Nurturing Sales Managers through Corporate Sales Training

In the competitive sales landscape of 2023, it’s more important than ever for businesses to possess a robust learning and development programme, especially for their sales managers. Corporate sales training offers the opportunity for professionals to develop a comprehensive understanding of how to coach staff to engage and maintain relationships with prospects, leveraging the latest technology and sales enablement tools to ultimately close deals and drive profitability.

In this guide, we’ll explore the concepts that staff will study on the courses that are provided by sales training companies, helping you to understand the return on investment that you can expect when you nurture these skills in your sales managers.

We’ll also discuss how you can pick the right corporate sales training provider and how you can ensure your staff get the most out of sales management training.

What Concepts Will Staff Study on Sales Training Courses?

Whilst you may believe that your sales management staff are too experienced to benefit from training, it’s critical to realise that those in decision-making positions within your business will achieve greater success with an investment into their skills. When almost 50% of managers with ten years or more of experience report receiving only nine hours of training over the course of their entire career, training for even your most senior staff becomes essential to your overall employee development programme.

Corporate sales training programmes equip your managers with the knowledge and skills necessary to lead and motivate employees effectively, enhancing productivity and improving morale and job satisfaction—which, in turn, can help to reduce staff turnover and drive business growth.

A corporate sales training course will impart many core competencies that are required for successful sales management. Training participants can expect to learn skills in many areas, including:

• A review of current sales best practices. Corporate sales management training will always offer an overview of the most up-to-date sales concepts, including customer-centric consultative selling, effective communication, prospecting, lead generation, and negotiation, which they can then impart to less senior employees.
• Building relationships with key accounts. Strategies for establishing and maintaining strong professional relationships are a crucial aspect of corporate sales training, allowing managers to handle complaints and pass feedback along to their staff, enhancing customer loyalty and return on investment.
• A comprehensive product understanding. Sales training companies will focus their bespoke courses on the context that sales managers are coming to them from, encouraging a deep understanding of their employers’ products and services that can help staff to deliver impactful presentation, overcome objections, and highlight their unique value proposition.
• Core leadership competencies. Corporate sales training will offer insight into sales management techniques, methodologies, and best practices, helping managers to set goals and targets, motivate and coach their staff, and measure sales performance.
• The latest sales enablement technology. Sales training companies will encourage managers to incorporate cutting-edge software into their workflow, encouraging the use of data-driven sales analytics to identify trends and make accurate forecasts. Alongside this, they’ll be introduced to the effective use of CRM systems to manage customer relationships, oversee sales activities, and improve the overall productivity of their team.

By incorporating bespoke corporate sales training into the professional development of your management staff, you can empower your employees to tailor their sales approaches and techniques to specific industries, understand your customers’ complex pain points, and adapt their overall sales team strategies accordingly.

From driving a high-performance culture to developing an effective management toolkit that can help your sales managers to address the challenges that seniority brings, sales training companies help your managers build accountable and competent teams that are motivated to perform at their best.

Sales training in the UK will incorporate role-playing exercises, simulations, and practical, experiential learning into their content, alongside micro-learning and additional learning resources that will reinforce learned sales, management, and communication techniques in a supportive and low-risk environment. Micro-learning has been shown to be 17% more effective than traditional forms of studying, allowing students to break complex concepts and methodologies down into bite-sized, easily understood information which can be put into practice.

With the evolution of eLearning, staff can study and practice in their own time, bringing their own challenges to the classroom—whether virtual or physical—to contextualise the knowledge they’re gaining.

If you’d like to learn more about the impact that sales training courses can have on your staff after reading this article, see our guide on how to prepare your business for digital transformation for insights on how employees can get ready for the future of work within the sales sector.

How to Pick The Right Sales Management Training Programme

Selecting the right sales management training programme requires you to consider a number of factors. First and foremost is to research and evaluate the various courses on offer from sales training companies. You should explore their websites, ask for client testimonials or case studies, and evaluate online reviews to gauge not only their reputation and track record but also the impact that the corporate sales training and professional development courses they’ve provided have had on other organisations.

Working closely with a provider of sales training in the UK will require you to determine specific objectives and goals that will help your management staff to align the content they’re studying with the challenges your business is currently experiencing. This will ensure that your training partner can develop a bespoke solution that matches your organisation’s culture and values.

Looking for sales training companies whose programmes can be tailored to your specific requirements means that your managers will gain knowledge and skills unique to your industry, the wider market conditions your business finds itself in, and your sales team’s skill gaps. This will also enable your provider to offer ongoing support and resources which can help you to onboard future managers.

It’s also important to establish the metrics that sales training companies will use to measure the effectiveness and impact of their programme. The right organisation will offer you the ability to conduct post-training assessments to gauge the skills development of your management staff and demonstrate the cost and overall value of their corporate sales training.

Support and follow-up are also vital, with ongoing coaching and mentorship helping reinforce the content studied on a programme and ensure retention. This can be impactful for onboarding new hires, particularly when we consider that sales training boosts staff performance by an average of 20% .

Conducting thorough research and considering these factors will enable your sales managers to get the most from their training and ensure that you pick the right corporate sales training programme.

Getting the Most Out of Corporate Sales Training

So, now you know how to evaluate sales training companies, how can you be confident that your staff will get the most out of their corporate sales training programme? Of course, half of the battle is connecting with a professional, specialist learning provider, but the other half is making sure your staff are prepared to study and put what they’ve learned into practice.

Since you’ve chosen to train your sales managers, you’ve already covered a fundamental aspect of the transformation of your business into a coaching, learning, and development-focused workplace—that is, communicating the importance of this training. By encouraging corporate sales training from the top down, you can effectively highlight how you value professional development. It’s important that these senior staff are ready to communicate how sales management training can enhance skills, boost confidence, and contribute towards career mobility.

By fostering a culture of learning, you can create a workplace in which your staff seek out opportunities for additional development and networking. Whether it’s attending sales conferences, reading relevant and up-to-date information online, or participating in webinars, your staff can effectively gain new knowledge and allow your business to remain competitive.

Ensuring your staff can derive the maximum benefit from sales training courses will allow you to increase sales performance and revenue growth, as well as foster stronger relationships with customers and engage employees at all levels of seniority.

Final Remarks

Corporate sales training plays a vital role in nurturing the skills of your sales managers and driving business success in the competitive marketplace of 2023. By investing in a robust, bespoke learning and development programme, your organisation can equip itself salespeople with the competencies needed to coach and engage teams, leverage technology and sales enablement tools, and ultimately close deals and drive profitability.

Sales training courses offered by reputable sales training companies cover a range of essential concepts guided by industry-verified best practices, such as the building of key account relationships, an in-depth product understanding, and core leadership competencies like coaching and feedback. By incorporating bespoke corporate sales training into their learning and development offerings, organisations can empower their sales managers to address business-critical challenges and build high-performing and accountable teams.

With so many providers of sales training in the UK, evaluating sales training companies is vital to selecting the right programme. Working in close partnership with a provider means that you can align training objectives with business challenges and industry-specific needs, allowing you to establish metrics for measuring success.

To maximise the benefits of corporate sales training, businesses should foster an internal culture of continuous learning. By encouraging professional development and providing opportunities for additional learning and networking, organisations can increase sales performance and revenue growth, develop customer relationships, and drive employee engagement across all levels of seniority.

Bespoke Corporate Sales Training in the UK and Beyond

At Pareto, we’ve been providing specialist, bespoke sales training in the UK and beyond for over 25 years. Our consultants are seasoned experts, ensuring that all of our sales training courses are guided by real-world industry best practices.

To learn more about our courses, get in touch today to discuss your needs.