What is Good Virtual Sales Training [Webinar Recording]
What is Good Virtual Sales Training?
[Webinar Recording]
Sales Training
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.
Ready to partner with a top virtual sales training provider?
Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).
Virtual Selling Tips [Webinar Recording]
Virtual Selling Tips
[Webinar Recording]
Virtual Sales Training Survival [Guide]
Virtual Sales Training Survival
[Guide]
Transitioning from Field to Virtual Sales [Webinar Recording]
Transitioning from Field to Virtual Sales
[Webinar Recording]
Why Verticalization Is The Smartest Sales Strategy [Webinar Recording]
Why Verticalization Is The Smartest Sales Strategy
[Webinar Recording]
Tips for Successful Sales Rep Onboarding
When I was in corporate America leading training organizations, my “white whale” was onboarding. I built programs, I improved programs, I chased the ever-elusive perfect new hire training experience. Pretty dorky, I guess. But MAN what a challenge.
I measured success by ramp time. Even that requires a special report of rep success by hiring cohorts (go ask for this now, it takes a while to build). And like the old game show “Name that Tune,” I challenged myself to get each group to quota in slightly fewer weeks.
I found great success, usually to the tune of about 50-100% decrease in unproductive time – or twice as fast to quota. I did it for an outsourced IBM hardware program hiring hundreds/year, for international launches of virtual SAP teams selling software, and even for small groups of reps selling waste management services (yes, I can tell you a lot about dumpsters now).
There are many keys to success – it’s a complex animal, isn’t it? Here are a few of my favorites:
- Institute rigor. Most trainers and reps approach new hire training as a break time. Reps get lazy and trainers “fill time.” Instead, think of the final 2-3-week step of the job interview. I’m talking daily tests, on-time starts, and class stack-rankings. It fosters an achievement culture.
- Self-guidance speeds learning over hand-holding. When onboarding a remote team, the go-to move is hours of Zoom calls with experts spewing data (sadly, this is called “teaching.”). Instead, put your newbies in charge of finding information, drawing conclusions, and completing tasks. You can use recordings of past “training” + your intranet and website to complete a quiz that invites decisions or conclusions and mirrors what the customer may ask. For example, after listening to your product person give the history of your solution set, they answer questions about product features of the most recent product and how it’s different from your competitor’s solution.
- Include all key areas. Most programs go heavy on systems and products. But that is a fraction of the picture. Reps and Managers need knowledge and skills in:
- Business, industry, & customer acumen: this gives us conversation confidence
- Sales skills. Even if you hired for experience, they’ll need to flex new muscles with your services in your industry in your sales motion (e.g. the online demo, virtual selling vs. face-to-face presentations) This is the easiest to outsource.
- Process. Remember Schoolhouse Rock? How a Bill Becomes a Law? Reps and especially managers need to know how a prospect becomes a renewal – the steps and departments and people involved in the business of your business.
- Product. Make this better by teaching them how to SELL it, not it’s full history.
- Systems. Make this better with scavenger hunts and timed drills. Can they talk and order entry and multi-task at once? It’s a key success factor.
- Just in time training. Resist the temptation to deliver training for the whole job upfront. They’ll only retain about 10% of what they don’t apply immediately. And frankly, you’ll scare them more than you’ll help them. Focus onboarding on what they need their first month on the job. Drill it to build confidence and let them loose. They’ll come back for the rest. Confidence is the name of the game for new reps, so let them graduate not knowing what they don’t know.
- Synthesis. Now that you know the five categories, mix them up and drive scenarios where they use them together. The key is to mimic the job. Have them use the CRM to look up customer data, in a sales role-play where the customer is talking about a product. You know, a typical call. Bonus: have them play along while listening to real recorded calls. Tip: if you’re assigning a single-thread task, re-think how to add a layer or how to add an assignment and/or rigor to it. Don’t just attend a session, write a report, create a video, answer ten questions. You get it.
- Application. Remember, the goal isn’t a perfect quiz score, the goal should be a well-executed call. What we know and what we can do under pressure are different. Consider using a call coaching or QA form as your final test and have their manager play the customer and give them their grade.
- Voice of the customer is key. Use recorded calls, case studies, even joint interviews of customers to get a feel for your ICP and why they chose you. Recorded calls are my favorite. Play the pause game where you listen to a sales call and pause every 5-10 seconds. Ask, “What is the customer thinking” and “What would you do next?” It’s the best way to get reps into the mind of the customer – making them better sellers.
- Keep managers at about 20%. Here’s a double-edged sword. YES, we want managers involved in new hire training but they SHOULD. NOT. OWN. IT. Your managers are the busiest people in your company and by putting new hire onboarding on their plate, you’re asking that the rest of their team receive no more coaching. Managers should do a daily check-in, a few role-play tests, and expectation-setting meetings. Hire a trainer or a coach to manage the rest. Training is a professional skill and done right will triple the retention of your trainees.
