Three Essential Characteristics for Sales Trainers in the Digital World

Selling has gone digital.

To sell in the digital world, salespeople rely on savvy technological skills from handling online transactions to closing deals using virtual videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom. To that end for upskilling and reskilling the sales team, sales training is still a powerful tool for maximizing each sales person's potential.

Training for selling skills remains crucial to the success of any firm.

Not all sales training programmes are made equal, and its effectiveness is largely dependent on the person giving it and the strategy employed; some of which can be very personalized.

Why is it important to employ a competent sales trainer?

The individual instructing your sales team should be a world-class trainer with real-world knowledge and experience to support what they are training in the training session, be it online or face-to-face classroom.

Every sales trainer must meet possess the following essential characteristics in order to develop your sales team with the latest selling skills and sales process to keep up with the changes brought by the digital world. Going down to the foundation of great sales trainers; probably, most would have all these characteristics to a certain degree.

Real-World Sales Experience

The extensive sales expertise serves as the foundation for sales trainers to support learning in various selling situations. Similar case of training people to swim. The swimming instructor must be able to swim. Sales trainers must be able to sell.

Commonality in the selling skills can help the sales trainer to target laser-sharp instructions for the salesperson to execute the sales process and strategies in a precise manner. For example in digital selling events, the sales trainer can use personal experience to guide the sales person appearing on the screen when closing a deal; whereby, the sales trainer may be outside the customers or clients view.

It's essential that every sales trainer giving face-to-face training sessions to a room full of salespeople has really made sales at some point in his or her career. Recalling an experience of live training session for selling skill, the sales trainer called a customer on the speaker phone so that all participants can hear for themselves when the sales process progresses. In this live selling demonstration, the sales trainer must have undergone the same or similar sales experience in the past in order to handle the live sales call.

The sales trainer should be able to draw from real-world expertise to provide coaching on skills and best practices when the sales team has queries. More so, salespeople will be able to recognise right away if their instructor has earned knowledge through real-world experience. Gaining the participants' trust, establishing your credibility, and "selling" the training to them all depends on this ability to sell live, as an instance.

Experience In Leadership

Slightly differing from sales leadership experience which is about a sales leader doing sales training; the concept of experience in leadership falls under the scope of having led a sales team while ideally also head various teams from a wide range of functions. For example, a sales trainer leading a sales team in addition to managing teams in marketing, production, logistics, or customer service functions.

Sales trainer is also a leader in the training session to keep the agenda on track. Thus, experience in leadership gains the participant's trust when the sales training programme requires being able to draw from a foundation in professional selling. If a sales trainer has prior leadership experience, they will go beyond this level of trust by comprehending the needs of the group on top of the individual and what is required to provide an effective learning environment to benefit the sales team as whole.

Leadership-experienced sales trainers are excellent teachers in the online and face-to-face classroom because they are a huge asset throughout sales management training programmes as well. Even when it is known that a leadership journey is a personal path, the lessons learned can be used as reference to enrich the content of any training programme. For example, a sales trainer can train on handling objection because he or she had overcome challenges during the course of selling career. Sometime, technical ability learned from experience of failure to close sales can far outweigh the knowledge gleaned from reading countless books on selling successfully. The same skills can be trained to work in the digital world of selling.

Inquisitive About Ideas

The most effective sales trainers are driven by a desire to learn and grow; since doing so enhances the effectiveness of the training sessions they provide. They are prepared to invest time in learning more about the:

• Industry the sales organisation is in for the product or service the company is teaching. For example: Sales training will need to include a topic on virtual presentation when majority of selling is done through online meetings by industry players.
• Goals, both short- and long-term, and sales strategy formulated and implemented by their sales organisation. For example: A product reformulation will require the sales team to inform their customers to coordinate the phase in and out efforts. Where as, a new product launch requires the sales team to pipeline into the market. A creative sales trainer will work with the sales and marketing teams to smoothen the implementation of sales strategy to support marketing initiatives.
• Company's particular business challenges, which can surface when conducting a comprehensive Training Needs Analysis (TNA).For example: a new product is not hitting the target due to the lack of skills to sell to new products to new customers. Or, the new sales leaders are not able to coach properly according to sales process.
• Current standards for adult training and education followed by the sales organisation, such as competency standards, safety standards or regulatory standards. These workplace standards may directly influence the selling process, for example: sales competency standards for the ability to deal with objections and difficult customers. Those that indirectly influence may rest under the safety standards, for example: salespeople are strongly discouraged from driving at night due to safety reasons.

In conclusion, the success of your sales training programme can be greatly impacted by a competent trainer and facilitator, who embodies the essential characteristics to drive as well as support the sales enablement process. Needless to say, the three characteristics will help the sales trainer to train in an agile manner so that he or she can swiftly change the training content and delivery to match the changes in the sales organizations as well as selling conditions in the marketplace.