Sales training is designed to help sales professionals achieve success through improved skills, knowledge, behaviors, and mindset. This training affects how deals are closed, how cold leads are generated, how new sales opportunities are handled, and even how rapport is built. Mastering these core areas impacts growth goals. 

Training techniques are changing as remote sales is becoming more common. You no longer have to meet someone in person to close a deal. More often than not, we meet and foster relationships with people online, through voice, text, and video meetings. Companies are embracing this change, and restructuring their workforce by bringing on fully remote teams. 

For remote workers, there are a lot of benefits working from home, including autonomy, no commuting, and better working hours, but there are some cons as well. For one, the benefit of working closely with colleagues in person from a shared physical work space is gone. In traditional sales, employees come into a physical office five days a week, where they can lean on other star sales representatives to see how things are done, and learn how to close deals. So how do you train new sales reps in a remote environment?

Sales is very hard. It is a full contact sport. You need to be in the game and doing a lot of work. For someone in sales coming from outside the organization, you want to give them the best chance possible. Some salespeople can come in and make something happen. Founders themselves can get overwhelmed selling. Instead, founders need to set up a system for sales early on.

The truth is, training and retaining sales talent in the modern workplace outweighs the traditional model if done properly. Here are three effective ways to train remote sales talent in less time. 

Strategy 1: Onboarding

In the onboarding process, it’s important to build a solid process that is repeatable. If it is not repeatable, you risk “reinventing the wheel” every time you bring on a new person. The first step in the onboarding process is to create a checklist. What are the things a new sales professional joining your organization needs to know in their first 30 days? Common checklist items include:

• New hire orientation (welcome introductions, new hire paperwork, orientation video)
• Technology (establishing a workstation, both hardware and software, email and phone accounts, etc.)
• Operational Onboarding (departmental introductions, org chart, culture)
• Product and Service (demonstrate product, share customer profiles)
• Sales Process (pipeline, CRM, lead tactics, cold calling scripts, handling objections)
• Goals and Expectations (break even point, objectives, establish desired profitability) 
• Lead Generation Training (specific difficulties, tools, techniques)

Creating a solid onboarding process ensures that you are setting your new sales professionals up for success so that they can add value to your organization.

Strategy 2: Consistency

Once you have an onboarding checklist, it is important to develop and deliver your training collateral with consistency. There are many effective ways to develop your content, and some of these proven strategies include:

• Keeping the content concise
• Incorporating tables and charts
• Adding product demonstration videos 
• Giving visuals
• Providing case studies
• Creating role playing scenarios
• Offering a cheat sheet

After you have perfected your training collateral, ensure that it is consistently delivered early on in your onboarding process. Find a system that will allow you to store this material so that your sales professionals can be trained with a single click. 

Strategy 3: Tracking 

The important thing is to focus on results.This is a key north store. What results is your training bringing to your company? How many deals are your professionals closing? How many clients are renewing? Track proactively on a daily, weekly, and even monthly schedule. In a remote environment, set targets. Use software that will send you notifications when mission critical goals are not being met.

Time management is extremely important for remote workers. Does it matter how many hours you work? No. To be productive in your training, focus on KPIs and results. Look at what is accomplished during a set period of time. Examples include:

• Emails sent
• Number of calls
• Number of sales meetings and demos
• Total revenue closed

A sales professional working three hours a day can still be a company’s top performer, so don’t track time, but rather results. 

What strategies are you using to train your remote sales team? We’d love to hear your tips, tricks, and best practices. We hope these strategies have provided you with additional insight.