10 Actionable Tips for Creating Your Sales Team Development Plan + Budget [“Sales Shot” Workshop]
10 Actionable Tips for Creating Your Sales Team Development Plan + Budget
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
Inside/Virtual Sales Tips
I’m in Sales [Live Event Recording]
I’m in Sales!
[Live Event Recording]
Why Your Salespeople Are Quitting (and How to Retain Them)
Whether you believe in “The Great Resignation” or not, one thing is for sure, there has been a record number of people quitting their jobs in the past year.
It seems like every month this year we received more emails bouncing back and letting us know that “John is no longer with the company.” The more of these responses we got, the more we wondered what was the true cause of this unprecedented mass exodus (and if there is anything we can do to make it stop).
To get to the root of the issue, we surveyed thousands of sales professionals to find the true cause of attrition amongst sales teams and to learn what reps and managers want most from their employers. We received responses from every level of the corporate ladder, from individual contributors up to CEOs. Some of the responses were obvious, some were rather surprising.
Spoiler Alert: Higher compensation is NOT the golden ticket to fixing the retention problem.
In our data, we learned that 63% of reps and managers started a new job within the last year. Yikes, that’s a lot of job changes! Most leaders cited the #1 reason their employees leave was due to lack of competitive compensation. However, both reps and managers listed a lack of training and development as their #1 reason for departing. Looks like we, as leaders, need to make some adjustments to improve sales team retention.
The next surprising stat we found was about coaching. The manager responses state that over 86% of managers were regularly coaching their reps. While the rep responses showed the majority of reps desire MORE coaching than what they’re currently receiving. To us, this communicates that while there may be coaching happening, what’s really missing is quality coaching. Coaching is one of our favorite topics (and the one we have seen provide the greatest impact). Recently, we hunkered down and gave some insight on how to master call coaching and how both reps and managers can prepare for an upcoming call coaching session.
While there were certainly areas where reps and leaders didn’t align, there was one area where all salespeople saw eye-to-eye. At each rung of the corporate ladder, the survey responses told us that reps and managers both want and need more ongoing sales training and leaders agreed that their reps and managers need more training. Sounds like this might be an easy area of opportunity for retention!
Want more insight? Make sure you grab your free copy of our survey results below!
Want to know how to retain your salespeople?
Download our Sales Team Retention Infographic to learn why reps and managers are quitting and how leaders can better retain them.
How to Scale Your Inside Sales Team
In the past decade, inside sales has been out-pacing field sales by a 10-15x ratio. Scalability is a challenge inside sales leaders will continue to face for years to come.
While I normally focus on building your process, today my job is to talk about the people angle. Although, a good half of my people suggestions are process suggestions! Allow me to highlight the top 3 common pitfalls we have all faced when trying to scale your inside sales team and a few outside resources that can help.
Pitfall #1: The success of a massive growth number will live or die in a rep’s ramp time.
Ramp time means something different to each company. It could be time to quota, paying for their overhead, or something unique to you. Whatever your ramp goal, you’ll be creating projections to hit a 1.5x, 3x or even 5x number and you’ll be doing it with a new headcount.
That means your success hinges on the ability of your headcount to:
- Be hired on time
- Be trained on time
- Hit goal on time
Really dig into your new hire training program, and start doing it six months before your first hiring wave. If you haven’t onboarded recently, check out our sales rep onboarding best practices. And if your offices are still remote, brush up on virtually onboarding new sales reps
Pro Tip: Hire a sales-focused training leader NOW. Most new hire training programs need a LOT of work, and the good ones can cut your ramp time by HALF.
Pitfall #2: We don’t change our hiring process.
Even if you previously onboarded an awesome team that is still with you today, your process likely needs a few tweaks before being pressure-tested during scaling. We usually see breakdowns in two key places:
- The pool isn’t as deep any longer. We are in a hiring crisis, folks. Many companies stole great talent when they were new on the scene, but now they’re competing for headcount like everyone else. So even if the number of candidates and job postings are similar, you may find the depth of talent more shallow.
- The hiring and onboarding process wasn’t built for volume and is probably too dependent on your managers (but the slew of new hires on the floor will need them more too!) At launch, these managers had all kinds of time to hire. If you triple your model (then double it for the shallow talent pool), think of how many hours per day they will be in interviews. Ouch!
