Started

Employee development is more critical than ever as our incoming sales reps have less experience and fewer skills, yet our customer expectations and the technology we’re required to master are on the rise. 

The best practice is to budget for sales training each year alongside your normal recruiting and tech line items. Now more than ever, “Training is something you do, not something you did.” 

Don’t be one of the sales leaders who wait for a budget surplus, a BHAG goal, or a massive GTM shift to train. Today’s generations prioritize career development ABOVE their paychecks. 

READ: Why You Need a Sales Training and Enablement Budget

So hats off, leader! You’re ahead of the game by searching for annual sales training budget amounts in this blog.

Why Budget for Sales Training?

Because many of us slashed or froze headcount and training budgets in 2023 and 2024, we recommend that planning for 2025 should be based on 2022 budgets. Before the economic uncertainty, we saw organizations spending more on employee development. This was driven by increasing customer expectations, shrinking pools of available talent, and a resounding demand by the employee base.

In 2022, the average company budgeted approximately $1200/per employee for professional development annually – up about 14% over the previous year. Keep in mind, that this average number is for all employees – from forklift driver to CEO. Not a surprise, but services and manufacturing industries reported the largest budget increases, whereas government, education, and nonprofits largely stayed the same or decreased. 

Growing customer demands = growing training demands.

We expect to see these numbers come down in the 2024 Training Industry Report with the widespread layoffs, but we anticipate a resounding rebound in 2025 for two reasons:

  • Sales leaders saw the evidence of their untrained workforces in 2023 and 2024. Our time to ramp to quota is still longer than pre-pandemic (or non-remote) days, and the majority of sellers missed quota – even after trimming the fat. The statistics vary by resource, but in 2023 approximately 50% of sellers hit quota vs. the normal average of approximately 70%. 
  • The pendulum is shifting back to quality conversations over a cadenced quantity of messages. Many believe we’ve come as far as we can with the written cadence, and all evidence now points to the need to refresh and improve the human interaction between prospect and seller. This is underlined by the overwhelming feedback that sellers today lack phone confidence and business conversation skills – two attributes we can’t solve with technology alone. 

How Much Does Sales Training Cost?

Average spend on annual training per FTE is 1-3% of the total annual budget or 2-5% of the salary budget. That’s about $50.00 per $1000 of salary. If your team is new, only remote, shifting, or hasn’t had hands-on sales development for six months, aim slightly above average:

Six percent of salary = $60.00 per $1000 of salary

$100K employee = $6000/year | $60K employee = $3600/year

Remember, the benchmark is an average across all industries and employee types – landscapers, fast food workers, and CPAs. If customer experience and loyalty are critical to you, go higher. And, if your industry is complex or your product is early in the lifecycle, go higher. If you’re competing like mad for talent, go higher.

One source says sales jobs average 20% higher than the industry average, meaning 6-7% of their salary. 

At Factor 8, our per-employee costs (for under 1000 employee companies) to outsource one year of sales development (onboarding to upskilling) comes in at the middle of this budget range – depending on services and other factors – again validating the research. 

How Often Should You Train Your Sales Team?

In 2022, the average organization provided about 5 hours of training per month or a total of 64 hours a year. If you haven’t trained since new hire onboarding, you’re lagging well behind average. This number is up since 2021 when we averaged 4 hours a month. 

We theorize that this increase is driven by two sources: Remote workers and ineffective remote training. 

With most of our teams still working remotely or hybrid, we are hit from two sides when it comes to learning: 

  1. We’re missing the “OTJ” passive shadowing opportunities of overhearing our peers.
  2. The ineffectiveness of remote training as compared to in-person. “Zoom fatigue” is real and an unengaged learner does not make big behavior changes (kind of like an unengaged buyer). 

Factor 8, provides sales training for virtual sellers and sales managers and we do so both in-person and virtually. I can tell you firsthand that it is taking us more remote sessions to get our normal increases in connection and conversion rate results we normally see in just a few hours when onsite. 

By the way, like the last ten years, most companies are increasing budgets for manager training the most (although this group still typically falls underneath “onboarding” as the training department’s top priority). 