BONUS: Get on the phones as soon as possible! Find the low-probability deals, the lost accounts, or data-cleansing lead projects to get reps outbounding and talking to prospects ASAP. They’ll learn more from their mistakes, they’ll find their fail points and fears and be able to address them.
Is training part of your sales rep onboarding plan? It should be!
Download our Overview Brochure to learn more about our virtual and inside sales training programs for both sales reps and sales managers.
How Do You Transition From Field Sales To Virtual Engagement?
If you’re a seller whose “office” is face to face with your customers, you may be experiencing tougher times than the rest of us. Your world was full of vibrant interactions, personal relationships, handshakes and live presentations. You carried your world in your passenger seat and you’ve built beautiful relationships over many meals, drinks, and outings.
Welcome to virtual selling my friends. So how the hell do you transition field sales to virtual sales? We’re here to help.
Today’s blog we’re talking about selling time. What I mean is the actual voice to voice connection where you get to do your job. In the past, great field sellers could meet with two to four, maybe five prospects/contacts in a day. You likely planned meetings based on geography and how you could hit buildings in a similar location, avoid traffic, or make the most of your plane trip to the other coast.
Great news, there are no boundaries now. Time Zones are your only constraint, and great phone sellers can talk with ten people a day. If you do it right, you just got much. more. efficient.
Bad news, it ain’t easy getting people to pick up their phones or call us back these days. Not because of a pandemic, but because we don’t answer calls from people we don’t know, because we all have competing priorities and because frankly, it’s easier to ignore someone ringing in than someone walking in.
That’s why in virtual sales, we focus on getting on first. Billy Bean will tell you (shameless Moneyball reference) “You can’t get to home if you can’t get on first.”. The first base is a conversation. It happens by:
- Leaving great voicemails that people will actually return
- Dialing 5-10x the number of conversations you want to have
- Starting calls with a compelling introduction that won’t turn people off
- Overcoming a brush-off and keeping contacts on the phone with you
These four basic skills can literally triple your first-base average. (Is that a thing? There must be a baseball stat focused on the number of times a player gets on first?). In virtual sales, this is often referred to as “talk time”. Talk time is a leading indicator of sales opportunities. And it’s a critical one.
One: Amp up the dials my friends and resist the urge to feel frustrated.
It’s easy to curse your old pal Joe for not picking up all ten times you call. Hey, he may not even know you are calling. Or he may be ignoring you. Don’t give up. It takes about 7 tries to get over 90% of your targets on the phone. The trick is not cursing at Joe when he finally does pick up. Your job is to be genuinely happy to talk with him and NOT hold it against him that he launched you a few times. Tough, but really critical.
Two: Make yourself a call list.
I recommend segmenting by industry/talk track so you know what you want to talk about with every contact on your list. That way when someone picks up after 15 misses and you’re a bit startled, it’s an easy recovery.
Three: Be sure to bookmark these resources for more tips on improving your intros.
5 Tips For Mastering Your SWIIFT℠ Pitch
The Ultimate Sales Script To Get A Buyer’s Attention
Four: Be sure to sign up / subscribe to get notified of more phone sales tips like these.
If you’re serious about taking your remote selling to the next level and coming out ahead of your competition, check out our top-notch virtual training on all of these topics at The Sales Bar (the only bar actually open right now). Now may be the best time to invest in yourself and your teams.
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Why You Should Focus on Virtual Sales Training When You’re Not Selling
I’ve loved hearing about leaders using this time of unreturned calls and stalled deals to sharpen the saw with their teams. Sure we’re all apprehensive, but so much is out of our control. These leading-from-the-front heads of sales are looking at their to-do list saying, “NOW I have the time I’ve been craving. What can we finally get to doing?”
Cleaning out the pipeline?
Managing dupes and updating CRM?
Building case studies?
(And my favorite) Train the team!
We so seldom come off the game field to the practice field, but I invite you all to join me here in the coming weeks.
Now, how do you do it?
The goal here is team engagement, team learning, improvement, and team bonding. That means sending them a link to a (mostly) sales pitch webinar isn’t going to cut it. “Click, yawn, take the quiz, take it again” eLearning isn’t either. Don’t phone it in or give them housecleaning learning (you’ll finally pass the HR required learning!). Use this time to bond. Inspire. And practice for when it’s game time!
We’ve been training virtually for a few years now and we’ve learned a lot about what works. Top tips:
Pick a topic and do it together.
Everyone attends. Meet fifteen minutes early and set expectations/goals for the training (what do you want to get out of it and why?) Open a private chat channel during the training if it isn’t interactive. Then meet for 30 minutes after to collect best practices and insights. Even better, set goals for how we’ll try and apply the new goods in the coming weeks. Want an A+? Issue a challenge (best-recorded call sent to me, cleanest pipe by Friday, best case study) and a contest!
Find interactive training.
Most content houses and webinars are sadly one-way (and a little snoozy). Harsh but fair. Good training is interactive, short, fun and easy to apply to your job. Even online. When I set out to move Factor 8’s content online, I vowed never to have five slides go by without some sort of engagement (sort it, pick it, classify it, choose it). We used real calls and gave script samples for every class. There should be activities to help apply on the job and a forum to share best practices (we call these Happy Hours). See what’s available to you from your company and associations, but preview first so you aren’t torturing the team instead of building them.
