10 Sales Training Topics to Help Your Team Get (and Stay) Sales Ready

Kevin Atkinson on September 4, 2024

Sales training and coaching are often reserved for new hires and low performers. For the rest of the team, training may be limited to a brief refresher during the annual sales kickoff.

But this approach to sales training isn’t as effective as we’d like to think. In many cases, this is because revenue organizations only cover a few training topics with their sales professionals.

To improve the effectiveness of training (and your entire sales enablement program), you must continually cover a full range of sales training topics. This will help all your reps build the skills and knowledge required for any selling scenario.

Sales training topics

  1. Pipeline management
  2. Prospecting and outreach
  3. Qualifying leads
  4. Call planning
  5. Building relationships with customers
  6. Identifying customer needs
  7. Presenting the value of your products
  8. Competitor knowledge
  9. Managing objections
  10. Closing deals

1. Pipeline management

Your sales reps need to be able to build their pipeline, prioritize leads and prospects based on lead quality and sales urgency, and measure their results.

In fact, research suggests that effective pipeline management is closely linked to rep performance.

However, a recent survey found that generating and converting a healthy pipeline is a top challenge among revenue professionals.

Training in pipeline management can set junior team members up for success. They’ll be able to keep track of all their deals in your CRM, know what pipeline stage their deals are at, and determine whether they have enough conversations in progress to hit quota.

2. Prospecting and outreach

Sales prospecting and outreach are two competencies that go hand in hand. Business development reps (BDRs) need to find and identify good-fit potential customers and then craft compelling messages to engage them. According to a Salesforce report, sellers spend about 17% of their time each week prospecting and researching potential customers to ensure they fit your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Sellers spend about

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Top performers spend even more time researching their prospects. According to a LinkedIn report, 82% of top performers say they always perform research prior to reaching out to prospects, compared to 49% of other sellers.

Cold calling and outreach emails are essential skills for BDRs to master if they want to bring new prospects into their pipeline. You can provide training and coaching via verbal and written role-plays to help reps practice these core skills. In fact, we found that learning to prepare cold email intros is the top use case for written role-plays by BDRs in the Mindtickle platform.

3. Qualifying leads

Nurturing or repeatedly contacting bad-fit leads is a waste of your reps’ time and energy. Furthermore, following up with a prospect they know isn’t interested is one of the top frustrations reps have with their jobs. And if a lead is a bad fit, they’re more likely to book time with your reps but never show up.

One way to cover this in sales training and revenue enablement is to share bite-size quizzes to test reps’ ability to qualify leads and their familiarity with your ICP. Then, if you identify knowledge gaps that may be affecting their lead qualification capabilities, you can follow up with AI-driven coaching.

4. Call planning

Your sellers need to know how best to prepare and plan for a call with a prospect at every stage of the sales cycle. For initial calls, sellers need to make a good first impression. They must build rapport with prospects and become trusted advisors for later calls.

Oracle found that 11% of prospects ignore sellers because the seller wasn’t properly prepared for their conversation. Call planning is essential for all sellers.

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You can create training materials such as pre-call checklists or run practice calls for product demos, discovery calls, or closing calls. These will allow your sellers to appear professional, knowledgeable, and trustworthy to prospects.

5. Building relationships with customers

Relationship building is another essential skill because, even in B2B sales, you’re still dealing with another person. According to research from Forrester, trust is the most important factor contributing to whether or not a company will do business with you. So it’s essential that your reps get training and coaching to help them foster relationships and earn prospects’ trust.

Trust is the most important factor contributing to whether or not a company will do business with you.
Forrester Research

Use tools like Mindtickle’s Call AI to record and analyze calls with prospects. It looks at reps’ confidence, talk time, clarity, and sentiment to understand their behavior on calls. It then identifies areas to improve. You can use these insights as a starting point for your coaching sessions or share dedicated training exercises to help them further develop the necessary skills.

6. Identifying customer needs

Research tells us nearly nine in ten B2B buyers are more likely to purchase if the seller understands their goals. Yet, nearly 60% of these buyers say most sales reps don’t take the time to understand their needs and goals.
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This is an immediate deal killer.

Sellers need to be able to identify customers’ pain points so they can show how your product will solve them. If they can identify customer challenges and needs, they can tailor the conversation to address those challenges and focus on the features and use cases that are most relevant to the customer.

You can listen back to call recordings or view call analyses, then score reps based on their ability to identify customer needs. If reps struggle with this, you can run training exercises such as practice calls or role-plays to give them more opportunities to develop their abilities in a low-pressure setting. Manager-led coaching helps provide personalized coaching to all your sellers, targeted to their individual needs. 

7. Presenting the value of your products

Sellers not understanding their product or service is another deal killer for many buyers. Your reps need to be able to provide effective demos that illustrate how your products will save buyers time, money, or effort. They need to be able to show the value of your product and not just run through a list of features.

You can provide different training formats for this:

  • Short quizzes to test product knowledge
  • Practice demos and virtual role-plays
  • Dedicated training sessions from your product team when you roll out new features

Product training will help your reps learn how to use your product and ensure they can accurately present its value to potential customers.

8. Competitor knowledge

Prospects will not just speak to your sales team but also compare different product options. A recent survey found that 57% of sales leaders feel competition has increased since last year.

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You need to be able to show how you measure up against your competitors. Familiarity with other products in your space is essential knowledge for sales reps, as not understanding competitors’ products and services may make buyers less likely to continue with a specific seller.

Train your reps on your competitors’ products by creating battle cards or in-depth instructor-led training sessions to review the key differences and where your product excels against the competition. Then, test reps’ knowledge with quizzes that review the training session’s material. Spaced reinforcement helps improve information retention, so your reps can speak confidently about your competitors months after their training session.

9. Managing objections

Our research found that 54% of sales calls contain “more negative sentiment than positive,” with negative sentiment “including anger, uncertainty, hesitancy, competitive mentions, objections, disappointment, and tentativeness.”

of sales calls contain more negative sentiment than positive
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Managing objections is an important skill to master because no buyer will say “yes” right away. Your reps need to be able to confidently address concerns to reassure prospects that they’re making the right choice with your product.

Dedicated training will help reps improve their ability to handle the most common objections in the sales process. To practice this essential skill, you can have reps complete practice calls or virtual role-plays.

10. Closing deals

If an account executive can’t close a deal, they won’t last long in sales. Fortunately, research has identified some of the most important factors that consistently influence buyer behavior – and a rep’s ability to close deals:

  • Trust in the brand
  • Price
  • Return on investment
  • Trust in the salesperson
  • Salesperson’s industry knowledge

If you’ve already worked the nine previous topics into your sales training, you’ll be well on your way to addressing all of these, but you can also provide specific coaching to help your reps master conversations around pricing.

Improve rep performance by covering a wide range of sales training topics

Sellers face constant change, so the more frequent and varied training and coaching you can provide, the better equipped they are to adapt to different selling conditions, buyer needs, and market changes. Don’t limit sales training to just onboarding or a couple of topics during sales kickoffs. Instead, create a culture of continual learning and improvement to help your sellers excel.

Technology is a key component of any sales training strategy. With the right sales training software, you can deliver relevant sales training that empowers each seller to master the knowledge and skills they need for success.

Sales Training in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in May 2022 and was updated in September 2024. 

Mindtickle Named G2’s #1 Sales Training & Onboarding Solution For 5th Year in a Row

Helen Waite on September 3, 2024

Every sales leader knows onboarding and ongoing sales training are key to preparing sellers for success. A strong program – powered by the right sales onboarding platform – ensures your sellers have what it takes to deliver winning experiences, delight customers, and close deals.

But what is the right sales onboarding product for your organization? If you’re like most people, you turn to G2 to get insight on the best sales onboarding and training solution for your business.

Mindtickle is G2’s #1 sales training and sales onboarding solution

No matter your business challenge, numerous vendors offer solutions to address it. In fact, many buyers find themselves overwhelmed with the number of options available to them.

G2’s rankings enable software buyers to make better purchase decisions.

Sales onboarding software shoppers rely on peer reviews

Each sales onboarding tool is unique. Each comes with its own set of features and functionality. It can be challenging to sift through your options and determine which solution will solve your business’s unique challenges and deliver ROI.

Modern consumers rely on feedback from their peers when purchasing just about anything. Software is no exception. According to G2, 86% of buyers use peer-review sites when purchasing software. In addition, 31% of buyers consult review sites more frequently than any other source.

Today, many sales enablement solutions address just one or two challenges to preparing sellers for success. This approach is ineffective and inefficient and leaves sellers feeling overwhelmed.

Mindtickle is an all-in-one platform that incorporates sales training, onboarding, content, digital sales rooms, and more. It combines on-the-job learning with deal execution, which improves reps’ behaviors and performance.

With Mindtickle, you can build, deliver, and measure personalized sales training and enablement programs that boost performance across your entire team – all from one location. In addition, Mindtickle delivers a seamless experience for your revenue teams. Sellers have a single source for everything they need to grow their skills, engage buyers, and close more deals.

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G2 is the go-to destination for accessing your software options. It’s no wonder why more than 90 million people turn to G2 to research, compare, and purchase software each year.

Mindtickle tops the list of sales training and sales onboarding software

B2B buyers depend on G2 to identify top software solutions. Since 2019, Mindtickle has ranked as G2’s #1 sales training and onboarding solution based on authentic user reviews.

In fact, Mindtickle ranks #1 both in terms of user satisfaction and market presence.

What sets Mindtickle above the rest?

Today, many sales enablement solutions address just one or two challenges to preparing sellers for success. This approach is ineffective and inefficient and leaves sellers feeling overwhelmed.

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See why Mindtickle ranks as G2’s #1 sales training and onboarding solution

Sales training and onboarding are foundational to ensuring your sales reps have what it takes to engage buyers and close deals. Choosing the right sales onboarding solution is key.

With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement solution, you can deliver effective, holistic sales training, onboarding, and enablement that improves your sales team’s behavior. As team performance improves, your revenue will grow.

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5 Essential Sales Productivity Tools to Boost Sales Team Performance 

Rahul Mathew on August 21, 2024

Even the best sales teams have room for improvement. According to Salesforce research, 84% of sales reps missed quota in 2023, and 67% don’t expect to meet their targets this year.

According to research

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It’s no wonder why so many revenue teams invest in tools and technology to boost sales productivity and performance. Around 70% of sales leaders report 10 or more tools in their tech stacks.

There’s certainly no shortage of solutions to your sales productivity challenges. But investing in a sales productivity tool doesn’t guarantee it’ll impact team performance.

Instead, it’s important to determine which sales productivity tools will drive a return – and then invest accordingly.

Read on as we explore:

  • The advantages the right sales productivity tools can provide to your company
  • The essential solutions and features to look out for when improving sales productivity at your company
  • The top five sales productivity tool “must haves”
  • Our recommendations and best practices

What is sales productivity?