If your enablement department isn’t prioritizing the development of your sales management team, consider allocating your budget to outsourcing this critical training. 

How Many Sales Trainers Do You Need?

Most companies under 1000 learners employ 1 trainer for every 80-100 learners. The exception to this rule is for start-ups where we recommend budgeting for the headcount at around 50 learners if you’re on the way up. 

When beginning an enablement effort, your team literally has everything to build. Digital selling skills can be outsourced, as can some systems training, but the product, services, process, and customer acumen training has to come from within. Remember, for every hour in the classroom, there’s someone spending between 3-10 hours creating that learning interaction (and please don’t get me started on the difference between training and telling! 😉)

If you’re in build mode, I recommend a management to director-level staffer and 1 year of time before your onboarding program begins to produce reps hitting quota in industry average timelines (around 6 months, depending on role). 

Why Invest in Sales Training?

Employee development and career advancement are 2 of the top 3 things millennials search for when accepting jobs. And only 50% of reps think their company provides them with the training they actually need to be successful.

More great news, the American Society for Training and Development cites companies who invest in training their people achieve a 24% higher profit margin compared to those who don’t invest.

It’s much more expensive to recruit and replace (on average 200% – 600% of salary vs. 6% – 7%).

virtual sales challenges

Justification and Benefits of Sales Training

Here’s some great research to help you justify the spend:

Both HR Magazine and ATD sites double the profit per employee that prioritizes training (priority = double the spend of not a priority). In fact, companies who invest a minimum of just $1500/employee will see 24% higher profits.

CSO Insights proved a 63% average improvement across teams where the manager was getting development (that’s average you guys…what would happen with an 85% increase on entire TEAMS?)

And great onboarding can cut a new hire’s time to quota in HALF. That could be 1-2 extra months of productivity on an already-shrinking rep lifespan. Worth it!

Again, I can validate these findings. Over twelve years of partnering with BDR, AE, AM, and management teams across thousands of companies, we’ve seen lifts from 30-300%, with a huge percent of teams paying for the training before it’s even over with increased leads, pipeline, close rate, etc.

If you need an ROI model to get the spend, I recommend showing a 15% lift over about 90 days post-training if you’re still doing event-based training.

READ: How to Measure Sales Training ROI

You can expect bigger spikes with face-to-face training, but longer-sustained skills with a long-term blended approach. Overall, if you can’t show at least a 5-10% lift, it probably isn’t worth the investment.

Not sure it will work? Do it anyway and measure the results. Remember this?

A recent Ambition study surveyed sales reps about training and 98% of them said they would stay with a company indefinitely if they got ongoing development.

IBM recently shared that employees who feel they cannot develop in the company and fulfill career goals are 12X more likely to leave.

Truth is, sales reps know less than they did 10 years ago and our customers expect more. If you haven’t added a development line item by now, you’re in trouble. If you haven’t increased it in the past five years, it’s time.

And, if it’s been more than a year since you provided training, increase your number.

Need help building your sales training & development plan?

Click here to watch our session on “How To Build Your Training & Development Plan” to learn what industry spend is for sales training, the critical skills you need for every sales role, how to partner with your sales training organization, and more!

Is sales training included in your budget?

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


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How to Measure Sales Training ROI

Training geeks will tell you there are four traditional ways to measure sales training ROI and the impact it has on an organization. It’s called “The Kirkpatrick Model.” In my experience, this model only includes two measurements that sales leaders actually care about. I’d like to add a few alternate levels to consider.  

Level 1 is Learner Feedback. The smile sheet has more to do with liking the trainer or getting fed than the impact, and the quiz results are more about short-term memory than anyone’s understanding of how to actually apply skills.

Level 2 is Observation. What happens on the job? It’s observed behavior change, and it’s subjective. “Manager, did Bob use his new skills?” Manager: “Um, I haven’t been listening to Bob all day long, boss. I have 14 people and 200 emails to read…” You get the struggle.

Level 3 is Information Retention. New skills should be fresh in their minds and easy to execute the day after training, but what about 2 months later? 6 months? 1 year? Over time, people are known to fall back into bad habits. Truly valuable training provides easy-to-use (and memorable) skills that stick with the learner over time. 

