When it comes to helping your salespeople succeed, equipping them with the best sales enablement tools is only half the equation. 

A sales training program is as important as arming your people with the necessary skills and expertise to attract leads and close deals. As with every aspect of sales, preparation is the key to successful training. 

Here’s what that involves, including key steps you can take to build a successful sales training program. 

Why is Preparation Important?

For sales training to be effective, it needs to be executed with the right focus and a clear goal. 

You need to consider both the knowledge and skill gaps on your sales team and how salespeople will apply your training in the workplace. This also includes putting mechanisms in place to assess the effectiveness of your training. 

Key Preparatory Steps for Your Sales Training Program

Before sales training begins, we recommend doing the following: 

Assess your training needs 

Establish the skill gaps currently in your organization, then determine which gaps have the most impact on your sales team. This can be done through a combination of pre-training surveys, performance reviews, and interviews. 

You should also review feedback from previous sessions if any exist, as this can help you identify weaknesses in your approach. 

Define clear training goals

What do you want your sales training program to accomplish, and why? Let’s say, for instance, you want to improve the technical knowledge of your sales team — how does that align with your overall business objectives, and how will that improve sales? 

Identify your key performance indicators

Training is highly data-driven, which is exactly why you need to know your KPIs. 

These are the metrics by which you’ll evaluate the effectiveness of your sales training. Management will generally want to know the overall ROI of your training program as well. 

Choose a sales training format.  

Consider both the needs of your sales team as well as your current resources. For some organizations, in-classroom education might still be the most effective approach, while others may choose to rely on virtual sales training.

Select the right training platform

Ideally, you’ll choose one that supports multiple training modalities and integrates readily with other corporate learning and development software, such as learning management systems. Look for tools to help trainees stay organized, such as note-taking apps. 

Create your agenda

If your training program is instructor-led, establish a training schedule with a detailed breakdown of how and when your trainees will learn. If your training program is self-paced, set a few milestone dates for completion. 

Double-check your training content

If your sales training program includes any supplementary materials such as handouts or online resources, ensure they’re both ready and accessible. You should also evaluate all training materials for accuracy. 

Test your technology

Few things are more frustrating than experiencing technical difficulties on the first training day. To prevent that from happening, you need to test every piece of technology you plan to use.

That includes in-classroom equipment, training platforms, meeting software, and productivity tools. 

Reach out prior to training

Optionally, you can connect with your trainees a week or two before your sales training week. Share any relevant preparatory materials along with your agenda, and encourage them to think about how they have been impacted by knowledge and skill gaps. 

This is usually most effective for instructor-led training, though it may still be worthwhile to provide people with learning tools and resources that will help them with a self-paced program.