Simply put, sales productivity is how efficient and effective your sales executives are at hitting various revenue milestones and goals. Of course, just because reps make more calls and send more emails does not necessarily mean they are progressing sales or generating revenue.

So what is a sales productivity tool? 

At Mindtickle, we define a sales productivity tool as anything that improves and measures reps’ skills, will, and in-field behaviors.

That might include tools that hold reps accountable, such as email and call activity tracking; those that empower reps to better prepare for meetings and follow-up, such as Content Management Systems (CMS); and solutions that arm reps with insights that help them drive specific deals and accounts forward more effectively.

After reading this post, you’ll be able to understand:

  • The advantages the right sales productivity tools can provide to your company
  • The essential solutions and features to look out for when improving sales productivity at your company
  • The top five sales productivity tool “must haves”
  • Our recommendations and best practices

Why are sales productivity tools important for your business?

The most powerful benefit of sales productivity tools is that they help reps win more business by holding reps accountable, saving them time, and helping them deliver a better, faster customer experience.

This has a butterfly effect that improves revenue metrics like quota attainment, pipeline coverage, number of at bats, average contract value, average cycle time, and even customer lifetime value.

At the same time, these tools align cross-functional members of revenue teams by providing a high degree of transparency and visibility while centralizing access to things like content, training, and insights.

With sales productivity tools, your team can do things like:

  • Search for potential buyers to set meetings with them
  • Grow, develop, and convert sales opportunities throughout the sales cycle
  • Understand areas of opportunity to improve their performance
  • Do more with less time and facilitate better hand-offs or deal collaboration
  • Access content and insights that can help move deals forward faster and personalize the customer experience
  • Learn from the winning attitudes and skills of top peers
  • Keep up-to-date on new strategies, product launches, competitors, and market approaches
  • Keep track of activity, pipeline, and progress toward goals

Modern sales productivity tools make your entire sales process more simple, measurable, and effective. This can result in benefits like:

  • Faster onboarding and revenue contribution
  • More opportunities in the pipeline
  • Higher conversion and win rates
  • Improved performance against competitors
  • Better understanding of winning playbook
  • Increased renewal rates
  • Improved rep performance and retention
  • Improved forecasting
  • Tighter alignment around customer needs

What are the top benefits of sales productivity tools?

Now that we know what sales productivity tools are and why they’re important for your business, let’s look at the top five benefits these tools deliver.

1. Manual data entry & note-taking is eliminated

In 2024, the days of manually inputting deal data into Salesforce and trusting it’s correct are over. This method wastes a lot of time and often results in a complete, inaccurate view of your sales pipeline. It also gravely reduces your organization’s ability to compete by limiting access to voice of customer insights.

Investing in tools like revenue and conversation intelligence that automatically transcribe every call, email, and meeting while scoring deal health is critical.  After all, teams that use conversation intelligence have lower churn rates and close more deals.

These tools also help reps self-coach by proactively flagging any deal risks, issues with buyer sentiment, or competitor mentions that must be addressed to move deals forward faster. As reps move into new roles or leave the company, it’s much easier to ensure no deal or account falls through the cracks by facilitating best-in-class hand-offs.

2. Personalized customer experience

To improve sales productivity, it’s critical that reps can quickly find relevant content to nurture leads, follow up with prospects promptly, and convince important decision-makers of the value your products provide.

Today, half of all customer engagement comes from only 10% of content created. That’s why investing in a sales content management system, or CMS, that helps reps know what content is new, suggested, and preferred by peers is key to boosting customer engagement and wins. The ideal content management system to improve sales productivity helps reps know what content they can use to drive a deal forward without even thinking.

Ideally, it will be integrated with your conversation and revenue intelligence solutions so that the system can suggest valuable assets to reps based on what was said in previous emails and calls, such as a competitor mention.

At the same time, your CMS should include a feature like Digital Sales Rooms to help reps personalize the buyer experience and understand which assets buyers viewed or shared. Since improving pipeline is critical to sales productivity, DSRs automatically identify new potential leads who visit and automatically upload them to your CRM so they can be nurtured through marketing programs.

3. Valuable voice of the market and financial insights

Since it’s a given that today’s inside sales teams must use a tool to email and call prospects en masse, such as Outreach.IO, we’re not going to put that on our list of must-haves. But sending generic emails and making calls is not enough. Every interaction must provide value and be highly personalized.

There are many ways to do this at scale. The first is to use a tool like Databook to uncover market and financial insights that will help your reps prioritize accounts and determine what business challenges your solution will need to solve. These insights can also help you write emails that inspire urgency, build better proposals, and make ROI-driven business cases.

When paired with tools like conversation and revenue intelligence that summarize key themes discussed in calls and emails that you can reference in follow-ups and suggest next steps or action items, reps can quickly ensure they’re doing the right things to drive deals home.

Insights on buyer engagement, such as whether reps have the right volume and title of prospects accepting their meetings and responding to emails, are also crucial to ensuring reps focus on truly winnable deals and don’t waste time.

4. Opportunities to practice and self-coach

A traditional approach to enablement does not drive sales productivity on its own. Reps need to quickly learn best practices from peers, practice, and improve independently.

Another way conversation intelligence solutions can improve sales productivity is by providing reps with access to call snippets and playlists of best practice calls. Organizations can build playlists around key competencies such as discovery calls, objection handling, how to lead the perfect demo, competitor smackdowns, pricing/negotiation, and more. They also share examples of what top reps do and say on calls about new products and services.

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At the same time, these tools provide immediate feedback to reps on how they compare to peers. Some of the best conversation intelligence insights reps can use to self-coach include understanding if they’re driving a customer monologue of a minute or more, measuring if they’re getting customers to ask or answer 12-14 questions, and trying to maintain a balanced talk time where reps speak 60% of the time or less.

5. Scale and measure coaching

Last but certainly not least, it’s critical that you not only provide sales productivity tools for reps but also for your front-line managers. One of their biggest challenges is they cannot find the time to coach and get pulled into too many different directions. When they have time to show up for 1-to-1s and offer coaching, they do not often have valuable, highly relevant data on how to help each rep and simply resort to doing deal reviews on the fly.

This is not productive, and it does not scale.

Instead, managers need sales productivity tools to run an end-to-end coaching workflow and measure performance improvement over time.

At Mindtickle, our coaching workflow starts with conversation and revenue intelligence. Every day, our managers can see exactly which deals are healthy and a detailed snapshot of all the calls, emails, and meetings associated with them. They can then show up to 1-to-1s more prepared to discuss how healthy a rep’s pipeline is and where they might be able to offer deal-specific support.

At the same time, our enablement team provides managers with a detailed report on which skills and competencies their team and individual reps need to develop each quarter. This data is provided via our Sales Readiness Index, a comprehensive way to benchmark which reps have the skills, will, and demonstrated in-field behaviors they need to drive deals home – or not.

Based on data like the Sales Readiness Index, managers can see how reps compare to their peers on various competencies, such as buyer engagement, outreach activity, objection handling, competitor win rates, and more. By comparing how reps perform on various competencies to the ideal rep profile created for each role on the revenue team, managers can know exactly who to coach on what topics without much thinking.

Managers can then immediately create and track the coaching as complete. Or, they can sort and filter through a list of recent calls to provide more comprehensive feedback on specific interactions with call scorecards.

At the same time, managers can collaborate closely with enablement and revenue operations teams by helping them understand which reps are ready to hit quota and where they can provide cross-functional support.

What are some of the best sales productivity tools?

Sales productivity tools can deliver significant benefits to both sellers and sales managers. With the right tools, your entire sales team can be more effective and efficient. In other words, sellers can close more deals—and do so faster.

Today, many tools are available that promise to boost sales productivity. But every sales productivity tool is different.

Which sales productivity tools are the best for your business? There’s no easy answer. It’s important to determine your goals and challenges when it comes to sales productivity. Then, you must find the sales productivity tools that best suit your unique needs and goals.

The truth is, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” sales productivity tool. However, the following are some of the most popular sales productivity tools on the market.

Mindtickle

Often, organizations purchase myriad solutions that address a single challenge related to sales productivity. However, a better approach is to adopt an integrated solution that addresses several common sales productivity challenges. Integrated tools like Mindtickle drive sales productivity in several ways – without requiring sellers to switch between different, disparate tools.

Mindtickle incorporates conversation and revenue intelligence, recording and transcribing calls while scoring deal health. This means sellers don’t have to take notes during calls; they can pay attention to the meeting. In addition, sales managers can leverage analysis of call recordings to determine where a sales rep might need additional training and coaching.

Mindtickle also incorporates sales content management. Sellers can easily find the content they need for any selling scenario, spending less time searching and more time actually selling.

Mindtickle’s integrated sales productivity platform includes many other features and functionalities that boost sales productivity. For example, sales reps can use Mindtickle to practice skills and unlock self-coaching opportunities on their own time. Sales managers can also leverage Mindtickle to deliver personalized coaching to sales reps and measure how (or whether) their efforts improve seller productivity and sales performance.

Other sales productivity tools

A few additional top sales productivity platforms include:

Salesforce is one of the most popular CRMs in the world. The platform incorporates myriad features that empower teams to increase sales productivity and performance. Salesforce unifies data across multiple sources to provide teams with a single source of truth for all customer information. Salesforce also leverages AI to drive sales productivity and enable better customer experiences.

This is an AI-powered workflow platform. Sellers that use it are better equipped to delight customers throughout the customer journey and close deals. Salesloft also equips sales managers with data and insights that enable them to more effectively coach and lead their teams. In addition, Salesloft provides features and functionality that allow for more accurate forecasting.

Calls and emails aren’t always the most productive forms of outreach. With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, sales reps can tap into LinkedIn to engage buyers and increase sales productivity. LinkedIn Sales Navigator also provides insights to help sellers understand which accounts they should prioritize. That way, they can spend their time on the deals they will most likely win.

Outreach is a sales productivity platform that enables SDRs and other sales team members to engage prospects throughout the sales cycle. With Outreach, sellers can automate their outreach processes – which means they can achieve more in less time. Outreach also gives sales leaders a complete picture of the sales cycle to increase deal velocity and sales rep productivity more effectively.

Databook is a Strategic Relationship Management Platform (SRM). This tool illuminates market and financial insights that help reps prioritize accounts and understand their business challenges. As a result, sales reps can spend less time researching and more time creating and articulating solutions.

Our recommendations and best practices

Now that we’ve covered five benefits of sales productivity tools and some of the top tools in the market, we’ve got a few recommendations and best practices to share.

Centralize tools & simplify the rep experience

Not all tools are created equal, but you must simplify the sales rep experience in mind.

