The Value of Sales Training: Why it’s Worth the Investment

In the highly competitive world of business, the ability to sell effectively is vital for success. As such, our view at Firestarter is that everybody in a business has a role in representing and promoting the organisation in support of sales activity. Recognising this fact and investing in sales training for your teams can bring immense value to both individual members of staff and the whole company.

The practice of selling encompasses a variety of skills, competencies, and sales tools. At Firestarter, we find the following list of actions to take is incredibly likely to assist your sales results:

• Always ask yourself the question “How can I ease my buyer’s pain?” – and understand that their pains will change over time – so you need to be prepared to help in different ways.
• Proactively manage your key accounts – you should have an in-depth understanding of each account, build plans to support them and execute the right tactics to bring those plans to fruition, rather than just reacting to changes as they occur.
• Actively fine-tune your selling process, including your personal manner and the way you organise and lead sales meetings, so you have more control over the sales outcomes.
• Be strict with your sales pipeline management – this will help you close more opportunities, steer your future activity, and give you clarity on the forward direction of your business.
• Just do it – put yourself out there and start selling! Fortune favours the brave, and you’ll never do any business talking to yourself!

Our Firestarter Academy Better Business Development course covers all of these areas, giving you everything you need to excel in your role.

One of the primary advantages of sales training is the opportunity it provides for personal reflection on existing practice. Through training, individuals and teams have the chance to identify areas for improvement and explore new approaches to selling. We would recommend identifying training programmes where you are given opportunities to directly link the learning to your needs – for example through bespoke sales training, you will benefit from a training programme that is tailored to you and your business, bespoke training is designed to be a truly unique approach, one that is specific to that of your selling needs.

To excel in sales, you need to understand what successful performance looks like and how it is measured. Anybody working in the field of sales should be evaluated against simple, clear targets and objectives. As such, it is essential for anybody involved in sales to understand the measurement tactics and tools available to them, so they can in turn identify relevant areas for improvement. At Firestarter, our approach is based on the following areas:

• Rhythm and rigour: how frequently should you be assessing your sales performance, and how robust does your approach to that assessment need to be to produce the quality of information you need to make informed decisions about next steps.
• Keep it simple: we make extensive use of KPI trackers and forecasting tools, but they are always straightforward for sales professionals to utilise, and simple to understand.
• Make use of technology: modern CRM systems can keep your sales efforts organised and produce meaningful insights at the press of a button, but you’ll really need to understand your overall sales universe to get the most out of it.

A comprehensive sales training programme should equip you with not only a selection of tools you can use to measure and analyse your performance, but the higher-level knowledge to inform how you can get the most out of using them. You will then be able to develop targeted sales improvement strategies, and align your efforts with measurable goals to maximise your potential and achieve outstanding results.

The real value of a quality sales training programme cannot be overstated – it is an investment that will see you reap rewards in your personal and professional growth. No matter what role you currently occupy, recognising your responsibility as an advocate for your business, and benefiting from the personal confidence that comes from knowing how to sell, will propel your career forwards. Join us on one of our upcoming Firestarter Academy training courses – your future self will thank you for it.