Pro Tip: Pull hiring out of HR and to a recruiter – even if you need to re-appropriate a sales headcount. You need someone doing passive recruiting on the front end, AND who can handle a phone screen for sales. It’s the only way to free up your managers’ time. Make sure you tie the recruiter’s compensation to the RIGHT hires that align with your goals, instead of fighting a recruiting company’s goal of straight-up bodies. I’ve seen way too many new hire classes filled with “live bodies” by recruiters only to have to rehire a replacement class a month later. Sales leaders, make no mistake, the need to retrain or rehire is how your hiring goals will be perceived in a culture of scale.
Also, check your hiring process. It should look like your pipeline, with your managers involved only toward the final stages. Oh, and let them hire their own team, OK? (Managers, you can send your cash directly to the Factor 8 HQ for that tip).
Pitfall #3: Develop your managers, NOW.
I’m watching a friend’s floor triple in size right now. They’re crazy-successful and swimming in leads. They need a headcount to maximize the revenue. What they’re missing is strong leadership, definitions of what ‘good’ looks like, and consistency among the management team. And folks, it’s being held together with duct tape and rainbows right now. These managers are SO (say it like a teenage girl) green. Everyone runs different reports, they all manage a different sales process, there are seven disparate call methodologies, no one can forecast because pipelines are atrocious, teams are mixed and matched constantly (because managers are leaving the chaos!) and no two are managed the same. I’d say they’re all marching to a different beat, but no one remembered to hire the drummer.
Pro Tip: Hire a drummer…as long as that drummer is a series of documented processes (management cadence, performance improvement, sales handoffs, sales process to name a few). Then, TEACH your managers how to execute against them. You and I both know these guys were reps five minutes ago. They need training. They need help being better leaders (or you’ll quickly wind up back at #1 hiring even more bodies). Reps join companies and quit bosses right? New managers are going to FLAIL in a rapid-growth environment, and your reps will be confused, frustrated, and complain about a lack of development (which also happens to be the number one reason reps leave).
So, save yourself some time and a headache by updating your training program, and getting the professionals to help you with hiring, and developing those managers! I promise, the work now will be worth it once your sales floor is full (and stays that way!).
Want more information on how to scale your inside sales team?
Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).
5 Tips to Maximize Your Sales Training Investment
After you’ve hired a sales training vendor, there are a series of questions you need to answer in order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your sales training investment, like:
- How do I maximize sales training ROI?
- How do I measure training success?
- How do I get results FAST?
Having been both the vendor and the buyer in this equation, I definitely have some insight to share. I’ve made mistakes as the Training Director hiring a sales/sales leadership training vendor, and I’ve had clients do some really smart (and less than smart) things.
Although I could write about this topic forever, I’ve narrowed it down to my top 5 tips to maximize your sales training investment.
1. Customize the Customization. Then customize that. Twenty years ago, I paid a vendor $15,000 extra to customize the training for my company. I spent countless hours sending them examples, marketing data, and websites. I forwarded redacted emails and unpublished case studies. I just KNEW they would get the “real feel” for how special our snowflake was. The result?
The vendor added one half-page sheet to the back of the workbook with two custom role plays. TWO! The pages weren’t even numbered with the rest of the workbook. Total afterthought! Literally, nothing else was custom.
Ready for the vendor flipside? Six years ago we up-leveled all our workbooks for Factor 8. This meant I couldn’t build custom workbooks from scratch anymore for clients (the downside of totally custom is a less professional look – even a few errors). Now each of our course workbooks of about 10 pages has around 15 sections in bold red font that our Advisors tailor prior to delivery. It might be the customer’s language, an industry example, a customer voice example, specific sales objections, etc. During the live interactions, our coaches play their sales calls, coach actual delivery, and will give custom samples/scripts of every skill. That’s customization!
Tip: Get an actual list of what is tailored to your organization, its format, and when/how it is delivered.
2. Require Manager Involvement. Note: I didn’t say attendance. You need attendance AND involvement! Back when I was delivering training in an enablement organization, we were afraid to invite all the sales managers to our training. They were so busy and important (and let’s be honest, a little rude). As I gained more confidence, I would meet with them 1:1 after the training with tips on what we trained and what to look for. As I got busier, I would schedule a 15-minute meeting so I could do this all at once. When I was put in charge, I required them to come AND met with them for 30 minutes afterward.
Guess what? They still couldn’t coach the skills. Sure, they attended the training, but they didn’t participate. They didn’t come and play to win as if they, too, would be graded on their adaption of the skills. They half-listened, did some email, smiled and nodded, and stole the stage as often as possible to give sage advice.