That’s why we believe centralizing and consolidating as many tools as possible is the best way to help drive sales rep productivity, as well as get more out of your tool investments. That means everything related to onboarding, training, ongoing coaching, content, and access to voice of customer or performance insights should ideally be in one place.

Doing so also provides you with a single data model to understand revenue enablement and performance and a single model for compliance and security.

Increase cross-functional collaboration

Driving sales productivity is the responsibility of every division at your company – not just sales. That means teams like product and marketing need frontline access to the valuable insights gauged from your sales interactions, such as competitor mentions or product feedback requests.

At the same time, in modern-day sales, you must ensure that your entire revenue team, including BDRs, sales, SEs, and CSMs are working together to understand deal or account health and drive those opportunities home.

Ensure that whatever solution you are using is standardized across your revenue org, focusing on providing the utmost transparency into what’s going on with key accounts and deals.

Improve visibility into what top performance looks like

Sales productivity is simply impossible if all of the roles on your team aren’t crystal clear about what success looks like in their role. How can I improve if I cannot know if I’m saying, showing, and doing the right things? If I don’t understand how my emails, calls, and how I engage prospects and customers compare to my peers, how will I even know what to do better next time?

That’s why your sales productivity tools must clarify best-in-class performance during every interaction and stage of your sales process.

Sales Productivity Tools FAQs

What is sales productivity?

Sales productivity measures how effective and efficient your reps are at meeting their sales goals. You can measure sales productivity across the entire organization, as well as at the team and individual rep levels.

Why is sales productivity important?

Simply put, unproductive sellers are ill-equipped to engage buyers and close deals. In today’s competitive market, that simply won’t cut it.

When seller productivity increases, so too does revenue generation. Productive sales reps can effectively and efficiently engage buyers and close deals. In other words, they can close more deals, faster, which leads to revenue growth.

What are KPIs used to measure sales productivity?

Ongoing measurement is key to assessing and improving sales productivity. However, there’s no single metric you can use to determine sales productivity. Instead, you must measure it by tracking a variety of metrics, including:

  • Quota attainment
  • Sales cycle length
  • Conversion rates
  • Annual recurring revenue
  • Sales rep habits, such as number of calls made and emails sent

What is a sales productivity tool?

A sales productivity tool is any solution that improves the effectiveness and efficiency of sales reps. In other words, it’s a tool that increases the productivity of sellers.

Reps only have so many hours in the day. A sales productivity tools helps ensure they make the most of that limited time.

What are some of the best sales productivity tools?

There is no single sales productivity tool that’ll solve all challenges for all businesses. Instead, the right sales productivity tools depend on the needs and goals of your organization.

However, some sales productivity tools are particularly popular today. Those include:

  • Mindtickle
  • Salesforce
  • Salesloft
  • LinkedIn Sales Navigator
  • Outreach
  • Databook

Sales Productivity in action

Learn more about how to consolidate your sales tech stack while driving more revenue per rep.

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This post was originally published in January 2023, updated in February 2024, and again in August 2024. 

AI in Learning and Development: How AI Enhances Your L&D Programs

Elisha Zhang on July 18, 2024

The whole world is buzzing about artificial intelligence. Everywhere we go – from industry conferences and boardrooms to news publications and social media sites – we hear conversations about the large (and rapidly growing) impact of AI.

Already, the most innovative organizations are leveraging AI in learning and development initiatives. Those that embrace AI in learning and development are better equipped to build and deliver programs that grow skills and improve business outcomes. 

In fact, as an L&D leader, you simply can’t afford to ignore AI in learning and development.

If you’re looking to supercharge your learning and development efforts with AI, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about AI in learning and development. We’ll cover topics including:

  • The role of AI in learning and development
  • Why AI in learning and development is important
  • Top challenges of implementing AI in learning and development programs 
  • How the right technology can help you capitalize on the opportunities of AI in learning and development while overcoming the key challenges.

The role of AI in learning and development

Chances are, you always strive to hire the strongest candidates for every open position. Most organizations do!

But every employee – from the lowest performers to the all-stars – need ongoing learning and development to be successful in their roles. With a strong learning and development program, employees have opportunities to grow their skills. When every employee has access to the right learning and development opportunities, performance improves across the entire organization. 

As an added bonus, a strong learning and development program increases engagement among employees. When you prove you’re invested in your employees’ learning and growth, it boosts employee satisfaction and retention. 

But where does AI fit in?

One-size-fits-all learning and development doesn’t work. Instead, the best L&D programs are tailored to the unique needs of each employee. Organizations must also be able to measure the impact of their learning and development program and make data-based adjustments as necessary.

Pulling this off requires a ton of time and effort – especially for enterprises with hundreds or even thousands of employees. In fact, it can feel downright impossible.

That’s where AI in learning and development comes in. 

When you strategically leverage AI, you’re able to develop and deliver effective, personalized training and learning that address the needs of each learner. That means every member of your team has the right opportunities to build the skills and behaviors they need to be as successful as possible.

Why do you need AI in learning and development?
 

AI isn’t just a buzzword or a passing fad. Instead, it’s becoming a critical component of any effective learning and development program.

Not sure why you need generative AI in learning and development? Let’s take a look at some of the key reasons innovative L&D teams are already incorporating AI in learning and development.

Faster creation of L&D programs

Strong learning and development programs can significantly improve performance. But building and launching impactful programs takes time. Chances are, you don’t have much to spare.

Today, winning organizations leverage AI to create learning modules quickly and easily. The sooner you launch a program, the sooner you’ll see an impact.

Personalized L&D programs that address the skill gaps of each employee

There was a time when learning and development was limited to onboarding, and programs were one-size-fits-all. That approach will no longer cut it. L&D needs to be personalized to the unique needs of each employee.

Organizations leverage AI in learning and development programs to recommend L&D that’s relevant to each employee. For example, AI for training can deliver recommended learning and development based on factors like:

  • Job title
  • Skill gaps
  • Learning preferences
  • Content they’ve already consumed

Self service learning opportunities

With AI in learning and development, employees don’t have to wait around for content or a training module to be assigned to them. Instead, they can access individualized training and other learning whenever and wherever they need it.

For example, a sales rep can type in a question they’ve received from a prospect. AI will analyze all the content that’s available to provide an answer. AI will also recommend additional, related resources (like microlearning and sales content) the sales rep can use to learn more.  

Immersive practice opportunities to perfect skills 

Ideally, employees would remember everything they learned in training and apply it in the real world. But that’s not reality. 

Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve tells us employees forget half of all new information within a day; they forget 90% within a week of learning it. 

It’s important to provide employees reinforcement and practice opportunities. Role-plays are one example. However, traditional role-plays require a lot of a manager’s time.

That’s not the case with AI. 

Learning and development teams can create realistic scenarios and assign specific characteristics to an AI bot. Then, employees can engage with the bot to practice and hone their skills. 

Timely coaching and feedback

Employees depend on coaching and feedback from their managers to improve behaviors and performance. But delivering meaningful feedback takes time and effort, and employees can’t afford to sit around waiting.

AI for coaching is the answer. 

Today, sales enablement teams use AI to record and analyze sales reps’ calls. At the end of the call, the rep receives a score and real-time feedback for improvement. In addition, sales managers can look for trends (for example, a high volume of calls with low scores) to identify opportunities to deliver additional coaching to sales reps. 

Data analysis

Data is key to L&D success. Chances are, you have plenty of data available to you. For example, you likely have data related to how employees are engaging with different learning and development programs and how they’re performing on the job.

But it can be hard to make sense of the huge volume of data available to you.

Innovative teams use AI in learning and development to analyze data and provide summaries. AI can also make data-based recommendations for next steps.

Top challenges of implementing AI in learning and development

Leveraging AI can have a huge, positive impact on your L&D program. But implementing generative AI in learning and development also presents some unique challenges. 

Let’s take a look at some of the top challenges of implementing AI in development and learning.

Challenge #1: Integration with existing tools

Chances are, you already use certain tools to power your L&D program. You can’t bring a new tool or technology into your ecosystem and hope for the best. Instead, you must make sure it integrates with your existing tools.

Talk to your existing vendors to learn about the existing or upcoming AI capabilities of the learning and development tools you already use. If you’re searching for a new learning and development solution, look for an option that incorporates AI in innovative, impactful ways.

Challenge #2: Costs

Integrating AI in learning and development costs money. For example, you may need to purchase new learning and development tools. You must also consider the costs of training the members of your learning and development team.

In the best of times, it can be challenging to secure funds to invest in AI. This is especially true in today’s economy. 

Challenge #3: Training

Of course, you must train your L&D team on how to use your AI in learning and development solutions. You must also train employees who will be consuming your learning and development programs.

Developing and delivering training on AI requires time and effort. Employees have to set aside time that they would typically use for other tasks. 

Challenge #4: AI limitations

Make no mistake: incorporating AI in learning and development can dramatically impact the effectiveness of your programs. However, AI isn’t magic. There are limitations.

It’s crucial to understand those limitations. It’s also important to remember that AI outputs are only as good as the data behind them. 

Maximize the impact of your L&D initiatives with Mindtickle’s rich AI features 

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. Now is the time to determine how to incorporate AI in learning and development. Your competitors are already using AI in learning and development initiatives, and you can’t afford no to.

Today, some organizations continue to use a traditional learning management system (LMS) to deliver their learning and development programs. However, a growing number are trading their LMS for an integrated, AI-powered revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle.

The Mindtickle platform incorporates a number of powerful AI features that enable organizations to deliver engaging, effective learning and development at scale. 

For starters, Mindtickle leverages AI to allow training, development, and revenue enablement teams to spin up new learning experiences quickly and easily. The faster you develop programs, the sooner you’ll start seeing an impact. 

In addition, Mindtickle uses AI to help employees surface relevant learning resources, such as individualized training, content, and microlearning. That means employees can find the learning resources they need, when they need them. Mindtickle also offers AI-powered role-plays that ensure employees have opportunities to perfect their skills in realistic, dynamic scenarios. 

Finally, Mindtickle leverages AI to help organizational leaders make sense of the large volume of data available to them – and act on those insights in a way that improves sales performance and business outcomes.

AI-Powered Learning with Mindtickle

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Enterprise Learning: What it is and Why it Should Matter to You

Elisha Zhang on July 9, 2024

“Knowledge is power.” It may be cliche, but it’s true.

Sure, every organization aims to hire the most qualified candidates. However, enterprise learning ensures employees can easily access learning and development opportunities to grow their skills and knowledge.

Organizations that embrace it reap some significant benefits.

Employees are better equipped to do their jobs and grow their skills by implementing enterprise learning. This increases employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention – not to mention the organization’s overall performance.

But what exactly is it?

