Salespeople need to learn how to choose what to do in a conversation: what to clarify with the customer, how to explain the offer and what to agree on next. To do this, sales training combines product knowledge, negotiation practice and daily reviews of real work situations. During a review, the head of sales points out a specific mistake and helps the salesperson practise a different response that they will be able to choose independently.
If, a month after training, you again have to explain to employees how to talk to a buyer, it is tempting to find a more capable trainer. Before paying to repeat the training, it is worth finding out what feedback the team received between sessions. Telling someone to sell better leaves them with too many options: speak louder, ask for payment more persistently, call more often. None of these necessarily corrects their mistake.
I believe the quality of training shows in the head of sales’ feedback. It should make clear at what point the salesperson chose an ineffective action, what information they had at the time and what they should have done with it. It is hard to learn a different way of working from a general assessment of the conversation.
Training salespeople
Start training salespeople with a recurring difficulty in conversations: the salesperson misses a buyer’s requirement, gives an unsuitable argument or ends the conversation without an agreement. Choose the session’s content around that difficulty; the team does not need to take an entire negotiation course because of one mistake.
The focus of training must be narrow enough for the change to be heard. “Learn to identify needs” does not achieve this. For a conversation about timing, a more precise task is to find out what event the buyer needs the result in time for and what will happen if there is a delay. The salesperson will then understand whether to discuss standard delivery, another option or the fact that the order cannot be fulfilled on time.
It helps to separate knowledge from choice here. If someone does not know how long production takes, they need an answer about the product. If they know but promise a date that suits the customer without grounds for doing so, the decision they made in the conversation needs reviewing. Another lecture on the product range will not correct this mistake.
Before the session, the head of sales prepares a recording and information about the offer, and identifies the exact point where the difficulty arose. The business owner only needs to see the connection: what action is being taught, where it was needed and why the previous approach gets in the way of a sale. Without this connection, the training budget is approved based on how appealing the course title sounds.
A new salesperson’s readiness to work with a customer independently is assessed separately. This question is covered in the article “The new salesperson is busy all day. But when will they start selling?”. Here, the focus is on correcting a specific way of handling conversations for someone who already talks to buyers.
Why does payment make it harder to see a mistake?
Payment makes it harder to see a mistake when the head of sales treats a successful deal as proof that everything the salesperson did was right. A buyer can agree even after a weak conversation; a refusal does not make every remark by the salesperson a mistake either.
Reviewing only lost deals creates a one-sided selection. It contains only refusals, and the head of sales starts looking for an explanation in any awkward word the salesperson uses. Meanwhile, nobody notices the same words in deals where the buyer paid. The team receives two different requirements for the same action, depending on how it all ended.
For training, it is better to select recordings by the moment that needs to be mastered: discussing a deadline, comparing what the offer includes, agreeing who will attend a meeting. Include both purchases and refusals. Assess the action itself first, then its consequences for the deal.
| What can be heard in the conversation | How the deal ended | Training decision |
|---|---|---|
| The salesperson stated a timescale without confirmation | The buyer paid | Review the unsupported promise; payment does not correct it |
| The salesperson clarified the required date and honestly stated the available timescale | The buyer declined because of the timescale | Pass on the question of whether the order can be fulfilled; there is no reason to retrain the salesperson because of the refusal |
| The salesperson listed benefits without relating them to what the customer needed to achieve | The buyer declined | Practise choosing an argument that fits the task identified |
| The salesperson explained a suitable option and agreed on the next step | The buyer continued the discussion | Keep this approach to the conversation; the buying decision is still ahead |
This table is for the owner to use when assessing the programme. A training report must distinguish an employee’s mistake from a limitation of the offer. Otherwise, salespeople will be assigned sessions on dealing with objections when the company really cannot meet the required deadline.
Reviewing before the buyer’s response is known
A useful review reconstructs the salesperson’s choice using the information available to them at that point. To do this, pause the recording before their response and first discuss what is already known about what the customer needs to achieve.
After listening to the whole call, the head of sales knows what followed. It is easy to suggest a response that takes account of a reason for refusal revealed later. But in the actual conversation, the salesperson had not yet heard this reason. Their task was to obtain the information they needed; judging their response with hindsight means setting them an impossible task.
For daily work, I suggest a short review of one choice. Below is a sequence for 12 minutes: this is the time allocated to the session, not a timeframe in which every employee will master the skill. The head of sales chooses an excerpt and checks the terms of the deal beforehand.
- First 2 minutes — establish what was known. Listen to the start of the excerpt up to the salesperson’s response. Separate what the buyer said from the salesperson’s assumptions. If a requirement is written in the record, establish whether it was known before the call.
- Next 3 minutes — choose an action. The salesperson states what information they lack to make an offer and formulates one clarifying question. The head of sales clarifies how different answers from the buyer would change the rest of the conversation.
