The Sales Marathon: Train Your Sales Team Towards Success

Today marks the 122nd Boston Marathon – and running 26.2 miles is no easy feat! However, neither is running a sales team. Runners put in countless time, effort, and hours of training and preparation going into their race. Without doing so, completing a marathon is a nearly impossible task. Similarly, here at Gryphon, we have found that without the proper tools and training, it can be almost impossible to effectively run your sales organization. Managers – here’s how you can train your sales team towards success to reach your sales goals this year:

The Sales Marathon

In many ways, Sales is a marathon, not a sprint. Sure, you can put your reps out there and have them make call after call and reach their numbers. But over time, without the proper training and patience, there is no guarantee that they will succeed. Anyone can run. However, there is much more than merely running that goes into running a marathon; runners practice proper form, pace, technique, and make sure they are equipped with the right tools (ex. running shoes) to get them to the finish line.

The same goes for Sales. Anyone can make a phone call. A rep can make hundreds of calls in a day! But without the proper training and preparation – who to call, what to say over the phone, and how to handle objections and rejection — their efforts will be wasted for lack of effectiveness.

The most effective marathon runners train day after day for months. To improve the performance of reps and, most importantly, maintain this behavior over time, managers need proper insight into the activity of their team to upkeep effective behaviors, day after day. Training isn’t a one-and-done activity. Just like preparing for a marathon, sales training takes time, repetition and maintenance to be successful.

Tracking Performance

To better train their reps every day, managers need access to accurate call activity data. When it comes to running, monitoring your pace and tracking your performance is key to staying on track to meet your goals. In Sales, overseeing the day-to-day activities of your reps is the key to improving performance and ensuring your team is on track to reach quota.

Sales intelligence gives managers the insights they need to do so; 100% accurate, real-time data and speech analytics give sales leaders unprecedented insight into the behavior of reps, identifying why some reps are successful and others are not. With this data, managers can then replicate the practices of successful reps across their sales team and improve the overall performance of each individual.

Tracking performance is key to staying on course. Every good athlete has a good coach, and every successful rep needs a manager who can coach them to reach their goals. Just like coaches use stats to strategize and better train their athletes, managers can use the statistics and call recording provided by sales intelligence to teach reps better habits, encourage them to adopt best practices, and better enable them to reach their goals.

Train Your Sales Team Towards Success

At times, reaching your sales goals or meeting quota may seem daunting. Like running, it is a long process that requires maintaining good habits and dedication. However, just like running a marathon, if you are equipped with the tools and training you need, you will find yourself nearing your finish line sooner than anticipated.

Learn how Gryphon can help your team improve training and better enable your reps to reach their sales goals.