In this post, we’ll explore the basics of enterprise learning to help you understand:

  • What it and why it’s important
  • Some of the top benefits
  • Some of the key challenges
  • The importance of choosing the right solution

What is enterprise learning?

You’re certainly not alone if you’re unsure what enterprise learning is. Let’s examine it and why it matters.

Enterprise learning, defined

Traditional professional learning often involves training built around a specific topic. For example, reps may attend a live rep sales training to get up to speed on a new product offering. Or, employees may be required to attend cybersecurity training within a certain window of time.

It goes beyond traditional training.

Enterprise learning is a set of practices and principles focused on providing employees with easy access to ongoing learning and development opportunities – whenever and wherever they need them. With this type of learning, employees are empowered to sharpen their existing skills and develop new ones that will help take their careers to the next level.

Enterprise learning isn’t a one-time training or event. Instead, it involves providing continuous opportunities across the organizations. In addition, it’s on-demand. Employees can access the resources they need whenever and wherever they need them.

Traditional training may be one component of an enterprise learning program. However, it’s is a holistic practice that may include many other components, like:

  • Live and on-demand webinars
  • Bite-sized learning
  • Text-based resources
  • Practice opportunities, like assessments and role-plays
  • Sales coaching
  • Mentorship
  • Knowledge sharing
  • Social learning opportunities
  • Professional certifications

Why is enterprise learning important?

So, why is it management so important?

Traditional training has a role to play. But on its own, it’s not enough to bolster knowledge and skills. After all, according to Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve, employees forget 50% of all new information within a day and 90% within a week.

Employees forget

of all new info in a day
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of all new info in a week
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Organizations must build a culture of ongoing learning if they expect to grow and develop their employees effectively – and reap the benefits of doing so. That’s where enterprise learning comes in.

We’ll take a closer look at some of the key benefits next.

6 key benefits of enterprise learning

Increasingly, organizations are shifting from traditional training to an enterprise learning approach. This makes sense, as both organizations and employees benefit significantly.

While this learning offers numerous benefits, let’s examine six that top the list.

On-demand learning opportunities

In the past, employee training was offered only at a specific time. For example, a sales rep might be required to attend a half-day training session on a new sales methodology.

Of course, real-time training still has a role. However, with enterprise learning, employees can also access learning opportunities on demand.

For example, they can watch an on-demand webinar during their lunch break or squeeze in a bite-sized learning session in the 15 minutes between two meetings.

In other words, employees can seek out upskilling opportunities whenever it work for their schedule. And if it works for their schedule, employees are more likely to do it.

A single source of truth for everything related to learning

Employees might want learning opportunities. But they’re not exactly sure where to find them. That means they waste time hunting for the right materials, which takes away time they could learn.

Organizations that are most successful provide their employees with a single source of truth for everything related to learning. Employees can find everything – from written content to video training to opportunities for social learning – all in one location.

The right management system makes learning materials well-organized and easy to search. Furthermore, employees can always be sure they’re accessing the most up-to-date versions of materials.

That way, employees can spend less time hunting for learning materials and more time learning and bolstering skills.

Improved job and organizational performance

Improved job performance is perhaps one of the most obvious benefits of an enterprise learning approach.

When employees have opportunities to learn and develop new skills, they’re better equipped to do their jobs well. When all employees have these opportunities, job performance across the entire organization will be boosted.

Higher employee satisfaction and retention

Employees who feel supported with ongoing learning opportunities are more satisfied in their roles. Research tells us 68% of employees feel learning opportunities are key to job satisfaction.

of employees say learning opps are key to job satisfaction
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Satisfied employees are more likely to stick around long-term. That means you won’t have to deal with the inconvenience and costs of backfilling vacant roles – or the stress of figuring out how to accomplish the same amount of work with a smaller headcount.

A competitive edge

In today’s world, change is inevitable. Your employees may be equipped to tackle their jobs today. However, an enterprise learning approach provides employees with ongoing learning opportunities that’ll help them adapt to continuous change – and excel in their roles. Your organization’s ability to adapt to change will give you a competitive edge.

Powerful insights to optimize learning initiatives

In the past, the HR, training, or enterprise sales enablement team would develop training, distribute it widely, and hope for the best. Though teams would spend plenty of time developing programs, they had little insight into whether their efforts had an impact.

A strong enterprise learning strategy – coupled with the right enterprise software – enables you to measure the impact of your initiatives. For starters, you can see which resources are used. For example, you can see what portion of sellers are accessing specific sales onboarding modules.

You can also understand how the consumption of different learning materials impacts outcomes. For example, you can see whether sellers who complete certain sales training are more likely to reach quota. Or, you can see if other materials are correlated with promotions.

These powerful insights can optimize existing enterprise learning resources, create new ones, and eliminate those that aren’t being used or have the intended impact.

Top challenges of enterprise learning

Organizations that adopt an enterprise learning mindset experience several key benefits. However, it also presents some unique challenges.

Let’s examine some of the top challenges.

#1 Creating engaging content

Different employees have different learning styles. While some prefer video, others are better able to retain written materials. Enterprise learning teams must be able to provide a large volume of assets that’ll resonate with different employees.

Of course, creating these materials takes time. Yet, time is a limited resource.

The good news is that the right tools can help teams develop materials more quickly and easily. One way these tools expedite learning creation is by offering templates as a starting point.

A recent analysis of Mindtickle users found that, on average, it takes between three and four weeks to launch a new enterprise sales enablement program from scratch. However, a program template can dramatically shorten this time to seven days.

Time to launch a program

without a template
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with a template
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Then, you can leverage analytics in your enterprise earning platform to determine which types of resources employees use and whether they impact outcomes. You can use this intel to invest in the resources being used and make an impact.

#2 Delivering personalized learning at scale

Learning isn’t one-size-fits-all. Instead, it’s important to offer personalized learning and development opportunities that meet the needs and interests of each employee.

This can be hard to do – especially at large organizations with many different departments.

A platform makes it easier to understand each employee’s unique strengths and weaknesses – and then deliver learning suggestions that meet their needs.

#3 Measuring enterprise learning impact

Many organizations measure the completion of initiatives. For example, they can see what percentage of sales reps completed a specific enterprise sales enablement program.

However, it’s critical also to measure the impact of your initiative. In other words, how is your practice improving outcomes?

This can be tough to understand – especially if you’re using a traditional learning management system (LMS).

However, you can measure consumption and impact with an enterprise learning or revenue enablement platform.

For example, you can see that a specific piece of content is used often – and it’s tied to many closed won deals. You can use these insights to optimize the content further.

#4 Choosing the right enterprise learning technology

Technology is a key component of any strategy. But there are many options, from traditional enterprise LMSs to enterprise revenue enablement platforms and everything in between.

Determining which option is the right fit for your organization’s needs can be challenging.

There’s no right answer. It’s important to consider your needs and find the platform that addresses them.

#5 Increasing adoption

Your initiative won’t impact if no one engages with the resources you offer. But getting employees to take advantage of learning materials can be hard when they already have busy schedules.

Building a learning culture within your organization is the key to combating this challenge. Help employees understand that enterprise learning is beneficial to them. Set aside a day every month when your employees are encouraged to engage with different learning initiatives. Also, provide recognition for those who are leveraging your materials.

Another key way to increase adoption is to rethink the format of your learning materials. Traditional employee training is often dull and lengthy, and employees must set aside a significant chunk of time to complete it.

Instead, consider creating bite-sized learning that employees can engage with when they have a few moments to spare. Be sure to communicate that learning doesn’t have to be a huge investment in time!

Transform enterprise learning with Mindtickle

The right enterprise learning software is foundational to the success of your strategy. But, as mentioned earlier, knowing which solution is the best for your needs can be challenging.

Today, some organizations leverage a traditional learning management system (LMS) to power their enterprise learning programs. However, many enterprise LMSs simply aren’t built for the needs of today’s learners.

Increasingly, organizations are searching for a solution that enables them to develop and deliver personalized learning programs for each employee. Many are opting for an integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle.

With Mindtickle, teams can develop and deliver training and other learning opportunities quickly and easily. That means employees can easily find everything related to enterprise learning – including rep training, content, and coaching – whenever and wherever they need it.

Finally, Mindtickle offers robust data and analytics to help you understand who is engaging with what resources and how that engagement is (or isn’t) impacting performance and outcomes. Then, you can use these insights to optimize your strategy.

Enterprise Learning with Mindtickle

Ready to see firsthand how Mindtickle can help you take your enterprise learning initiative to the next level?

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What is Sales Training? 

Helen Waite on July 9, 2024

Hiring strong sales reps with the right mix of skills and experience is important. But sales training is key to ensuring all sales reps (even your top performers) are properly equipped to close more deals, faster.

In fact, sales training is an essential component of any winning sales enablement strategy. When it’s done well, training can have a big impact on sales outcomes.

But what exactly is it?

In this guide, we’ll explore everything you need to know about sales training, including:

  • What it is and why it matters
  • How it can benefit your revenue organization
  • How you can build and deliver the best program
  • Key pitfalls to avoid when building your  program

Sales training: What it is and why it matters

First things first, what exactly is sales training?

Sales training ensures your sellers have the knowledge, skills, and competencies they need to be ready for every step of the sales journey – from prospecting to closing the deal.

Going beyond sales onboarding

At most organizations, the training journey starts with onboarding. Sales onboarding is an important way to get new reps up to speed with your organization, products, and goals – as well as their role in achieving those goals. It makes sense why organizations invest in sales onboarding. When it’s effective, onboarding can greatly impact key business outcomes.

But all too often, it ends at onboarding. Per an analysis of Mindtickle users, onboarding took 21-22 days in 2023, compared to 58 days the year prior. 

Days it took to onboard sellers

in 2022
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in 2023
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However, sales training shouldn’t stop at onboarding. Why? There are a few important reasons.

For starters, sellers are thrown a lot of information during sales onboarding. Even if you’ve built a great, engaging sales onboarding program, new reps are going to forget some of what they’ve learned. In fact, they’re going to forget most of it. Per Gartner, sellers forget 70% of the information they learn within just one week of training. Ongoing training (what we at Mindtickle refer to as “everboarding”) ensures learning sticks – and that sales reps are actually applying what they’ve learned to drive sales.

In addition, it’s important to remember that change is the only constant – both in life and in sales. Products, markets, competitors, and priorities are constantly changing. All reps – from the newest to the most seasoned – need ongoing training to ensure they’re up to speed on these changes and ready for whatever comes at them in the field.

The key benefits of sales training

There are many benefits of sales training. Here are two of the most important.

1. It positively impacts sales growth

Today, many sales leaders buy into the 80/20 rule, which is the outdated notion that 80% of sales will be driven by 20% of your reps. That means the vast majority of your reps will miss their sales quotas quarter after quarter.

But there’s a way to make sure all your sellers are meeting and beating their quotas.