- Next 4 minutes — say it and revise it. The employee says the chosen response aloud. Then play their actual response and the rest of the recording. Compare the original response with the revision: which question was left unanswered, and what the revised version now seeks to find out.
- Last 3 minutes — reinforce the reason for the choice. Write down which cue calls for this question, what it establishes and which answer calls for a different action. The employee repeats the revised version in their own words.
Questions can be useless too. If the buyer’s answer does not change the offer or the next step in any way, the salesperson is simply adding them to follow a rule. The head of sales must explain the purpose of the question before requiring it in every call.
For discussions about timing, suitable questions are: “By what date do you need the finished result?” and “What is that date linked to?” Use the first when the date is unknown. Use the second when the reason for the deadline needs to be understood. If the answer is already in the record or in what the customer has said, you can move on without asking again.
You do not need to identify every shortcoming an employee has from one call. Choose the earliest action after which the salesperson lacked the information needed to continue the conversation. If they missed an essential condition of the purchase, polishing the presentation before clarifying that condition will only make an unsuitable offer more convincing.
Sales training programme
A sales training programme must set out the actions salespeople will learn, the material for practice and the observable result of each part. The programme includes the product, questions for the buyer, explaining the offer, dealing with doubts and agreements on how to continue; the scope of each part is determined by the team’s mistakes.
Below is a draft programme for an existing sales team. You can use it when choosing external training or discussing in-house training. The time allowed for completing it depends on how often the relevant conversations occur: infrequent negotiations cannot be assessed solely by the number of days that have passed.
| Programme section | What to practise with | What should appear in day-to-day work |
|---|---|---|
| The product and limits on promises | Current terms, restrictions, real requests | The salesperson distinguishes an available offer from a promise that needs approval |
| Clarifying what the customer needs to achieve | Excerpts before the presentation and calculations | The salesperson asks a question whose answer changes the choice of offer |
| Explaining the offer | The buyer’s request and the option prepared for them | Each argument is linked to a condition stated by the customer |
| Discussing doubts | Recordings in which the customer stopped the discussion | The salesperson establishes what the customer is unsure about before trying to persuade them |
| Continuing the conversation | Ends of calls and the correspondence that follows | The next action is agreed with the buyer, and everyone involved understands its purpose |
A complete programme does not require all its parts to be taught at once. If a mistake keeps recurring when discussing doubts, that is where to start. Add product basics for those who lack the knowledge they need to answer. The business owner pays to resolve an identified difficulty and has a reason to expand the programme when the next one becomes clear.
Group training is appropriate for a shared task: a new product, changed terms, the same difficulty affecting several salespeople. Individual reviews are needed where the causes of mistakes differ. Choose online or in-person training based on whether you can hear the employee’s attempt and give feedback: the location of the session alone does not ensure this.
It is useful to involve a strong salesperson as a source of approaches that work. But making them the only trainer is risky: the success of their own conversations still has to be explained to others. How a team becomes dependent on such an employee is covered in the article “The team are generally capable”. Why the department still depends on one salesperson.
What should remain after a daily review?
A daily review should leave a short note about one action to change and the reason for it. This lets the head of sales compare new conversations against specific feedback, instead of repeatedly assessing the employee as a whole.
Five lines are enough for the note:
- Moment: a link to the conversation and the time of the excerpt.
- What was known: the buyer’s words and the conditions available to the salesperson before their response.
- Choice: what the salesperson did and what information they lacked.
- Revision: which question or response was practised and when it is appropriate.
- Observation in practice: a new recording, the employee’s independent action, the buyer’s reaction.
Fill in the last line once the action has been used. If the relevant conversations have not yet happened, the head of sales leaves it open and chooses practice based on a recording. The date of the session alone does not show that someone has already used the skill with a customer.
Here, a tool’s ease of use depends on the quality of the source material. AI ROP shows a salesperson’s mistake in a conversation with a quote and an alternative response; this is the task of sales quality control and call assessment. Choosing the exercise and talking to the employee remain the head of sales’ job.
Who is responsible for the quality of feedback?
The head of sales is responsible for the quality of feedback: their comment must take account of the information available to the salesperson and give them an action they can carry out. The business owner needs a sample of this work to assess the head of sales without personally listening to every call.
If the same mistake keeps appearing from one review to the next, the head of sales must show which response was practised, where the employee used it and what got in the way afterwards. Telling them to pay more attention does not explain any of these steps. When the owner has to correct the feedback itself, a new course for the salespeople will leave this work with the owner.
At RENTROP, turnkey sales management takes over the daily running of the department so that the business owner stops being the main head of sales. RENTROP does not sell courses or training sessions.
The most uncomfortable part of training comes when the customer has paid even though the salesperson missed a necessary question or promised too much. You can be pleased about the money, but the mistake still needs to be reviewed. Otherwise, the successful deal itself will give the employee permission to repeat an action the company was trying to get them to stop doing.