Level 4 is ROI. Calculate sales training ROI by taking the results that went up and dividing by the cost of the sales training. Naturally, there are flaws here, like, “When do we stop measuring?” “What about soft costs of missed revenue?” “What if results fall off?” and “Training wasn’t all we changed that quarter!”

When I advise sales training leaders, I help them solve it all with two little words:

“Contributed to”

Last quarter, new vendor training contributed to a 25% increase in meeting close rates and a 34% increase in show rates. Extrapolated over the period of a year and using our standard meeting to deal close rates, that means an additional 245 meetings and 66 closed deals or $3.1 million in revenue. That’s a 31x return on investment of the $100K training investment. (That’s also expressed 3,100% folks and it’s BIG. It’s also a real case study, BTW).

So, sales training ROI is a big deal. When calculating, the bottom line is nearly always revenue or profit, but there are little wins along the way. Look for bumps in any of the following (and celebrate!):

  • Talk time
  • Conversations over 2:00 minutes
  • Close percentage
  • Show rate
  • Pipeline velocity
  • Average deal size

Combine these as I did over a time period of a year and the numbers get big fast. Even a modest increase in a close percentage or deal size will bring double-digit ROI.

Now for the new stuff. In today’s climate, there are 5 more sales training ROI measurements I advise you to start tracking:

  1. Applicant increase
  2. Tenure
  3. Promotion rate
  4. Employee satisfaction (a KPI to tenure)
  5. Ramp time

Yes, nearly all of these are about helping show the link between the career development you offer the new generation of sellers and how many of them come to work for you and stay.

If you’re offering ongoing development, a training budget, a certification, or a partnership with a premier vendor, ADVERTISE THAT (you’ll attract the new generation of sellers!). Then start tracking the average number of applicants over the previous months, but don’t compare pre-COVID (that’s apples vs. bacteria).

Great development keeps people in companies longer. So count what percentage of promotions are now happening internally and whether your investments are moving the needle of employee satisfaction. 

There’s a direct correlation between employee engagement (and happiness) and their performance. If they’ve been with your company for 6 years and are consistently meeting or exceeding quota, chances are they’re happy in their role and less likely to leave. Have they missed quota a few times now, or are they not as engaged with their customers as they once were? Then it might be time for a 1:1 to see what is going on behind the scenes. 

Finally, my holy grail: ramp time. How long does it take a new hire to get to quota? This critical number not only impacts revenue right where it counts but also determines whether a rep stays or not. Here’s an insider tip:

People who feel successful at work will keep coming back to work.

No, not Earth-shattering, but it might be if you reverse-engineer it. 20 years ago I revamped a new hire sales training program for a computer manufacturer. It was taking reps 9 months to hit their goal. Ouch. (Best practice is 3-6 months and it’s getting longer – we’re now approaching 9 months again) Yes, we took out a bunch of filler courses and implemented my “Just in Time” training approach, but we also did something a little sneaky. We lowered the bar. The VP of Sales and I saw the mass exit happening at six months and we worked together to get reps PAID if they were on track by this point in time. The result? We cut the turnover in half.

Help people win, and they’ll stay and keep winning.

Long story long, employee development has an impact on more than just revenue. There’s a reason training investments are up over 30% as an industry over last year. And if you don’t already have your enablement team running regular reports on these new stats, I suggest you get started or you’ll be late to the party. It may feel like we’re in a war for talent, but I assure you this is only the battle. Use your training investments strategically to attract, keep, and promote your people because this precious resource will become only more scarce.

Want more information on how to measure sales training ROI?

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


invest in sales training

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10 Signs Your Sales Team Needs Sales Training

Your budget is limited. Your needs are not. So when do you know it’s time to invest in sales training for your team?