With a strong program, you can create an entire team of sellers that are equipped to close deals and meet quota. Of course, when more sellers are closing more deals, that’s going to lead to more revenue growth.

2. It improves seller engagement and retention

When a great rep decides to leave, it’s costly to your company. For starters, you’re losing revenue the rep would have generated. Plus, you have to factor in the costs of recruiting, hiring, and training a new rep to replace them. It adds up! In fact, according to research from DePaul University, it costs nearly $115,000 to replace a sales rep.

Cost of replacing a sales rep
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Either way, the message is clear: when you find great reps, it’s important to do what you can to retain them.

Research tells us you can lose upwards of 60% of your entire workforce within four years if your sales reps don’t feel like they’re learning and growing at your organization. Providing ongoing sales training is a great way to engage your sales reps and give them opportunities to learn and grow. This will boost job satisfaction, which will increase retention. Higher retention will save you the headache and costs of filling vacant roles – or the pressure of meeting your sales goals with a leaner team.

Six tips for more effective sales training

The potential benefits are clear. However, claiming to deliver training isn’t enough to see the benefits. In fact, according to ES Research, between 85% and 90% of training has no lasting impact.

What is it that sets great training apart from the rest?

Here are six tips to improve the effectiveness of your program.

Tip #1: Don’t stop at onboarding

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: training should extend beyond sales onboarding.

Sellers forget the vast majority of what they learned during onboarding. What’s more, products, markets, and selling landscapes are constantly changing and evolving.

Ongoing training is a key component to ensuring all of your reps are ready to sell. Training should be delivered regularly for maximum impact. According to a Heinz Marketing and Mindtickle report, among respondents who hit 75% or more of their quota, 90% participate in monthly training.

Tip #2: Define excellence

Sales training aims to create more, great sellers. But first, you have to determine what a great seller looks like.

Chances are, you have an ideal customer profile (ICP), which outlines what a good fit customer looks like for your business. But it’s just as important to define your ideal rep profile (IRP), which is the skills and competencies a seller needs to succeed in your organization.

Ideal rep profile competencies

Then, you can plan courses and programs that map to each key area. That way, you can be sure your training is helping sellers boost the skills and competencies they need.

Tip #3: Make it personal

Imagine you have two sellers in the same room. One is a veteran seller, and has been with your company for a few years. The other is a recent college grad with big potential – but only a year of sales experience. Does delivering the same training to those two sales reps make sense?

Absolutely not. The newer seller likely needs more training on being a great seller. But if you deliver that same training to the veteran seller, they’ll get bored and disengaged.

Of course, there will be certain training all sellers need to complete. But as a general rule, it shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Instead, sales leaders must work to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each seller. The best way to do this is to measure each rep against your ideal rep profile. By doing so, you’ll see where they’re shining and where there are gaps. Then, personalized training can be delivered to each rep to close gaps – and improve sales performance.

Tip #4: Reinforce training

It’s disappointing, but it’s true: sellers will quickly forget what they learned in training. If you want that learning to stick (who doesn’t?), you’ve got to reinforce it.

Be sure to incorporate reinforcement exercises into your strategy. For example, after a training session, assign your sellers a quiz. If they earn a low score, assign them bite-sized video modules reinforcing the concepts presented during the training session.

It’s a best practice to house all  materials within a single sales training platform. That way, reps have a one-stop-shop for everything they need.

Tip #5: Mix up the format

The phrase “sales training” might conjure images of an instructor standing at the front of a room filled with sales reps. Sure, real-time training sessions – in-person or via video – are an important part of it. However, it also makes sense to incorporate other types of training.

For example, you might assign bite–sized training modules for sales reps to complete on their own time. You might also assign a quiz to test knowledge. Another idea is to assign role-plays to allow reps to practice their new skills and get feedback from either their manager or peers (or both).

Again, it’s important to ensure all training material is housed within a single platform so reps can easily find what they need.

Tip #6: Measure the impact

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. And without regular measurement, it’s impossible to determine what (if any) impact your training has on reps’ performance.

Many organizations measure completion rates. While this is important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. A seller may fly through their assigned training but fail to perform when interacting with buyers.

As such, it’s key to measure how your training impacts key business outcomes, such as quota attainment and win rates. In addition, be sure to continuously measure your reps against your ideal rep profile. That way, you can understand how training is positively impacting skills and in-field behaviors.

Sales training vs. sales coaching: What is the difference?

Training and coaching are key components of a sales enablement strategy. Often, these phrases are used interchangeably. Training and coaching are two pieces of the same puzzle, but they’re not the same.

At each organization, there are a certain set of skills and competencies a seller needs to be successful throughout the sales cycle. Training is focused on delivering knowledge to help reps learn those skills and competencies.  Classes and modules can be focused on any number of things, including (but not limited to):

  • Product knowledge
  • Sales methodology
  • Ideal customer profiles
  • Pitch delivery
  • Objection handling
  • Use of tools, including CRM

Sales coaching is aimed at improving sales performance. However, the delivery methods and tactics are different. The goal of sales coaching is to improve sales performance through strategies including:

  • Relationship-building
  • Knowing and analyzing what’s happening in the field
  • Delivering individualized plans to improve deal outcomes and build key skills for each sales rep

When it’s done well, sales coaching can extend the impact of training and have a big impact on sales results. In fact, effective sales coaching can boost win rates by as much as 29%. 

What exactly does sales coaching look like?

The most effective managers work closely with each sales rep to understand their unique strengths and weaknesses. In addition, they leverage meeting intelligence to see firsthand how reps are performing in the field. Armed with these insights, sales managers can deliver sales coaching that helps reps capitalize on strengths and improve weaker skills and competencies.

Often, sales coaching is limited to deal coaching. In other words, a rep and manager regularly review in-flight deals and determine how to move them forward. However, it’s also important to provide skills coaching. Skill coaching drives long-term behavior change and helps reps hone the skills they need to close deals.

Training and coaching shouldn’t be viewed as an either/or choice. Instead, both are key to ensuring reps are ready to move deals through the funnel and eventually close them.

Sales training mistakes to avoid

Many organizations invest time and resources into developing sales training programs. However, the harsh reality is that these programs often fail.

If you’re looking to increase the effectiveness of training at your organization, be sure to avoid these four common sales training mistakes.

Mistake #1: Taking a “one and done” approach 

It’s not realistic to deliver training one time and expect the entire team to retain what they learned and apply it in the field. Instead, it’s important to deliver training on an ongoing basis and provide reinforcement exercises and practice opportunities.

Average companies

Winning companies

role-plays a year
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role-plays a year
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Role-plays are one popular way to allow sales reps to practice their new skills, and they’re correlated with sales success. A recent analysis found that the average company has sellers complete 13 role-plays in a year. However, top companies have sellers do an average of 80 role-plays per year.

Mistake #2: Requiring every seller to complete every training

It’s not effective to create a generic sales training that requires every member of the revenue team to complete. If a sales training is focused on a skill a seller has already mastered, they’ll be disengaged. Plus, they’ll be wasting time that could be better spent engaging with buyers and closing deals.

Instead, measure each sellers’ mastery of the skills and behaviors that matter most. Then, assign relevant training that helps each seller strengthen their weaker skills.

Mistake #3: Only measuring success with completion metrics

Ongoing measurement is a key component of any sales training program. However, many organizations focus on completion metrics. In other words, they measure what percentage of sales reps complete a specific training.

Revenue organizations must go beyond completion metrics to understand the actual impact. Be sure to track sales training completion and how it is (or isn’t) impacting sales productivity.

Mistake #4: Depending on an outdated LMS to power your sales training program

A learning management system (LMS) can be a great solution for more general training, such as that that HR and IT teams deliver. However, an LMS isn’t built for the unique needs of the sales team.

A better approach is to invest in an integrated revenue enablement solution that incorporates all the key elements of revenue enablement, including sales training, sales coaching, sales content, and conversation intelligence. That way, sellers can access everything they need in one location. This is great news, as Salesforce research found that 66% of sales reps are overwhelmed with the number of tools they’re expected to use.

Salesforce research found that

of reps are overwhelmed with sales tools
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Furthermore, an integrated revenue enablement platform allows enablement teams to create and deploy personalized programs that meet the needs of every seller – at scale. Enablement teams can also holistically measure the impact of all their initiatives on sales productivity and performance.

Supercharge your sales training program with Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform

Hiring experienced sellers is one piece of the puzzle. But even the most seasoned sales reps need ongoing training to ensure they’re ready to conquer any deal.

Generic sales training simply won’t do. Instead, revenue enablement teams must work to define what excellence looks like – and then deliver personalized sales training and sales enablement to ensure every seller has what it takes to succeed.

Today, some revenue organizations continue to leverage a learning management system (LMS) to deliver sales training. However, a growing portion are trading in their LMS for an integrated revenue enablement platform.

With an integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle, revenue organizations can power their entire revenue enablement program – including sales training – all from one central location. That means revenue enablement leaders can build, deliver, and measure the impact of sales training and sales enablement initiatives – all in one platform. Furthermore, sellers can easily access the sales training, coaching, content, conversation insights, and other information and resources they need to close more deals, faster.

Sales training in Mindtickle

Ready to see why top revenue organizations are trading their LMS for Mindtickle?

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This post was originally published in November 2022 and updated in July 2024. 

What is Revenue Enablement?

Helen Waite on June 17, 2024

As a revenue leader, you’re likely quite familiar with the concept of sales enablement. You’re probably already investing in sales enablement teams, technology, and programs to improve sales engagement and performance.

But increasingly, winning organizations are shifting to the next iteration of enablement: revenue enablement.

Why the shift?

Modern B2B customers expect great experiences, whether they’re engaging with a sales rep for the first time or seeking advice from a trusted customer success manager. Revenue enablement ensures all customer-facing roles—including sales, marketing, customer success, and support—are aligned and have the right tools, data, and resources to deliver outstanding, connected experiences across the entire customer journey.

Ready to learn more about revenue enablement, how it can positively impact business outcomes, and how to get started with revenue enablement? Read on as we explore everything you need to know about revenue enablement.

What is revenue enablement?

First things first: what is revenue enablement?

Revenue enablement is an expansion of sales enablement. It is a practice focused on ensuring all customer-facing roles—including sales, marketing, and customer success (among others)—have the right tools, resources, processes, and data to deliver outstanding experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.

Today’s B2B buyers expect seamless experiences wherever they are on their journey. Revenue enablement ensures alignment across the entire customer journey, allowing for connected experiences that delight customers. Doug Bushée, Senior Director analyst at Gartner, says revenue enablement “provides buyers with a seamless and more effortless experience.”

"[Revenue enablement] provides buyers with a seamless and more effortless experience.”
Doug Bushée
Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Revenue enablement vs. sales enablement: How are they different?

