Upskilling your sales team is more important now than ever. With changing workforce demographics and demands, team training is about retaining talented team members while improving your bottom line.
There are many available resources, and knowing which are worth your time can be challenging, especially when juggling your own work demands! We’ve compiled a list of valuable resources to help your team up their sales game.
Continuous Learning
Organizational excellence is achieved by developing a culture of excellence built around a commitment to sustained professional improvement.
How do you stay ahead of the trends and challenges facing your business and sales team? And, more importantly, what sales resources will help them outperform competing sales teams?
Sales Reports
Data from LinkedIn’s report on the Global State of Sales 2022 clearly shows the importance of research in the sales process. Top-performing sales professionals are far more likely to perform research before contacting prospects. In fact, 76% of them use research to ensure they are “knocking on the right doors.”
Training your team on the best research practices isn’t the only way to supercharge their performance. According to the State of Sales report by Salesforce, the rapidly changing world has created a need for empathy, trust and insights. These skills require a much different type of training.
Sales reports like these help identify essential knowledge and skills your team may need, and these next two types of resources can be used for individual or team training.
Sales Podcasts
With dozens of fantastic podcasts available today, you and your team have no shortage of insights and tips at your disposal. This list of podcasts is organized for both sales managers and sales reps. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Accelerate! With Andy Paul
- Sell or Die
- The Quotable Podcast
- In The Arena Podcast
Sales Blogs
Just as with podcasts, there are many sales-related blogs available. We’ve identified these four key blogs for you to subscribe to or review regularly.
- LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions Blog
- Inc.com’s Sales Source Blog by Geoffrey James
- HubSpot Sales Blog
- Xinnix Blog
Sales Tools and Guides
Now that you have a few valuable learning resources, here are some tools and guides to equip your sales team for success.
The Cold Email Grader
Cold emails aren’t always successful. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool that uses machine learning to score your email compared to millions of other emails? The Cold Email Grader Chrome extension ensures you are using best email practices.
HubSpot’s Make My Persona
Understanding your ideal customer takes the guesswork out of sales prospecting and cold outreach. The free HubSpot Make My Persona tool also includes a quick overview of what a buyer persona is as well as a downloadable Beginner’s Guide to Buyer Personas.
Other Guides and Tools
Here are three more guides and tools for you to explore and bookmark:
- LinkedIn Social Selling Guide
- HubSpot Sales Metrics Calculator
- SBI Growth Advisory’s KPI Dashboard Tool
Professional Development
Continuous learning is valuable, and sales performance guides and tools improve effectiveness, but more in-depth professional development training is critical for operational success.
HubSpot Inbound Sales Certification
HubSpot Academy offers free training courses and certifications in various subjects ranging from inbound sales to digital marketing. The HubSpot Inbound Sales Certification, a free 3-hour course about the ins and outs of inbound sales methodology, is a great starting point.
Professional Sales Training
The success of your business relies on a team focused on excellence, and the best way to develop this focus is to use professional training that begins and ends with excellence. That is just what we do at XINNIX®, The Academy of Excellence.
XINNIX is different from most training programs; we expect excellence from ourselves and our students. We don’t just tell your sales manager and team what to do; we show them how to do it, using accountability and coaching to help you develop that culture of excellence.
Your Next Step to Improve Sales Performance
The number of sales resources, tools and guides is extensive and may be overwhelming. Sales training resources are easy to find. Finding the right sales resource may not be so easy. So, what is your next step?