Assessing Sales Skills Part 2: How to Upskill Sales Representatives

In our last post, we looked at why you need to establish a skill set requirement to make your sales process customer focused so you can position yourself as a problem solver for those customers.  In this post, we will consider the what you need in your skill set, how you might assess where your representatives are in the desired skill set, and plan training or other interventions to help them improve their skills so they can achieve more sales and keep customers coming back.

Step 1 – Determine necessary skill set.

Basic skill your sales representatives may need include:

• Understanding value creation and proposition (more than just knowing your products/services and the competitors plus the differences)
• Implementing a customer-driven approach that builds relationships (which includes solving their problems by becoming an advisor verses being a pest)
• Understanding buyer styles and behavior (knowing the difference between conversation and communication skills, as well as body language signals and key phrases)
• Knowing what questions to ask a new lead when asking for their time or a sale
• Identifying opportunities (as well as knowing who your customer base is while understanding industry regulations)
• Knowing the complete sales process and determining where each customer is in the process

Step 2 – Assess current skill levels

• Determine skills and competencies needed for various sales expectations or levels
• Design a sales skills matrix and assess each sales rep against it
• Analyze the matrix results and plan appropriate sales training to fill the gaps in each rep’s matrix

Step 3 – Plan upskill interventions

• Hold sales training that includes role playing and key questions reps may need to answer
• Besides training, consider mentoring/coaching and monitoring for successful continual learning
• If you are planning a hiring ramp up, be sure to include an onboarding process to move new hires along the skills matrix more quickly
• Re-evaluate yearly to keep up-to-date and promote more sales

If you would like some options for sales training, please visit the Peak Performance Solutions website.  If you are interested in a book to encourage your sales staff, consider The Sales Messenger.  If you have any questions on how we can help you with your sales process and training needs, please contact us.