Sales enablement and revenue enablement are related concepts, but there are some key differences between them.

Sales enablement refers to the strategies, processes, and technologies that support and empower sales teams to sell more effectively. This includes activities such as providing sales training and coaching, developing sales collateral and tools, and ensuring that sales teams have access to the right information and resources to close deals.

Revenue enablement, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities that go beyond just supporting sales teams. It involves aligning all customer-facing functions of an organization, such as:

    • Marketing

    • Sales

    • Customer Success

    • Support

This includes optimizing the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. Revenue enablement aims to drive revenue growth by maximizing the lifetime value of customers.

In summary, sales enablement is focused on supporting and empowering the sales function specifically, while revenue enablement is focused on aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. (Find out where your revenue enablement IQ stacks up here.) 

Revenue enablement Sales enablement
Purpose Ensure all customer-facing teams have the tools, resources, processes and information to engage customers throughout the customer lifecycle Ensure sales teams have the tools, information, content, and resources to engage with buyers and close more deals.
Goal Consistent, streamlined customer experiences Improved sales performance
Primary audience All customer-facing roles, including Sales, Marketing, Pre-sales engineers , Customer Success, and Customer Support Sales
Examples of KPIs Revenue growth, customer retention, customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value, cross-sales, upsells, and referrals New rep ramp time, quota attainment, average deal size, sales cycle length, conversion rates, and cost per customer
Primary responsible party Revenue enablement team Sales enablement team
Who team reports to Chief Revenue Officer Chief Sales Officer

Why should you implement revenue enablement?

Today’s business-to-business (B2B) customer expects more from their buying experience. They want relationships, experiences, and understanding, not sales-driven transactions. In fact, Salesforce research indicates that 66% of customers expect companies to respond to their unique needs.

of customers expect companies to respond to their unique needs
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When sales enablement and revenue operations (RevOps) work hand in hand, organizations are poised to:

1. Increase revenue

By aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, you can help optimize the entire customer journey, resulting in increased revenue generation.

2. Improve customer experience

You can ensure that customers receive a consistent, high-quality experience throughout their entire journey with an organization, from initial engagement to post-sales support.

3. Better alignment and collaboration

Promote better alignment and collaboration between different customer-facing functions, such as marketing, sales, customer success, and support, improving efficiency and effectiveness.

4. Increase customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, you can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value.

5. Better data and insights

 Get a have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs.

Overall, revenue enablement can help organizations drive revenue growth, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increase operational efficiency and effectiveness.

How can revenue enablement help your sales team?

Taking this approach can help your sales team by doing the following:

1. Better aligning with other customer-facing functions

Revenue enablement aligns all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, ensuring that sales teams work collaboratively with marketing, customer success, and support teams. This alignment ensures a consistent customer experience throughout the entire customer journey, which can help sales teams close deals more effectively.

2. Improving lead generation and nurturing

 Revenue enablement helps organizations develop a more comprehensive understanding of their target market and buyer personas. This knowledge can help sales teams generate higher-quality leads and nurture them more effectively, resulting in a higher conversion rate.

3. Enhancing sales enablement

Revenue enablement helps organizations develop more comprehensive sales enablement strategies that go beyond just providing training and collateral to sales teams. It ensures that sales teams have access to the right information and resources at every stage of the customer journey, enabling them to sell more effectively.

4. Better data and insights

Revenue enablement requires organizations to have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. Sales teams can use this information to tailor their sales approach and messaging, resulting in higher win rates.

5. Increasing customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, revenue enablement can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value. Sales teams can benefit from this by having a larger pool of loyal customers to upsell and cross-sell to.

Overall, revenue enablement can help sales teams sell more effectively by providing them with the right information, resources, and support to close deals, and by ensuring that they work collaboratively with other customer-facing functions to provide a consistent, high-quality customer experience.

What are some examples of revenue enablement tools?

Revenue enablement tools are software solutions that help businesses increase revenue by improving their sales and marketing processes. Some examples include:

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software

A CRM system helps businesses manage their customer interactions and sales pipelines, enabling them to track leads, forecast revenue, and automate sales workflows.

Marketing automation software

Marketing automation software helps businesses automate their marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media management, and lead scoring.

Sales enablement software

Sales enablement solutions provide sales teams with the tools and content, such as sales collateral, training materials, and analytics, they need to engage with prospects and close deals.

Content management software

Sales content management software allows businesses to organize and manage their marketing and sales content, such as product information, marketing collateral, sales decks, competitive battlecards, pricing sheets, and case studies.

Sales forecasting software

Sales forecasting software uses data analysis and machine learning algorithms to predict future sales trends, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions about their sales and marketing strategies.

mt-platform-forecasting-screen

Customer analytics software

 Customer analytics software gives businesses insights into their customer behavior and preferences, enabling them to tailor their sales and marketing strategies to better meet customer needs.

Best practices for getting started with revenue enablement

As you’re building up your revenue enablement strategy, here are key things to keep in mind:

  • Establish key business objectives for revenue enablement, such as overall revenue growth and individual seller productivity metrics
  • Decide whether to consolidate technology and data under one revenue productivity platform versus integrating point solution products, or some version of each
  • Determine a cadence for discussing and analyzing revenue enablement initiatives – prioritize and stick to it
  • Hold front-line management, marketing, sales enablement, and ops accountable to overall business goals
  • Create a cadence around org readiness to be discussed alongside forecasting and pipeline reviews

Ready to take the next step?

To pivot toward a revenue enablement-focused approach, organizations should take the following steps:

  1. Align around a common revenue goal: The first step is to align all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. This involves setting clear revenue targets and ensuring that all customer-facing teams understand how their activities contribute to those targets.
  2. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey: To optimize the customer journey, organizations need to develop a comprehensive understanding of their customers and their buying journey. This includes understanding their pain points, preferences, and needs at each stage of the journey.
  3. Implement a technology stack: Revenue enablement requires a technology stack that supports the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. This includes marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer success platforms.
  4. Develop a sales enablement strategy: Revenue enablement goes beyond just sales enablement. However, it’s still essential to develop a sales enablement strategy that ensures that sales teams have the right information, resources, and support to sell effectively.
  5. Measure and optimize performance: To ensure efforts are effective, organizations need to measure performance regularly and optimize their approach based on data and insights. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction.

Implementing revenue enablement is an ongoing process that requires continuous refinement and improvement. By taking these steps, organizations can create a customer-centric revenue growth engine that optimizes the entire customer journey and drives business success.

Ready to learn more about how Mindtickle can make this a reality at your organization?

Revenue Enablement in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in April 2023, updated in November 2023, and again in June 2024.

What Makes a Successful Sales Training Program?

Poornima Mohandas on May 17, 2024

Every revenue leader will tell you that ongoing training is key to getting reps the skills and knowledge they need to close deals. 

While most organizations invest in a sales enablement department (84%), according to our 2024-2025 Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, only 40% of these C-level executives said they can identify rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training.

According to research, only

of C-level execs can identify rep strengths and weaknesses
0 %

So, while leaders know that training is necessary, they lack visibility into where to focus training efforts. 

When effective, sales training becomes one of the most important investments in your sellers and an invaluable use of their time. In this blog post, we’ll define sales training and programs and why they’re important. We’ll then outline:

  • Why one-size-fits-all sales training won’t work
  • The essentials for a successful sales training program
  • Different types of sales training programs
  • How sales training technology helps
  • How to use Mindtickle for sales training.

What is sales training?

A sales training program teaches sales reps the skills needed for every step of the sales journey—from first contact through the close of a sale. It’s the ongoing process of teaching sales teams how to create deal-closing interactions with buyers. This includes in-person learning, e-learning, micro-learning, gamification, or other training techniques to help sales reps improve performance.

Although sometimes used interchangeably, sales training is not the same as sales enablement or sales coaching.

What is a sales training program and why is it needed?

Organizations need to develop personalized sales training programs for their sales teams so they can achieve and maintain sales excellence across the organization.

Ideal rep profile competencies

Once you’ve mapped out your ideal rep profile and understand the specific selling skills, behaviors, and knowledge your salespeople need to succeed, you can plan out courses and programs that focus on each area.

Start by defining the outcomes for each training program. For example:

Focus on on different product features to help reps run product demos tailored to prospects’ needs

Help reps spot when they’re using filler words so they can reduce the frequency of using them on calls

Focus on on common objections to help reps handle prospects’ objections confidently

Why one-size-fits-all training won’t work

If you choose a sales training program with a one-size-fits-all manual, you may be throwing away time and money.

Despite significant investments in sales training programs, the average rate of quota attainment has been declining for years. In fact, according to some research, only 42.8% of reps met their quotas last year. One-size-fits-all training programs assume there is just one way to sell and therefore fail at the very thing they are teaching.

According to research, only

of reps met their quotas last year
0 %

No two sales reps have the same needs or experience. Similarly, no two businesses are alike—a technology company and a retailer have different needs relevant to the industry and each has a unique sales process.

For example:

  • A retail sale — B2C —might require a shorter, but more personal interaction.
  • Reps selling products in B2B, like technology, require an intricate knowledge of customers, products, trends, and advancement in the industry.

In both examples, the sales rep must deliver a modern sales approach that can compete with information available online, and the complexities of each product require specific understanding. But the approach to these differing sales requires unique knowledge and techniques, meaning training must be suited to the individual rep, business, product, and customer.

While there is some benefit to be gained from any initiative, the results won’t be nearly as effective as those from an individually designed program that incorporates your company’s methodology and provides ongoing training and coaching opportunities.

The essentials for a successful sales training program

What are “the essentials” of choosing a sales training program, and why do they matter? Conventional training programs focus on behavior modification, communication, and negotiation skills. Those things play an important role in sales success, but other strategies can improve results faster and give your sales reps an advantage in the field.

The best sales training program for your company should include these essential features.

#1 Diverse training formats

Offering several different formats for presenting training material means teaching sales reps in the manner that they learn best.

Video provides a forum for role-play and live lectures, as well as narrated slide presentations to keep reps engaged.

Audio recordings work well for delivering training when complete attention is not necessary, like while driving or completing other activities.

Written materials allow reps to review and study resources in a written form with PDF files that can be made available for easy download and/or printing.

Gamification turns lackluster training modules into a fun, competitive learning opportunity. Video games, quizzes, and more can keep reps engaged and eager to continue their training.

#2. Customizable platform

While standard training programs can offer the basics, a customizable program allows you to add content specific to your business, including techniques that work well in your market or with your product, and change and grow with your needs.

At the program’s onset, expect a framework driven by your organization’s sales strategy and a practical understanding of your products, services, and process. Intuitive real-time editing means the program adjusts via sales rep input, evaluating what reps need according to what they have completed, how they learn, and even existing or desired customers. Front-line managers can coach teams and review analytics by utilizing easy-to-use mobile tools.

