How to Make Sure Your Sales Reps Remember Their Training

If you’re training a team of reps, it’s common for your wisdom to go in one ear and out the other.

In a post-COVID world, you may also be fighting with training sessions that are hybrid or are on an all-virtual platform for the moment, which can make your team even more distracted.

Make sure your reps remember their training, so they’re able to put it into practice when they’re in the field. They may start in virtual or remote networks, or they may start in an office or field environment, but you want to make sure they’re prepared for every type of situation that pops up.

There are five tips to make sure that your reps retain the right stuff to help them close a sale.

1. Use Microlearning When Teaching Your Sales Team

Break information up into manageable chunks so your sales team can digest and store information more efficiently.

If you ever took a three-hour lecture class in college, by the end of class, you would walk out with 20 pages worth of notes and a terrible recollection of what you had just seen and heard.

It was three long hours and too much to take in at one time. If this is a training you have to complete in a short amount of time, present the information by way of team-building exercises or other methods so reps can better retain the information; don’t just put up the PowerPoint presentation with hundreds of words on each slide.

2. Bring in an Experienced Rep

Have an experienced rep help out and give guidance regarding topics. Better yet, see if they can lead a session. They spend day-in and day-out working with customers. Real-life examples are some of the best teaching tools. Further, you’ll help new reps feel more comfortable approaching their peers for help.

3. Have a Day of Shadowing When Teaching Your Sales Team

Like many other professions, have a new rep shadow a more experienced rep, at least for a day. If you’re training virtually, have them join the meeting. Shadowing can help a new rep see the inner workings of what a day looks like — virtually or in-person. It’s one thing to talk about sales and another to see it in action.

4. Structure Versus Versatility

There are many professions where something has to be done the same way to make it work.

Sales doesn’t work quite that way, but you will want to show your reps during onboarding how experienced reps have found success using tried-and-true measures. A good sales playbook should outline some of these strategies. Once reps find their footing, they can modify existing strategies to make them their own.

5. Weekly One-on-Ones at least

This goes slightly beyond shadowing, where a sales rep is going to look and observe.

Instead of shadowing, where it’s easy for a rep to observe once, then forget, have your reps participate in weekly one-on-one sessions with sales managers who can provide them with ongoing coaching feedback. This keeps information fresh and at the same time leaves room for improvement with motivating yet constructive feedback.

This feedback on real opportunities gives reps the chance to start flexing their skills.

There are a few other suggestions as well to help sales reps retain information:

• Motivate your new reps through success stories during training
• Have morning drills for each day of training to recap the previous day
• Have roleplaying and practice sessions during the training

Your team will retain more by doing than just by listening to you, so the more you can put into practice, even if it’s just role playing or listening to live calls with other reps, the better.

If this is a priority for you at the moment, reach out to us at Copilot today.