Vendor Flipside: At Factor 8, we meet with managers before the training, require attendance at the training, train the managers on how to coach the skills after the training, give managers 3+ tools to make it easy to support and coach the training, then do a follow-up meeting with the managers on how skills went, AND certify the managers to certify the reps on the skills. It may seem like overkill, but trust me, it works.
Your ROI will be cut in half if your managers aren’t underlying the importance of using the new skills and coaching their execution. Go overboard making sure they are trained, incentivized, and supported by your vendor to do this!
3. Measure Your Heart Out! If you aren’t crystal clear on the results, KPIs, and metrics that should be impacted by the training, then you’re not ready to outsource sales training. (Really, a vendor just said that!) In fact, ask the vendor what numbers they expect to move with this engagement (and don’t hire them if they don’t know!) At some point, you’ll have to show your sales training ROI, so define during the interview stage what success looks like and then go get a 3-6 month baseline on these metrics. As a training manager, I was nervous early in my career to do this. It only took one sales leader saying, “You are not solely responsible for the 35% uptick in XYZ…!” for me to start backing down and measuring success anecdotally or with smile sheets. As I grew in my career, all I did was add two words: “contribute to.” If we measure pre and post, we can all SHARE the credit!
Vendor Flipside: I love a case study. Number one reason I don’t have one on every client? They don’t provide us with their reporting. The leader pulls the trigger on the contract and then sales managers or the enablement team are left to execute and the ask never bubbles to the top. In fact, I’d love to take contracts based on up-side (we get paid when you improve) and have offered it many times in the past, but the baseline metrics and results weren’t available from the client.
4. Get Leadership Involved (more than they are). How do I know they aren’t very involved? I’ve had about 3 clients out of 300 who were. As a training leader, I had about none. Why is this critical? Because your attendees determine how important the training is based on what the leader says, does, and spends money on. Even if you have to write the script for the VP to kick off the meeting and send over the questions they need to ask in their 1:1 meeting afterward, take the time and do it. Otherwise, you may be the flavor of the month.
Vendor Flipside: They’re my favorite three clients ever. And when they ask for anything extra, they get it. I’ve helped them get jobs 10 years later, spoken free at their conferences, and featured them on our blogs. When a leader lends their time, voice, and stature to training, it will literally change the organization’s culture. Help convince them they’ll get more ROI by being involved. Make it easier on them with cheat sheets and reminders. These clients get double their money’s worth.
5. Focus on Long Term. Ever met with an internal client who wants you to train 5 things in 20 minutes? Me too. Try every single sales leader ever. Here’s why: Most people don’t know the difference between telling and training. That’s why their people don’t change their behavior after being told. Folks, if you want people to change what they’re doing, the training will take 5x longer than you want it to AND the support “tail” for the training will be months, maybe even years. Don’t make training an event – studies show they’ll remember about 30% of what is taught. The best leaders get this fact:
Training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do.
Vendor Flipside: Events are fun. They’re low risk and high reward. We often would have better selling days during training than normal days (live calling during training). Lots of energy, buzz, and results. But if that’s all your vendor is doing, reconsider. What about keeping skills alive? Pulling the buzz forward? Seeing skills move from the classroom to the sales floor? 15 years ago we offered a 1-day post-training follow-up. Then 90 days virtual. Now we do one-year contracts. It’s the right thing to do and the right way to do it. Doesn’t fit the SKO? Hire a speaker instead.
If you’re evaluating sales training, we’re here to help. Fill out the form or email info@factor8.com and let us know how we can help.
Want more information on how to maximize your sales training investment?
Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).
What Makes Good Inside Sales Training?
Whether you’re shopping around for external sales training vendors or working with your internal training department, knowing what good inside sales training looks like is the first step to making sure your training is checking all the key boxes.
We’ve outlined a few of the most important considerations to keep in mind when deciding on your inside sales training.
First Thing’s First: Decide What Success Looks Like
This shouldn’t be a surprise to any sales leaders out there — but what makes a 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 deciding on what those goals are to you — whether it’s sales units sold or market share gained.
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 AE’s.
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, KPI’s 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 KPI’s are early indicators that the results are on the way. Identifying metrics or results only can lead to a miss.
5 Characteristics of Good Inside Sales Training
After the goals are set, here are a few more tips to ensure you’re maximizing your investment:
It’s 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.
Get a Pro
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.
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 to connect with decision-makers, get callbacks, find the right people, figure out who to call, and capture 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?
The 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 get 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.
Make Sure Your Managers Get Involved
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.
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.
