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You've just hired two new additions to your sales team - a rookie salesperson and an old hat. Your mission is to come up with a customized training plan to launch them both to peak performance. The following tips will provide helpful advice to sales managers working with both new and experienced salespeople:
BEGINNERS
Beginning salespeople are a delight for sales managers. They have more enthusiasm than a tick at a dog show and more motivation than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Having probably come from customer service or retail sales backgrounds, they may already be familiar with some rudimentary aspects of selling. However, they still lack knowledge of most aspects of the sales cycle and, most importantly, when to use them. It's up to you to provide them with the right skills from the beginning so they don't develop bad habits from the get-go.
Sales novices possess a burning desire to be successful in sales. Unwittingly, without a carefully formulated strategy of individually targeted training, you may be the one to douse that flame. These beginners need a dynamic training program and this can only be achieved by research, planning and customization to fit individual needs. Simply put, sales managers can't assembly-line their training and expect it to work.
Considering novice salespeople have probably had some experience dealing with the public, you'll want to know exactly where their strengths and weaknesses lie in these interactions. You'll want to focus your training on the weaknesses while building upon their strengths. Even more challenging for managers is instructing them on closing techniques and rejection handling. For beginners, this new territory can be very intimidating. Not being able to achieve mastery in these skills...