READ: New Funded Sales Training Program

Here are some easy benchmarks and warning signs to help determine if your sales team needs sales training:

1. Your New Hire Training Doesn’t Include Sales Training. I know, you hired for sales talent. You shouldn’t need to train them. If I had a nickel every time I heard that… Trust me, they need training. Why? Their old company did it differently, the sales motion was slightly different, they love a different methodology, and maybe they were loyal sellers but not great ones. I’ve had 15-year sales veterans in my virtual sales skills classes and often their learning curve is the steepest. (Head here for more info on what good virtual sales training looks like)

virtual sales challenges


2. The Last 4 Classes Were Product Related. If you’re thinking: “I do training all the time!”, I invite you to check the content. Reps are used to getting product/service updates and company updates, but not skill refreshes. Sales skills should be taught in onboarding AND at least once a quarter ongoing.

Think of sales calls as “game day.” How often did you practice before then?

3. There’s Been a Strategy Change. About half of our clients come to us because it’s been a struggle to change behaviors now that ______ has changed. Sometimes it’s a go-to-market strategy, client coverage, or an addition of a product or service line. You get it. What seemed simple in the boardroom can prove crazy-making when trying to align 50 junior reps and their managers. Just remember, telling them in the meeting only opens the door. Most employees don’t have the capacity nor the inclination to then translate how this will change their approach, their conversations, their goals, etc. Tell, TRAIN, then coach.

4. You Just Listened to Sales Calls and Your Ears Are Bleeding. If you’ve recently implemented a conversational intelligence tool like Gong, Chorus, or ExecVision, you probably thought it would be fun to listen to the customer’s voice. By the ninth call recording, I’m willing to bet you summoned your team leads and training liaison and had a serious talk about rep skills. Enter professional sales skills training.

5. You’re Losing Gen Z or Millennials. If the last 3 exits or thanks-no-thanks job rejections were Gen Z or Millennials, check your training package. A recent article cited “opportunities for development and advancement” as the number one requirement for these job seekers. New hire product and systems training won’t cut it if you want to attract and keep today’s talent.

Are you considering alternate hiring pools and need to teach former teachers, retail workers, vets or tradespeople how to sell?

Assign this task to the professionals, your HR trainer is probably not equipped for that heavy overhaul. Alternatively, congratulations on your brilliant strategy. Great training programs will open multiple hiring pools to you that won’t be open to your competition, and I love finding behavioral traits in an existing hire rather than teaching the skills to someone new!

6. It’s Playbook Time! If you’ve grown to the point where it’s time to capture best practices and “how a bill becomes a law” at your shop, I’m guessing you have more than 10 reps but under 50 and you’ve been selling between 1 and 3 years. It’s time to document! Before you do, grab some new best practices from a professional sales trainer. The perfect time is after draft one and before it’s finalized. Invariably, clients who just finished their playbook have gone back to update it with our skills and strategies. If you’re not sure which to do first, I do recommend starting the playbook so that what’s already created can be standardized and uniformly improved with training.

7. Flat Growth. If you’ve used the same conversion ratios the last 2-3 times you’ve done headcount projections, it’s time for some training. In other words, rep staffing isn’t always a quantity equation, you should bank on quality improvements as well. Not sure? Ask yourself how many heads you could save in your budget with a 15% improvement in your top-line conversion metric (whatever that may be). We regularly clock 30-70% improvements allowing sales leaders to lower sales headcount! Shift that spending to your “want” list instead!

Now let’s check in on manager training. Most companies invest in new hire training, then ongoing rep training, and maybe finally manager development. Makes sense, there’s only one for every ten or twenty reps, right? Unfortunately, most reps we promote to manager fail in the first 24 months (50-70% according to the Corporate Executive Board), and they can take down great customers AND reps with them. Here are three signs to check:

8. Your Turnover Is Over 65% or Increasing. If you don’t have annualized employee turnover/exit rates on your dashboard, get them – and by manager. Your star sales managers are keeping their teams and promoting reps rather than suffering high attrition. This is a red flag that you have a struggling manager – perhaps one who hasn’t been taught how to lead people yet.

9. Low Employee Engagement Scores. Consider this a leading indicator KPI of attrition. It is NOT a buyer’s market anymore and if you have a great rep they are actively being recruited out. New generations demand ongoing development opportunities, so be sure you have a line item in your budget every single year. If not, you simply won’t be able to compete for talent.

