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Recently, our CEO Ray Makela sat down virtually with industry insider Ken Taylor, CEO of Training Industry, for an in-depth conversation about the current state of sales training and what learners need going forward. Here are three key takeaways from their discussion.

Are you looking to improve how your sales team sells? Sales training can provide your team with the skills they need to succeed. But with so many training programs and providers out there, it can be hard to figure out which one is best for your team. We've come up with 5 factors to consider when evaluating a sales training program.

Many organizations invest in sales training initiatives to improve the sales team’s performance, yet these efforts often fail to achieve the desired results. Why does this happen?

Sales training is proven to help your team close more business deals, stay competitive, avoid discounting, win bigger deals, and boost productivity. A well-designed sales training program gives your team the skills, tools, and techniques they need to become top performers. And for most sales leaders, driving topline performance is more than enough justification to invest in training. But sales training can also provide your organization with hidden benefits.

Sales Coaching is the most important way a manager can improve how their sales team sells. The power of sales coaching is that it can be personalized to the individual needs of each member of the sales team. As an example, a new member of the sales team may need help with prospecting and call planning skills, while a more tenured member of the team may require help with strategic account management.

In prospecting, the only thing worse than not setting a prospecting appointment is setting an appointment with the wrong prospect. Meeting with an unqualified prospect is a huge waste of time and can clog up your sales pipeline with bad opportunities. Increase your odds of prospecting success by only focusing on the most appropriate prospects for your solution. That means defining what the most valuable customer looks like for your company using a “reverse engineering” concept based on specific demographic criteria and certain behavioral characteristics. In marketing lingo, these criteria form an “ideal client profile” or ICP.