Blend team and on-your-own training.
If you don’t have access to good virtual training, try a book club. Assign some reading on their own and have each person lead a discussion / chapter or section. During the discussion be sure to cover how to apply concepts to your company/product/customers, give examples, and then an activity to go and do it. The best part of training is the application portion. Leaders own this.
Talk about it.
Make sure your team knows your intent and strategy here. Use the sports and playing field analogy if it helps, but resist the temptation to just assign and micromanage. Each of my recommendations includes team discussion and sharing for a reason. Working together to build the best messaging and sharing wins along the way will bring you all together and make life much more fun.
If you don’t have access to good eLearning, Factor 8 wants to share a free class in The Sales Bar for you and your team. We know that now more than ever, you need training for your team. Interested? Email “I need training!” to info@factor8.com and we’ll hook you up. Or, hit me up directly if you have a special circumstance at lb@factor8.com
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Is It Time For Sales Training?
Should we be doing more or less sales training right now?
Let’s talk about why some companies are doubling down on training right now (and some aren’t).
We’re all in brand new situations today, but our companies, our people, and ourselves are affected differently. Some of us are:
- Facing layoffs and massive business downturns
- Ramping up amidst high demand
- Slowing down but staying the course
And many of us are moving between these three as situations change daily and we plan for the best (and the worst). At Factor 8, we’re seeing some companies decide it’s time for more sales training and others are pausing. Here’s why:
Most of what we’re hearing is #3 – we’ve slowed down. Smart leaders here are focusing the teams on what is in our control and on positive production. It may NOT mean calling the list/book for the fourth time. It might mean writing case studies, cleaning out the pipeline, and spending time developing the team.
Not only are there some obvious team development needs right now, but we’re seeing some companies push beyond “WFH” topics to really improving call quality and efficiencies in preparation for the turnaround. Some no-brainer topics to consider starting with are:
Sales Managers:
- Remote management – our front line managers may have it toughest right now
- Remote call coaching – now is the time to better engage through coaching
- Essential meetings – they can’t be ad-hoc anymore
- Developing your team – do’s and don’ts of team development
- Pipeline fundamentals – hey, we’re cleaning out the garage at home…you get it
Sales Reps:
- Weaving empathy into messaging – we all wish every vendor was teaching this! 😉
- Voicemails that get returned – now’s the time to leave better messages
- Conducting remote meetings – enough said
- Engaging customers – ditching the script and getting human
- Pipeline fundamentals – yup.
What gets me excited are companies that are digging in even further. Working with teams on how to attack their books and leads when we’re back online. Capturing new decision makers, getting strategic, practicing messaging for their introductions, writing better questions, using stories, overcoming objections, asking for referrals…you get the idea. The blocking and tackling needs we all have skill gaps in but never have time to address.
Here’s the strange but apt analogy. Factor 8 does training inside women’s prisons for the hundred of women doing outsourced calls on behalf of clients who hire Televerde. Really amazing program that meets a business need while changing lives. In talking with these women we’ve learned that the women who make it when they are out are the ones who spend their time inside preparing for the outside. School, studying, physical and mental fitness. Quarantine is starting to feel a little like the inside, right?
Like sports, when we’re off the game field, we go straight to the practice field. Are college basketball teams all sitting on the couch right now because playoffs were canceled? Hell no. They’re doing drills. They’re staying fit. They’re doing all they can to come back stronger and their coaches are doing all they can to keep the team operating as a team and spirits high.
Leaders! Get your teams off the couch and focused on sales drills! Let’s prepare for the comeback and stay positively focused!!
OK, now the other side. We’re NOT training teams right now if:
- We’re planning layoffs or cutbacks
- Leadership is still heads-down on the transition (connectivity, remote management, etc.)
- We don’t have a rally strategy to get behind yet
- All budgets are frozen and time is allocated in bridging the situation
All valid reasons my friends. But if you’re swamped, I invite you to investigate ways your team can still rally and drill without you. Delegate to a hopeful team lead. There are free resources, self-study, and programs available (we’ve offered shorter terms, discounts, and delayed payments at Factor 8). Employees stick with leaders and companies that help them develop, and now may be a critical time to engage our people (and may also offer us more time to do so).
And if you’re ramping up, it’s tempting to get them a log-on or a script, but I hope that you too will find time eventually to train these folks if you want to keep them. This rapid-ramp model works for a short period only. Can you weave in a schedule where they’re on the phones for a few weeks and then digging into skills training? Your customer experience and your employee retention numbers will thank you.
If you’re using the free webinars and resources on the web, check out my next post to help you get more out of these and better engage your team during training. And if you wish you had access to awesome sales and manager skill drills but your budget is frozen, we’ve got your back with assistance programs. Let us know you want to learn more and we’ll show you in a no-pressure meeting (info@factor 8.com).