10. You’ll Be Scaling in the Next 18 Months. If you’ve proven your concept (product fit and funding or even the voracity of digital sales vs. field selling), you’ll be planning to add headcount. When doubling (or more) in size, the critical path is your management team. Sales management training helps provide a consistent rep experience (teams will juggle), a consistent sales process, a consistent definition of what is a good call, consistent performance evaluation, and consistent hiring. I think you’re getting the keyword here. Consistency will allow for a smooth scale. Without it, you’re trying to replicate the Wild Wild West and you’ll experience a spike in rep (and manager) attrition 3-9 months after your hiring waves.

Bonus: Before you scale is also the right time to upgrade your onboarding experience. You’ll need a standard curriculum, testing, wave-based hiring, sandbox systems, and a professional sales curriculum. Do this before tripling the team’s volume in class!

If you’ve found a few signs that your team needs sales training, I hope you’ll reach out and have a conversation. We’re happy to help you decide what skills would help most even if you don’t ultimately outsource to us.

Ready to invest in sales training?

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


sales team development plan

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How to Create A Sales Team Development Plan and Budget

Professional development opportunities are a major factor in the decision to change jobs. That’s according to numerous research papers, including our recent Sales Team Retention survey. So if you want to improve employee satisfaction and stave off attrition, then a sales team development plan must be a top priority. 

By giving your reps a roadmap to build their skills and advance their careers, you give them a compelling reason to stay in your organization. Read on for actionable tips to build the perfect development plan for your sales team. 

Why is sales team development critical?

Sales team development is more important than ever. Ambition found that 98% of sales reps would stay with a company forever if they were given ongoing development opportunities. 

What’s more, companies that invest in sales team development put themselves at a significant competitive advantage by retaining talent. Losing a salesperson costs an average of $115,000. 

Your sales team is only as good as the people on that team. By investing in their development, both as individuals and as a group, you can improve their ability to meet quotas and move the needle. 

How to build a sales team development plan

Sales development doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of a lot of intentional strategy and effort and requires a commitment of resources from the organization. 

As such, it’s important to have a clear plan to get you from Point A to Point B. A cohesive development plan includes role definitions, resources, expectations, and timelines. Here are some steps you can take to develop your own. 

1. Establish a sales development budget

On average, 1–3% of the total annual budget should be earmarked for development. Small to medium businesses are spending more than $77,000 annually on outsourced sales training and development. Large companies spend more than five times as much. 

If you under or over-spend on sales development, that will create bigger problems down the road. Over-spending without generating results will cause you to lose buy-in among executive stakeholders. Under-spending is unlikely to generate positive results. 

By understanding your needs, you can set a realistic budget that suits your goals and needs and, more importantly, moves the needle in the right direction. 

Download our Sales Training Budget Guide to help you determine how much to budget for development.

2. Reallocate unused resources

There’s no point in spending money on tools and resources that no one uses. A great way to invest in development without increasing costs is to look for resources that you aren’t using. Rather than waste those dollars, use them to grow and improve your team. 

3. Identify high-impact opportunities 

Most companies have limited budgets. This is especially true in today’s economic climate. 

The key to an effective sales team development plan is knowing where to spend the most time and money. After all, you want your limited resources to go where they’ll have the greatest impact. 

This is where having high-quality managers makes all the difference. When you support your managers and empower them to make decisions around resource allocation, they can effectively support your sales reps at every stage of onboarding and production. 

Effective managers understand the best delivery methods for training and development. Live in-person and virtual training sessions are both great options for team training. For companies that are local, live training sessions are refreshing in today’s remote-heavy work environment. Getting reps face-to-face for in-person training is worth the cost of the return. For remote companies or spread-out teams, virtual sessions are a great alternative to in-person meetings. For best results avoid pre-recorded training videos. When participants are able to meet in person or join a live virtual session, they feel more engaged and collaborative, which promotes learning. 

4. Prioritize your tools and tech stack

Not all tools and technologies are created equal. For example, many sales teams have a digital resource library—a big expense content bank that no one uses. It’s important, then, to look at your current resources and decide which are actually empowering your team to do their jobs better.

