No sales team will reach its full potential without effective sales training. Whether you’re hiring new salespeople or looking to advance your existing sales team, a good sales training program can improve areas of weakness, improve effectiveness and boost confidence.

Pro Tip: Reinforce your training with a good CRM like Freshsales to encourage your employees to develop the right habits. Freshsales makes following up with leads easy by allowing you to make calls and send emails directly through the CRM, and by automatically setting reminders after the initial contact. With Freshsales’ lead scoring system, it will also help your sales team prioritize the deals most likely to close. Click here to start a free trial.

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We’ve identified 20 of the top sales classes, seminars, and resources:

Public Sales Training Programs

For the main part, public sales training programs are delivered as 1-3 day workshops or seminars. Usually they take place at a local convention hall and anyone can join in by purchasing a ticket. Admission costs anywhere from $500 to $3,000 per seat.

1. MHI Global

If you’re looking for classic training seminar, MHI hosts a number of sales training workshops around the US, as well as in Canada, Europe and Australia. Their events typically last 2 to 3 days, covering a variety of sales topics, including large account management, SPIN Selling and Strategic Selling – which teaches a step-by-step method for managing complex business-to-business sales.

2. FranklinCovey

Screen Grab of FranklinCovey Homepage

Launched after publishing the classic business book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, FranklinCovey offers a wide variety of business training resources. They sell books, offer online business training programs, hosts live seminars and provide one-on-one business coaching too.

While FranklinCovey do offer sales training programs, the majority of the resources cover leadership disciplines including; time management, data analysis, leadership and strategic thinking. You can view a list of their public training seminars here.

Private Sales Training Programs

Training groups will work with you to write a curriculum specific to your business, then travel to your office to teach your employees. Costs can be quite a bit higher than public courses, ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 per day.

3. The Brooks Group

The Brooks Group provides customized sales training courses. What I like about their approach is that it avoids the hype of pop sales books: “Customized sales training is NOT a matter of changing the language or giving you a unique acronym for the sales process,” reads their website.

Instead, The Brooks Group develops a close understanding of your business so it can teach according to your specific needs: “Real customization ensures that the training your salespeople receive accurately matches their daily selling experience, [is] tailored to fit your unique sales environment and organizational culture.” Before deploying to teach your employees, The Brooks Groups spends 3 to 12 weeks working with business owners to build the curriculum.

4. Richardson Sales Training

One of the big names in customized training courses is Richardson Sales Training. They start with assessment tests that highlight areas of strength and weakness in your sales team. Then, they use this to develop a course that addresses your specific needs – i.e. lead generation, opportunity management, on-boarding, account development, etc.

Richardson also has a number of 1 and 2 day course that cover topics like sales conversations (how to interact with a client), sales negotiation, complex sales training and more. View the rest on their website here.

Richardson can serve a wide variety of businesses, but according to their website, they primarily focus on financial services, finance, technology, manufacturing and distribution, chemicals, life sciences and professional services.

5. Wilson Learning

Wilson Learning offers private, customized training courses. They follow the belief that single training seminars aren’t effective, since much of what’s learned is forgotten months down the line. Instead, Wilson focuses on sustained sales training programs: It starts by consulting with managers, then runs sales training programs with the sales team. Finally, Wilson provides reinforcement quizzes enabled via mobile apps.

6. Signature Worldwide

Signature Worldwide offers customized training courses in a few areas of specialty. “Client-Centered Sales” is a consultative sales training program that helps sales reps add position themselves as experts and win the trust of their prospects and customers. Other sales courses focus on prospecting, equipment sales and rental property leasing.

Like Wilson Learning, they follow the belief that single training events are not retained very well months down the line. Instead, they help reinforce knowledge with follow-up lessons. Telephone “mystery shoppers” gauge the effectiveness of your sales and customer service team and help Signature Worldwide trainers determine what to focus on.

7. DoubleDigit Sales

DoubleDigit Sales specialize in helping salespeople, sales managers and executives perform significantly better to achieve double digit growth. DoubleDigit leverage a consultation process to deliver customized learning experiences that change behaviors and drive improved sales revenue. They are also one of the SellingPower Top 20 Sales Training Companies in 2017.

One program that caught my eye was called “StorySelling.” As Fusion explains on their website, “Stories are one of the things that make life and work fun and fulfilling. The ability to craft and tell great stories is a critical business and life skill.” Other topics include prospecting, sales presentations and consultative selling.

Online Sales Training Programs

Online sales training programs are delivered via a range of different channels including; video conference, webinar, video, e-books and other accompanying content. Many of these can be hosted on a learning management system so that you can track test scores and completion rates or even print ‘certificates’. Below I have provided a selection of free, low-cost and higher-cost options.

8. Sales Hacker 2017

Sales Hacker has a massive online digital blog presence, which I speak about further below. This free sales training course bundle is designed to help any B2B sales professional improve their skill set. The bundle includes some of Sales Hacker’s favorite conference lectures, webinars and eBooks. There are 4-hours of sales training content, 10-video based lectures and 5-PDFs.

9. Accelerate Your Sales

Jill is a highly respected expert sales professional. This workshop covers the changing sales environment, the elements of a strong value proposition, how to use sales intelligence and trigger events, effective calls and voicemails, and more. There are also free and paid options and resources for reinforcing and extending the lessons covered in the virtual workshop, such as coaching, and video lessons.