#3. Real-world scenarios

A successful sales training program uses real-world buying scenarios (and proven solutions) to train the team to handle any common situation. It must offer the flexibility to successfully address every aspect of a business reality. This type of program allows reps to practice real-world scenarios before they actually enter a high-stakes conversation with prospects or customers.

#4. Structured reinforcement

Effective training requires time, repetition, and detailed individuality. A customized training program enables your sales team to achieve milestones while continuing to sell successfully.

Reinforcement is key to helping salespeople retain what they’ve learned. Without systematic, continual learning and reinforcement, sales reps forget 70% of information within one week of training, and 87% within one month.

#5. Tracking and metrics

How do you know if reps use the program and if it’s working? A good sales training program should include progress tracking for each sales rep and analysis through quizzes, tests, and other assessments. This information should be used to generate performance metrics and continually improve the program.

#6. Different instructional modalities

Providing learning opportunities that meet your sales team where they are, physically and mentally, is the best way to get their attention and make learning fun and interactive.

Your sales team is always on the go. Training materials should be agile, available via streaming or download to mobile devices for use when the time is right.

Online lectures and virtual conferences provide a forum where everyone can participate without being in the same physical location.

Discussion forums, chat capabilities, and social interactions provide learning in an environment that enhances engagement through connection and discussion.

#7. Micro-learning capabilities

Micro-learning offers information as bite-sized, easily accessed, individualized content for sales reps. Usually focused on one topic or problem, it is presented in various ways like quizzes, videos, games, or simulations. Micro-learning uses information about how our long-term memory performs and incorporates the use of repetition over time. Learning that is fun and engaging—presented over time—helps learners avoid information overload and increases retained information. It is quick and easy to complete and provides the opportunity for tracking progress and identifying gaps for future learning.

#8. Gamification

When learning is less tedious and more fun, information is retained better. Reps are more likely to complete training modules involving video games, leaderboards, social networking, and gamified quizzes, even when they aren’t assigned. Sales reps are motivated to do the work, becoming increasingly skilled in the process, which drives revenue growth.

Different types of sales training programs

General sales skills include relationship-building, questioning, solution-building, negotiation, problem-solving, and proposal writing. Different types of sales training programs focus on different areas. When you choose just one area to focus on, not all reps on your sales team will benefit.

Here are a few types of sales training.

Teaches information or steps that improve the chance of a positive outcome. Usually a standard format, it creates a common approach and language for sales reps and emphasizes skill development.

Long-form modules with in-depth subject knowledge that teach essential sales skills. Reps learn how to sell with fundamental skills like finding prospects, active listening, asking questions, negotiation, sidestepping objections, giving presentations, follow-up, and other administrative communication skills. These skills have no expiration date and continue to evolve over time, as your reps’ confidence and knowledge grows.

Focuses on the product features and benefits, giving a sales rep a solid foundation regarding what they are selling, so they can focus on the customers’ needs.

Information refreshers that reinforce knowledge from training modules. Small, frequent updates prompt knowledge retention and connect information that reps have already learned for improved results.

 

How sales training technology helps

Enlisting a data-driven sales training program can change the game for your business. Technology-based onboarding alone can propel your success rate forward. A quality, customizable program offers cost-savings, flexibility, logistical simplicity, accessibility, and the chance for self-paced learning and repetition as needed.

Online or off, effective sales training programs should be customizable to adapt to the changing needs of any business. Key metrics provide a barometer for results. Diverse training opportunities coupled with a variety of learning modalities can help you reach your sales rep and improve retention. Micro-learning and bite-sized updates provide refreshers and continual learning.

Choose a training program that uses technology to make learning easier, empowers sales reps, and drives excellence.

Mindtickle for sales training

With a comprehensive suite of sales productivity applications, Mindtickle provides your sales team with a positive learning environment and never-ending learning. Sales reps learn and practice concepts from engaging, accessible delivery platforms that convey knowledge, offer role-play opportunities for eventual success in the field, and improve mastery for customer engagement.

Tracked usage offers accessibility and visibility—a window into progress and performance, that emphasizes knowledge retention through quizzes, gamification, and coaching. Mindtickle’s data-driven approach provides easy mobile access that ties individual performance to revenue growth with metrics that reveal what’s working, what needs adjusting, where gaps exist, and how training is affecting sales outcomes.

See Sales Training in Mindtickle

Build a sales training program that actually helps your reps close more deals. 

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This post was originally published in April 2020, updated in November 2022, October 2023, and May 2024. 

What is Sales Onboarding?

Vivian Batman on April 19, 2024

Sales onboarding is an education program that provides newly hired sales reps with the necessary knowledge, instills the company values, and shows them how to leverage the provided tools of a company in an easy-to-absorb and timely format. This process ensures all sales reps have what they need for success within the company, with the team, and in the field.

A well-defined onboarding program, in particular, allows sales reps to learn in consumable chunks, with defined learning objectives and onboarding materials that are readily available and updated with the latest competitive, corporate, and product information.

Sales reps who undergo standardized onboarding processes become productive 3.4 months sooner, on average than those who work at organizations with less formal onboarding. And those new hires are 50% more likely to stay with the organization.

To be successful, sales reps need an intimate knowledge of the products they are selling, as well as the specific procedures and behaviors that will help them succeed. To be clear, a strong sales onboarding program gives reps more credibility and confidence in their new role, boosting the success of the entire sales department. In this post, we’ll cover the the following topics so you’re ready to build an onboarding plan that sets every rep up to be a top performer:

What is the importance of sales onboarding?

What are the best sales onboarding practices?

What is a 30-60-90-day sales onboarding plan?

How does sales onboarding reduce ramp time?

What are the features of a sales onboarding platform?

What is the importance of sales onboarding?

Sales onboarding is an essential component of an effective sales enablement program. It’s the first step in ensuring sellers have the tools, resources, and support they need to be successful.

The numbers are in, and reports confirm the importance of a solid sales onboarding program for every organization.

According to G2, reps are productive in 3.4 months faster with best-in-class sales onboarding programs — that’s 37% faster than organizations with low-performing programs. 

Sales onboarding sets sellers up for success

Creating an onboarding program that is aligned with the specific needs of your sales reps as well as the organization leads to greater success in the field, as your reps will know the products they’re selling and have the knowledge and skills to back them up. Knowledge gained through onboarding also helps reps get to know their customers, both existing and potential. It provides information about current users and enhances creative thinking around new business opportunities.

Even further, reps enter the field with the comfort of knowing the values and standards of the company, so they can sell with confidence. If onboarding at your company is too general, you may miss out on opportunities to improve key sales skills aligned with your organization.

Sales onboarding improves retention and recruitment

Setting new hires up for success in their role is a huge part of attracting and retaining top talent. In today’s competitive job market, job seekers are more knowledgeable and discerning of their prospective employers than ever before. If a talented sales rep is considering joining your team, the onboarding and training programs may play a significant role in their success. A strong onboarding and training curriculum sets you apart as an employer that values and invests in its employees.

A strong onboarding program also helps you retain the top talent you have recruited.

Companies with ineffective onboarding lose 17% of new hires in the first three months.

With a great onboarding program, you can keep employees for months and years to come by giving them the knowledge and consistent onboarding experience they need to succeed in your sales department.

Sales onboarding increases rep engagement

Sales reps who are highly engaged in their work do everything they can to satisfy their clients, grow their client base, help other sales reps succeed, and contribute ideas to improve the overall sales department. These highly engaged employees are advocates for your company and an integral part of your sales department.

Building employee engagement starts with onboarding. When new reps get the tools and information they need right from the start, they are more likely to buy into the company’s goals, bond with the sales team through shared experiences, and contribute in a positive way every day.

What are the best sales onboarding practices?

A job done poorly gets poor results—and sales onboarding is no exception. An onboarding process that is effectively built from the start can lead to improved sales opportunities, more closed deals, and great salespeople who stay for the long haul.

Here are a few best practices to help you build your own sales onboarding program:

  • Build a company story: Come to the table with a clear vision of your goals. What is your company’s mission and vision? What are your company values? What do you bring to the table? How is it different from your competitors?
  • Provide clear, concise messaging: With a clear understanding of your company values, new sales reps need a guide for how to convey your message. Your onboarding program should provide key messaging tips for a variety of different sales situations and opportunities.
  • Target the right customers: Develop sample profiles of customers that are a good fit for your products, including personalities and relevant industries. Learning how to pick and choose potential customers is a great way to help new hires understand your ideal customers and sell to them effectively.
  • Standardize the process: Access to paperwork, manuals, onboarding materials, and centralized messaging can significantly improve the results of the process. Enlist the help of a dashboard-style system that keeps everything in one place. A simple, effective, repeatable system will help new reps feel confident when the process begins, and give a simple way to check back and review important information when needed.
  • Provide continuous support: Using a revenue productivity platform that standardizes your message is just the first step toward improved sales and retention. Provide opportunities for reps to check in, access sales coaching, and track their own productivity with assessments to cement the learning process with ongoing activities — a concept we call everboarding.
  • Offer engaging, varied training formats: Onboarding used to mean all-day training sessions and shadowing experienced reps — long days, information overload, and minimal retention. With advances in sales training technology, you can offer a more engaging and interesting onboarding experience. With sales training techniques like micro-learning and gamification, you can present information in various formats to keep new hires engaged and help them retain more information long-term.

While a consistent model of behavior and information makes the onboarding process run smoothly, creating one for your company is an individual, unique exercise. It must be consistently administered across new sales reps but customized for your industry, values, goals, team, and leadership.

What is a 30-60-90-day sales onboarding plan?

A common onboarding strategy sales organizations take is the 30-60-90-day plan — a roadmap for where you want new reps to be after the first, second, and third months in their role. It can look something like this:

  • 30 days: The new hire is familiar with the company mission, culture, history, products, buyers, sales processes, and tools. Offer some icebreaker activities and opportunities for collaboration and team building.
  • 60 days: The new hire becomes more hands on, participating in team meetings, confident in talking to customers and prospects, and seems motivated to perform well.
  • 90 days: The (not-so) new hire actively reaches out to their accounts independently and fits into the larger company culture. You can see a clear picture of their progress from day one.

There are different ways to approach a sales onboarding program, and where you start will depend on two things: your company objectives and what you already have in place. Using technology can help you customize the process for not only your company but also for the many different learning styles that each rep brings to the table.

How does sales onboarding reduce ramp time?