Instead of thinking of technologies by their product class (e.g. “asset management platform”) think of them based on the problems they solve for your organization (e.g. storehouse of information to educate our reps). 

When you break out the mold, you may find other more creative solutions to the problem (e.g. interactive, live training sessions vs. pre-recorded talking-head videos). 

5. Make use of free resources

While it’s important to invest resources in sales development, there’s a wide range of free courses, webinars, and training available online. In an interactive group setting, these resources can be a valuable tool—and they don’t require additional buy-in from budget holders!

However, it’s not enough to simply throw these free resources at a rep without any context or structure. Prepare discussion questions and exercises to test skills during webinars and presentations. 

When reps take part in live discussions and practice the skills they’re learning, they’re more likely to retain and apply them when they hit the floor. 

6. Think outside the classroom 

Training and lecturing are two different things. Lecturing is telling someone how to do something, while training is actually showing them. 

Take new hires out of the classroom so they can see skills being put to use in real-life scenarios and how to put them into action themselves. 

7. Focus on moving the needle

Hiring and training salespeople is an investment. To get the best return on that investment, you can’t treat it as a one-and-done. Skill retention requires applied learning and repetition. 

Don’t waste your investment by neglecting follow-up sessions, coaching, and feedback. Good coaching builds on the skills learned in training and helps reps understand where they are and where they need to be. 

8. Leverage gamification

Gamifying information is an easy way to improve retention and increase problem-solving. New hires who are challenged to solve problems and demonstrate skills outside of the pressure of the sales floor feel safer trying new things. Contests, competitions, and similar tactics help reps use skills in dynamic ways.

Who needs a sales development plan?

You may be wondering: do you even need a sales development plan?

The answer is YES if you want to:

  • Meet quota consistently
  • Retain your team over the long haul
  • Improve morale 
  • Grow and scale your business

Regardless of size, every sales department needs certain skills and information to be successful. A comprehensive sales development plan lays the foundation for your team to build and adopt these skills. 

Reach out to learn more about our customizable virtual sales training programs and get the best out of people. 

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Get the budget you need to keep your team

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Get the Budget You Need to Keep Your Team

Congratulations! The decision to develop your sales reps and managers is a sound one. If you don’t already have battle wounds from our industry’s war for talent, the fight may be coming your direction as our hiring pool shrinks and the demand for digital sellers grows (at a rate of 10-14x traditional sales). 

For most of us this means that our talent is harder to find, harder to keep, and coming to us with less and less experience. In other words, we can’t always count on “buying” the talent — especially at the top of the sales funnel — instead we have to prepare our companies to “build” it.

“We can’t count on buying talent, we must learn to build it.”

According to The Bridge Group, the average tenure of a BDR/SDR role in technology is under 15 months and shrinking. And although best practice is being at quota by month 2, the average is closer to month four to six.  So we’re left with a year or less of productive sales talent and a lot of open reqs. 

So how do we get them up to speed faster and staying longer?  Glad you asked: You train them.

Forbes reported last year the #1 thing Millennials search for from an employer is development opportunity.

Sadly, only about half of Reps rate their companies as providing them with the training to be successful (American Association of Inside Sales 2019).  That means half the folks working for you right now may be looking elsewhere as your read this.

AA-ISP also taught us that only half of us Inside Sales Leaders actually get the budget we need to provide ongoing development for our teams.    

If our industry continues to think of training as something we do when there’s a budget surplus, we simply won’t have the tools and talent we need to attract, ramp, and retain our reps for the foreseeable future.  We’ll literally lose the war for talent.

Here’s how to fix it:

  1. Demand a per-employee training line item in your annual budget.  Ten years ago we convinced the CFO we needed one for recruiting. Five years ago it was tools.  Now it’s got to be training.
  2. Sneak it from a spiff, travel, or tools budget.  Hey, there are learning tools and training is a reward, right?  Sneak it this year and budget for it next year.
  3. Build an ROI case study.  Grab results from your favorite vendor case studies and do the model for your team.  Show seats filled faster, reps ramping sooner, and employees staying longer. Not to mention lifts in conversion, average deal size, and pipeline velocity.  We’ve seen companies increase conversions by 300%. The average is closer to 75%. But try building an ROI model of even half that and plan to over-perform.  
  4. Not comfortable modeling your floor?  Cite industry ROI statistics. Training Magazine re[prt that great sales onboarding can cut time to quota by half.  CSO Insights tells us that management development improves their teams’ percent to quota by up to 107% (with a 63% average improvement).  Where would your floor be if reps hit quota twice as fast or your floor increased quota attainment by 63%?
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What do I budget?