10. 21st Century Sales Training for Elite Performance

This three-month virtual course covers the seven key facets of sales: Prospecting, developing trust and credibility, identifying the buyer’s problems, overcoming resistance, selling value, closing, and getting referrals and repeat business. Along with 24-videos you can re-watch at any time, you also get workbooks, exercises, and bonus training modules.

11. Inbound Sales

This course teaches you to sell the inbound way, which Hubspot are experts in. like a This free virtual course on the Inbound Sales methodology encompasses everything from identifying potential buyers to developing personalized presentations. Once you’ve finished the course and passed the exam, you’ll get a badge to display on your LinkedIn profile, email signature or website.

12. Smart Calling College

This course is focused on the art of cold calling and telephone based sales. Art is an expert and he shares his expertise on how best to use the phone as your primary sales communication channel. Over the course of one month, you can will learn how to engage buyers in the first few seconds of call, resolve objections, add value at each stage, secure follow-up calls and more. Along with the videos, you’ll get access to a workbook, live coaching sessions, and an online forum.

13. Sales Strategy: Mastering the Selling Process

This 5-week course provides new sales reps with a solid introduction to the fundamentals of sales. It covers; cold calling, prospecting, qualifying, asking questions and developing cost proposals. Unlike many of the other options, it’s equally relevant to both B2B and B2C salespeople and includes lectures, reading, and real-world exercises. The course itself is free, but if you want to course certificate to put on your LinkedIn profile and email signature then this will cost you $95.

14. B2B Inside Sales Training

In this 8-week training program, inside sales professionals will learn how to get past gatekeepers, overcome call reluctance, engage prospects, book appointments, delve into their prospects’ motivations, resolve their concerns and close deals. Beyond the 1-hour per week live online interactive training, you get sales, sales scripts, workbooks, weekly tests and final exam results. You also get free support via email and chat. All sales training workshops are recorded for your sales reps to refer to when they need a refresher.

15. Top Sales Academy 2017

This online option is ideal if you’re and experience B2B salesperson, manager or leader looking for relevant, digestible insights across a range of sales topics to boost your skill set and come away with some fresh ideas and techniques. Each year from April to July sales experts including; Dave Kurlan, Deb Calvert, and Colleen Stanley deliver a short presentation on their area of expertise. Past sessions are available as recorded videos and include selling value, creating a social selling strategy and managing your sales pipeline.

16. Iannarino Online

Screen Grab of Iannarino Online Homepage

Tony Iannarino’s sales training program and membership community is designed for continuous learning. Each month, members receive a new lesson on a core sales skill. They also get to attend a live question and answer webinar with Tony. You also get access to a private forum, where members network and answer each other’s questions, share thoughts and support each other.

17. Sales Leaders Coaching Program

This course is intended for sales leaders looking for predictable results. Whether your goal is a higher quota and revenue attainment, better win rates or lower sales force turnover, this course provides the best answers available. Delivered by expert sales professional Lori Richardson, the course is delivered in six 90-minute virtual sessions. The program will help you put in place the right sales process and methodology for your market, your product and your revenue goals.

18. Mindflash

Area(s) of Focus: Custom online training exercises

One of the top online sales training websites, Mindflash lets you create your own training courses. You can upload sales materials you already have (like PDFs, PowerPoints or videos) and tailor them into a quiz.

Mindflash automatically send invites and reminders to users and generates reports for you to view their progress and determine who needs to focus more on what. The downside is that it takes a while to setup, since you have to create the courses.

19. Rapid Learning Institute

Area(s) of Focus: Fast online sales lessons

As the name implies, Rapid Learning Institute is all about quick exercises that teach important concepts. There’s 70+ sales training lessons called “Quick Takes” that last 6 to 10 minutes. One of the key benefits to Rapid Learning Institute is you don’t have to create courses yourself, as you would with Mindflash.

Training topics include prospecting, presentation, handling objections, closing, referrals and more. When you assign lessons to your staff, they’ll receive automated emails reminding them to log on.

You can check out some free educational videos on their blog here.

20. Boyer Management Group

Area(s) of Focus: Sales Assessment Tests, Sales Training

Boyer Management Group offers a variety of sales resources. The one we want to highlight, however, is their sales assessment test. This may seem a little out of place in an article focused on sales training, but sales assessment is actually the first step in any good training program.

By scoring each area of the sales cycle, including prospecting, performing a needs assessment, presenting, closing, etc., the Boyer Assessment Test tells you which employees need help on which areas of focus. Rather than each all employees all topics – in which case, they’re liable to lose focus – you can zero in on their specific needs.

Armed with this information, you might realize you don’t even need an outside educator – You can host training sessions of your own, or pair employees with “mentors” who have more experience in particular areas.

Over to You

Every business has different needs when it comes to sales training. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to reinforce knowledge with ongoing lessons, as opposed to just a one-time workshop. You can also reinforce your sales training programs with a good, easy-to-use CRM like Freshsales. Freshsales allows your sales team to get into the habit of prioritizing leads and following up with those most likely to close. You can also generate reports on sales trends in order to see how your employees are progressing and where they may need more training. Click here to start a free trial.

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