20
Apr 2023
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Why your B2B organization needs its own Sales Academy

We can think of at least five reasons why your team needs its own Sales Academy.

Why your B2B organization needs its own Sales Academy

Els Costers Els Costers  |    Competence Development, Sales Performance

The war for talent is raging. On top of that, B2B buying behavior is changing dramatically. Commercial teams have a hard time finding answers to these ongoing challenges. The changing environment has a serious impact on sales functions, responsibilities and competencies. What your sales team needs now is new skills. Even more than that, it needs a program that enables your team to continuously develop and hone its competencies, through an effective learning method. At Perpetos, we call this your Sales Academy.  

We can think of at least five reasons why your team needs its own Sales Academy: 

  1. Consistent training: A Sales Academy will provide your team with consistent commercial training, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. This will help to deliver a consistent and positive customer experience in all the touch points with your organization. In turn, this will lead to improved sales effectiveness and better results. 
     
  1. Customized training: By developing your own Sales Academy, you can customize learning according to the specific needs and performance priorities of your company. This requires a company-specific integration between individual competence gaps, business performance gaps, team interactions, effective messaging that engages customers, and new ways of working. This can include messaging about specific products and services, that are most effective and translated into your sales teams’ reality. 
     
  1. Increased sales: Sales is not that different from athletics. Training and mental fitness are key for a top performance. By providing your commercial team with the tools they need to succeed, you can improve their ability to close deals, improve customer loyalty and maximize revenue for your business. 
     
  1. Improved customer experience: Well-trained people in today’s reality understand how people buy and are also better equipped to do their job. By understanding the different phases of the customer journey and knowing how to adjust messaging accordingly, your sales team will be able to influence buyers more successfully and build stronger relationships. 
     
  1. Increased employee retention: Providing continuous learning opportunities will help to improve employee satisfaction and retention. But just as important is a commercial academy to groom sales talent and facilitate internal job mobility, from a technical role into sales and moving on to key account management. All this requires is a well thought out training strategy with competencies linked to learning modules, which allow people to grow in their career and be guided with Just In Time learning.  
Get inspiration on possible sales programs and modules applicable to you.
Explore our “Learning & Development Curriculum“

Signing up for a Sales Academy in your B2B organization means that you are serious about installing a culture of continuous improvement, and that you want to stimulate peer-to-peer learning.

People uplift each other when they are challenged. They acquire new competencies and are being reminded about the things they know but no longer apply. After all, the hardest thing to achieve is closing the gap between knowing and doing. 

  Commercial Excellencelifelong learningSales Academy
18
Nov 2020
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5 Tips om sales training te verankeren

5 Tips on how to make sales training stick

How do you make sure your investments in learning & development are effective and pay off?

5 Tips on how to make sales training stick

Nicolas Dejehansart Nicolas Dejehansart  |    Sales Performance

Probably you have seen this quote passing by several times on your LinkedIn feed: 

“CFO says: What happens if we invest in developing people & they leave us? 

CEO responds: What happens if we don’t & they stay?” 

Now I ask you: How do you make sure your investments in learning & development are effective and pay off? Simply put: How do you make it stick?  

Infographic – All you need to know about Sales training

The major pitfalls of sales trainings are the following: 

  • Lack of reinforcement  
  • Lack of engagement  
  • Lack of business relevance  

Competency does not come from periodic, one-time training. According to Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, learners forget 90% of what they learn from an event-based approach within 30 days, with most of the new material being forgotten within the first few hours after the training.  

Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

True though; there is not a single, absolute learning curve. Several factors contribute to learning retention, like individual ability and prior knowledge. But the risk of forgetting fast is real for most of us.

A first solution to promote knowledge retention is spaced learning (1). In short, i.e. multiple training opportunities. Many figures like this one show how less is forgotten after each review.

Rate of Retention with Repetition

Repetition is indeed the mother of learning. We also notice great results by combining spaced learning with micro-learning (2)! Micro-learning breaks down complex courses into smaller manageable learning content. Not only do we enhance retention rates through repetition, but we also speed up the learning process because trainees avoid the phenomenon of mental fatigue.

Of course, transfer to the job (3) is equally as important. In the end you are aiming for measurable business results, are you not? Knowledge of concepts is one thing, the capability of applying them another. So, if you want to see impact on your sales results and implement lasting positive change, you will want to change habits and behaviors. 

That is where the design of the training matters and on-the-job learning and coaching come into play. Think about group coaching, peer learning, in the field coaching done right (i.e. where the coach does not intervene) and using mobile technology with scenario-based challenges. 

By genuinely including your team in continuous training opportunities, you can make lasting changes in sales behaviors and positively impact performance. 

Next, make sure trainings are relevant to the business and your team’s objectives (4).

Do you remember those compulsory courses you had to follow in school which were nowhere close to your field of interest? Probably not your absolute best. It is the same with business training. Making it business relevant and aligned to individual and team objectives will generate higher engagement, increase on the job practice, and generate tangible results.

A good way to gauge this, is whether people within your sales team take ownership of their day to day activities and proactively ask for feedback about their successes and challenges, encountered while consciously trying to apply what they have learned.

Finally, think about building a performance dashboard (5) measuring proficiency, adoption, and the link to commercial performance. It will enable you to do two things:

  • See how competency levels are evolving within the group in order to put your time and effort where it matters most
  • See the direct link between your investments in L&D and business results.

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  Continuous ImprovementL&DSales Academysales trainingSales Transformation