Let’s all face it. Sales training sucks. No one looks forward to it, and everyone either thinks they are too talented or too skilled to actually learn anything. This is because sales training isn’t relevant to the salespeople.

It’s a simple theory: if you approach a complex and human-driven enterprise like sales with a basic, cookie-cutter program, you are wasting your dollars. Your people will turn out before the end of the introduction.

How do you make it relevant? I am glad you asked.

The basics around relevance are to make every communication impactful and directed, which, by the way, is precisely how you should approach your prospects and clients. Salespeople need to see themselves ad their daily work reflected in the training. That means that the training must be custom-built and custom taught to have a maximal impact on goals, revenues, and quotas.

Additionally, relevance means being approachable. What every salesperson dreads more than anything is ‘role playing’. And so many trainings are built on this very flawed approach. The problem with role-playing is that it is hypothetical. And usually a little embarrassing. Here’s an example:

Trainer: I need a volunteer for a quick exercise.

Salespeople (groan and think to themselves, I do not want to look like an idiot).

Trainer: You with the blue suit, stand up and pitch me, and then I will critique you in front of your peers, make you question of skills in order to make my approach seem smart and worth the $15,000 your boss just flushed on this program.

This achieves nothing and, ultimately, will have zero impact on the sales actual sales skills of your staff. Not to mention their quota. The way it should be done is this:

Trainer: Cindy, I know one of your biggest prospects is XWZ Software, based out of Austin, TX. Who are you trying to reach? What do you think their challenge is? How do you think you can differentiate yourself?

Cindy: Jill Prows. She is the chief revenue officer. I think their problem is that they have a new competitor that is less expensive and easier to use. My pitch is that by using our marketing automation software, she can target new prospects easier and safe time.

Trainer: If his problem is a competitor, then your solution, your power pitch, is not that she can get more clients but that she can differentiate her value propositions. What do you think they are?

Cindy: Well, they have been around longer, they have a lot of experience, and they keep updating their platform to meet client needs. Plus, they have a known brand.

Trainer: So, what I am hearing is that Ms Prows needs a partner that can position his strength, market leadership, and adaptability to new clients. How would you pitch that?

This approach switches both the calculus and the focus of the training. It is now relevant to Cindy, and it requires that the Trainer actually know, understand, and speak coherently about the products and solutions being pitched by the salespeople.

It become relevant. It becomes impactful. It because a powerful learning tool. The training does this because it is customized to the client and focused on discovering what are the best ways to communicate value to prospects and clients.

On the whole, salespeople know the hard skills they need pretty well, like how to prospect, how to ask questions, and how to deliver a pitch. What real training does is teach the soft skills of storytelling, of making products and services relevant, of driving a prospect from the ‘Need Knowledge’ phase, in which they are exploring options, to the ‘want’ when they can see how your product and services can help them.

At Adirela, we have been teaching and training salespeople for decades. We are experts at identifying where your sales processes go sideways and showing your people how they can right the sale. We have developed a tried and true set of thoughts that we base on training on. We call them The Rules, and when salespeople understand them, they become far more effective.

And successful.

Our approach is to understand our clients, understand their products and solutions, and see their market and their position from an informed outsider who asks the hard questions about ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘who’. We use this knowledge to then apply The Rules to your situation and custom-build a training that reflects the unique needs, situations, prospects, and culture of your organization.