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 software after their session to brush up on their skills, hone in on their weak spots, and keep skills in practice.
When evaluating 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
Reps want skills on-demand. Learning should be easy, fun, interactive, and flexible. The old days of long-form narrated slides and 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 the sales training software to engage your management team as well as the learners. New skills and a culture of development live and die in 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 good inside sales training?
Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps and managers.
Entrepreneurial Selling and Branding Tips for Founders [Webinar Recording]
Entrepreneurial Selling and Branding Tips for Founders
[Webinar Recording]
Top Virtual Sales Challenges [Survey Infographic]
The Current State of Virtual and Inside Sales
Top Virtual Sales Challenges
15 Virtual Sales Tips for Field Sales Leaders
Once a quarter we host an invite-only Executive Open Bar for our Friends at Factor 8. It’s a safe place to connect, share, help, and learn. This quarter’s topic was focused on transitioning field sales to virtual sales. We were joined by leaders of field teams who have gone virtual, inside teams struggling to be remote, leaders of hybrid teams, and even a sales university professor (now teaching remotely)!
Right off the bat, I was impressed with the speed many of these leaders exhibited. It’s not uncommon that I hear stories of companies figuring out their approach and strategy 6-9 months after we all went into lock down.
One inspiring leader changed their entire product line in the space of 5 weeks. Incredible.
Another immediately sourced virtual selling skills for their face-to-face sellers. Smart.
Our friend from Canada started talking about personal and team self-care and wellness a full quarter before anyone else.
Wow, we keep some good company at Factor 8. Thank you all for sharing.
Below are 15 more tips we gathered, from personal productivity to company-wide pivot. I hope you learn something new or validate an idea you’ve already had so you can take fast action like these executives did.
Q1 2021 Factor 8 Executive Open Bar Tips:
- Move marketing newsletters to two-way communication to engage your distributed audience and learn what they want and need.
- Use a calendar scheduling tool. It helps you get more meetings faster! (everyone loved Calendly)
- Share sales standings more often – reps want to win and they aren’t in the office to see or hear the official or unofficial leaderboards (side note, get a leaderboard. We love Ambition and LevelEleven).
- Share success stories – HOW did she crack that account? HOW did he land the big deal? The informal learning and sharing is lacking!
- Shift to a virtual “booth” of products so customers can see it, then send out samples to arrive before a meeting so customers can feel it and ask questions during the meeting.
- Increase other forms of engagement: Linkedin campaigns, emails, and phone calls
- Teach how to leave a better voicemail so it will get returned (or teach the kids how to leave one at all!)
- Upgrade the tech stack; CRM, Marketing automation, learning management
- Make websites easier to use so customers can self-serve
- Add team wellness checks. No business talk, just personal check-ins
- Add hangouts. No agenda, just come and connect and chat. Add structure if needed with breakout rooms and a guided discussion topic (e.g. one thing you’ve done for your wellness this month)
- Do not underestimate the value of going back to basics. Teach those outside sales folks how to use Zoom, how to use whiteboards, how to use breakout rooms. Make these Zoom calls more interactive and less just talking to them.
- How to make your team Zoom calls more engaging:
- Guided questions that are light and fun
- Music to welcome them to the call
- When people are hesitant to come off mute, ask them to chat in their answer
- Good lighting, make sure background is professional
- Use chat to get fast interaction
- Use reactions (e.g. thumbs up/down)
- Wait 10 seconds for people to come off mute before moving on
- Beat Zoom fatigue by scheduling shorter meetings, doing some phone-only calls, and staying on agenda!
- Help motivate “distant” reps (by geography or by attitude!) by changing compensation plans (e.g. new business pays more than existing, growth pays more than reorders), teaching basic skills, driving some competition, adding games to calls (Who can guess their pet’s name today?)
Hope you picked up or confirmed something. I’m grateful to our vibrant community of revenue leaders for making Q1’s learning happen. I’m always honored to spend an hour in your company.
Lead a team?
Join us for our next Executive Open Bar. Our Q2 topic is “Leader’s Choice Challenge”. Bring an obstacle and get help from your peers. There’s ALWAYS unexpected take-aways during these sessions. Even if you don’t think you have a struggle, request an invite now (you know you’ll get one before it’s time!)
Email us for your invite: 
Not a sales leader yet?
Join one of our upcoming Virtual Sales Training Masterclasses! We offer 4 different classes for BDRs, SDRs, ISRs, account executives, and account managers all focused on areas like prospecting, objection handling, running virtual sales demos, closing, and more!