Average ramp time for new sales reps can be anywhere between six and 12 months. A strong onboarding program can use the following techniques to improve the onboarding process and decrease ramp time:

  • A repeatable process: A well-defined, easily accessed, and standard process with clearly stated goals for the first and second week, first month, and so on is a must-have. This process leaves the first impression with new reps and can make or break the relationship between the new rep and the company.
  • Written resources: Information must be easily accessed for learning and review, so ensure everything is properly recorded and accessible.
  • Goal setting: Expectations should be communicated and accountability tracked, but not rushed.
  • Company experience: Give new sales reps the opportunity to experience other aspects of the company, such as customer service and support and inventory control.
  • Mentorship and shadow opportunities: New hires get up to speed more quickly when there are ample opportunities for mentoring and shadowing. These activities allow reps to get guidance from more experienced sales team members in a less formal setting, giving them good opportunities to ask questions and learn in a real-world environment.

These techniques can be automated and/or streamlined with the help of a revenue productivity platform. 

What are the features of a sales onboarding platform?

Sales onboarding platforms are typically part of enablement or productivity software. Today, more sellers are working remotely than ever before, and using technology is crucial for ensuring that sales onboarding is accessible and adaptable for every individual rep.

These systems help to optimize the creation and execution of onboarding materials by:

  • Storing, managing, and distributing training content
  • Replicating in-person engagement through video conferencing tools and virtual instructor-led training (VILT)
  • Providing practice opportunities through recorded role-plays
  • Offering gamified learning and competitions
  • Personalizing learning paths based on proven competencies and areas for improvement
  • Tracking completion rates and scores

Successful sales onboarding with Mindtickle

The Mindtickle revenue productivity platform offers onboarding and training features that improve time-to-productivity, sales rep effectiveness, and much more. Mindtickle offers user-friendly dashboards and analytics to track new reps’ progress through onboarding modules and identify reps who need additional training in certain areas.

Once onboarding is complete, Mindtickle offers a full suite of sales training, sales coaching, analytics, and micro-learning tools to reinforce concepts and build key skills. 

Sales Onboarding with Mindtickle

Schedule a demo today to see how Mindtickle can improve your sales onboarding program.

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This post was originally published in January 2020, was updated in September 2022, and again in April 2024.  

Sales Mirroring: What is it and How to do it Well

Rahul Mathew on April 18, 2024

Building relationships is essential in sales. Once you’ve established rapport and earned a prospect’s trust, they’re more likely to make a purchase and stay long-term.

Modern sales reps leverage many different techniques to build rapport. Sales mirroring is one that’s especially common and effective. In fact, research shows that sales mirroring can increase sales reps’ closing rates by 17%.

Sales mirroring can increase closing rates by

0 %

But what it? And what techniques can help you close more deals?

In this blog, we’ll discuss what mirroring in sales is and why it’s a powerful approach for closing more deals. We’ll also explore some techniques to consider – and some common pitfalls to avoid.

What is sales mirroring?

Sales mirroring (also known as sales mimicking) is a strategy sales reps use to build rapport and earn their prospects’ trust. But how exactly does it work?

Sales mirroring is based on psychology. Essentially, it involves a seller observing a prospect’s verbal and non-verbal cues – and then “mirroring” that communication style. The prospect feels heard and understood, which increases their likelihood of purchasing from the seller.

Sales reps can use mirroring when interacting with prospects at every stage of the sales cycle—from initial outreach to discovery to demo to negotiation to close—and everything in between. Sales mirroring (when it’s done well) can significantly impact a rep’s ability to move deals through the sales pipeline and ultimately close more of those deals.

Of course, mirroring can be used during verbal communication – such as sales calls and video conferencing. However, this technique can also be used in email and other written communication.

What are the benefits of sales mirroring?

In today’s world, 78% of B2B buyers expect companies to understand and adapt to their changing needs and preferences. Rattling off a generic list of product features and benefits won’t cut it.

of B2B buyers expect companies understand and adapt to their needs and preferences
0 %

Many sales reps practice sales mirroring to build customer relationships and earn trust. But why is this approach so popular?

Let’s examine some key reasons why sales mirroring is an important (and popular) tool for sales reps.

Sales mirroring helps sales reps build trust with prospects

When a seller earns a buyer’s trust, they’re more likely to win their business. Research from Forrester found that 83% of B2B buyers would recommend a trusted vendor to others outside the company.

The bottom line is that earning a prospect’s trust is foundational to winning and retaining customers.

Mirroring is a powerful way to build trust with prospects. When sales reps use sales mirroring, the buyer feels heard and respected, which increases trust and the prospect’s likelihood of making a purchase.

Sales mirroring builds relationships

Any successful sales rep knows that relationship-building is key. Strong relationships lead to more deals, renewals, and referrals.

Practicing mirroring is an effective way to grow relationships with customers. For starters, sales mirroring helps sales reps demonstrate commitment to understanding a customer’s challenges. When a buyer feels understood, they’re more likely to listen to a seller’s recommendations.

In addition, mirroring can help a prospect and sales rep identify things they have in common. These commonalities can help build strong, long-term relationships.

Sales mirroring helps sales reps understand a customer’s needs

Before recommending a solution, a seller must understand a buyer’s needs. Sales reps who practice mirroring observe a buyer’s verbal and nonverbal cues. By listening to what the prospect is saying—and how they’re saying it—the sales rep can truly understand the prospect’s unique needs. Then, they can develop a solution to address those needs.

Sales mirroring helps reps close more deals faster

Putting a lot of pressure on a buyer can seem like an effective way to move a deal forward. But the truth is, this approach often has the opposite effect. When a sales rep is pushy, it can scare buyers off for good.

On the other hand, when a sales rep uses mirroring, their buyer doesn’t feel pressured to buy a product that may or may not truly fit their needs. Instead, they know the seller understands their needs. This reduces the buyer’s resistance and can speed up the sales cycle.

How to practice sales mirroring

Mirroring can effectively build rapport, earn a prospect’s trust, and, ultimately, close more deals. But how exactly does it work?

Let’s take a closer look at some proven sales mirroring techniques.

#1 Listen to the prospect

Verbal cues are important, so pay attention to what the prospect says and how they say it.

Take note of their speaking cadence. For example, do they talk quickly or take frequent pauses? In addition, take note of the words or phrases they use often.

You’ll also want to pay attention to their speaking style. Are they formal, casual, or somewhere in between? Do they incorporate humor, or are they all business?

Use these verbal cues to adapt your speaking style. But find ways to do so subtly. If you go overboard, you’ll come across as insincere.

#2 Tune into non-verbal communication cues

Research tells us that at least 50% of communication is nonverbal. As such, it’s imperative for sales reps practicing mirroring to pay attention to body language. Be sure to pay attention to non-verbal cues, including (but not limited to):

  • Eye contact
  • Posture
  • Hand gestures
  • Facial expressions
Eye contact
Posture
Hand gestures
Facial expressions

This is certainly easier to do in person. However, with the rise of video conferencing, sales reps can more easily notice a prospect’s nonverbal cues even when they’re not sitting in the same room.

For example, if you notice a prospect sitting tall in their chair, do the same. If the prospect looks more relaxed, change your posture accordingly. If the prospect maintains consistent eye contact, try to do the same.

Again, be sure to incorporate these non-verbal cues into your communication subtly.

#3 Find common ground

Some prospects join a call, ready to get down to business. Others prefer to chat first. Gauge your prospect’s preference – and adapt accordingly.

For example, if the prospect shares a story about a recent trip or special interest, reciprocate by doing the same. Ideally, you’ll find something in common to help build the relationship. But don’t force it, lest you come across as phony.

#4 Perfect the art of asking questions

Asking the right questions is key to uncovering your customer’s unique needs and challenges. According to the 2024 State of Revenue Productivity Report, sales reps ask an average of 20 questions during discovery sales calls.

Sales reps ask an average of

questions during discovery calls
0

So get your prospects talking. Avoid yes/no questions as much as possible, and opt for open-ended ones. You’ll get more valuable information from your prospects and have more opportunities to observe their communication and practice sales mirroring.

#5 Practice active listening

When a prospect answers a question, don’t zone out. Instead, remain present in the conversation and follow up by summarizing what the prospect has said. This will show that you’ve made the effort to truly know and understand them. It’ll also allow them to delve deeper into something you may have missed, which will help you develop and deliver the most relevant solutions possible. Finally, actively listening will give you more insight into the prospect’s communication style and more insights for sales mirroring.

5 Sales mirroring mistakes to avoid

Mirroring can be an effective strategy for building rapport and trust. However, sellers often approach it incorrectly.

If you want to succeed with mirroring in sales, you must avoid a few common mistakes.

When it comes to sales mirroring, less is more. It’ll turn off prospective buyers if your mirroring is too obvious.

So, don’t go overboard in your sales mirroring. Instead, keep it subtle and natural.

Emulating body language is a component of sales mirroring. However, sales reps should only attempt to mirror a prospect’s body language if it’s positive or neutral.

In other words, if a prospect is scowling and defensively crossing their arms, this shouldn’t be emulated by the sales rep.

Listening to a prospect – and then summarizing what they’ve said – is a key part of sales mirroring. However, simply repeating what a prospect says without taking the time to understand isn’t the way to do it.

Instead, tune in to what the prospect is saying and seek to understand. Ask follow-up questions to dig deeper. In addition, consider using a conversation intelligence solution (like Mindtickle’s Call AI) that records and analyzes sales calls. That way, you can remain present and not have to spend your time taking notes.

When engaging with a prospect, you may notice they frequently use certain unique words or expressions. Avoid mirroring these specific words or expressions. It can be phony (at best) or mocking (at worst).

Instead, the goal should be to mirror the prospect’s general behavior. Speak naturally while incorporating some general traits you’ve noticed during your encounters with the prospect.

Asking questions is key to getting the prospect to open up. But you have to ask the right questions.

Avoid asking questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. In addition, avoid general questions that you could have answered independently with some research. Instead, pose questions that demonstrate you’ve done your homework.

Empower your reps to master the art of sales mirroring

Mirroring in sales is an effective way to build rapport with prospects. With it, reps can earn prospects’ trust – and their long-term business,

While mirroring is popular, not all sellers know how to do it well. Revenue organizations must ensure sellers have what it takes to be successful.

Winning revenue organizations depend on Mindtickle’s integrated sales productivity platform to deliver the training, sales enablement, reinforcement, and coaching sellers need to perfect the art of sales mirroring.

Of course, completing a sales mirroring training or sales enablement exercise doesn’t mean a seller is putting these skills into practice while in the field. Mindtickle incorporates Call AI, a conversation intelligence solution that records, analyzes, and scores sales calls. Sales reps get real-time feedback on improving deal outcomes, and managers can easily identify when they need additional coaching on sales mirroring or other key skills.

In addition, Mindtickle incorporates revenue intelligence, which helps revenue teams boost their forecasting, pipeline, and deal confidence.

With Mindtickle, you can boost your team’s productivity with sales training, enablement, call insights, and revenue intelligence – all from a single, integrated platform.

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