Best practice line item per rep is about $1500 and $2500 per manager.  If you haven’t trained in a while, have lack-luster onboarding, or a big hill to climb with a strategy shift or goal increase, double it.  The average spend across all industries is just under $1000 per person, with IT industries and sales professions trending at or above best-practice spends.

A few more stats to feather your pitch:

  • On average, the Fortune 100 ‘Best Companies to Work For’  list provide 73 hours of training for full-time employees, compared to 38 hours delivered as standard practice by others.
  • The top organizations also had 65% less staff turnover than other organizations in the same sector – partly due to their employee development programs.
  • Sales Architects tells us that 85% of best in class companies use a professional sales curriculum and/or trainer. These companies see reps hit quota faster. 
  • Aberdeen and The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals tell us that a lack of development is a top reason for reps leaving companies. 

All preaching and pitching aside, the absolute differentiator for companies in the next five years will be our ability to develop and retain our current teams + our ability to recruit from diverse hiring pools. Now is the time to create an annual development line item in the budget.   it’s up to leaders like us to fix the development gap with the generations we are hiring, or the scraping sound you hear today as we recruit from the bottom of the barrel will sound a lot more like a puncture as we blow out the barrel itself. 

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how much does sales training cost

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How To Get Budget for Inside Sales Training

If your Inside Sales team is relatively new, chances are you don’t have a defined training budget at your disposal (am I getting warm?). I’d also venture a guess that your somewhat green team could definitely use some inside sales training. (Still warm?) Which means that either:

  1. You’re individually training each of them yourself (ouch!)
  2. You’re sending them to some form of field or other training that doesn’t seem to actually fit
  3. You’re pulling out your hair and ready for some help! (ooh! Now she’s hot! Ha ha)

We’re here to help!

STEP ONE: DETERMINE NEEDS

The average company spends around $1000 / rep / year on training. Companies that score in the “best practices” range for sales spend closer to $2K. This goes right next to your incentives and recruiting budget my friends. Every year. In the meantime, ask for the equivalent of $1750 / Rep. You have some gaps to fill. This should buy you a few days of training per rep.

STEP TWO: FIGHT FOR BUDGET

Enter the Big-Bad–Doesn’t-Want-to­-Spend-Money-On-Your-Silly-Little-Team-Boss:

“Why would I spend money on training! I heard that by the time you back to your job, you’ve lost 90% of what you’ve learned in training and 3 months later the rest is gone too. And by the way, these Reps will be gone in six months anyway, right?” (Whoa Boss Man!)

Don’t panic…we’re gonna get through this. Ready for your side of the negotiation?

You (Superstar Inside Sales Leader): Sure, sometimes that is true (with bad training) but did YOU know that:

  • A recent survey found that 40% of employees who receive poor training leave their positions within the first year (and site “lack of training” as a reason for leaving!)

So providing good sales training will reduce attrition!

  • A second study found that companies with training programs that “exceeded expectations” achieved 94.8% of quota – ten points above companies with mediocre programs (and X points above you today with no training???) – So providing good sales training will raise our performance to quota!
  • Best in class sales training improves individual performance by an average of 20% – So if we raise even 10%, we should recoup ____ $$ and pay for training in X months!
  • 85% of companies rated best in class in Sales use an outside professional sales trainer / curriculum – So we probably should buy this not build it. I’ll do the legwork…

STEP THREE: FIND YOURSELF A VENDOR

So, what does good inside sales training look like? How can you prevent the “fall out”? Check out my recent video for quick tips to get the most from that training budget you fought so hard to get!

Hope this helps you Super Star Inside Sales Leaders out there!
Cheers!

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