4 steps to a more productive sales force

Build a confident sales force
Confidence shows up in the very way your sales force approaches customers and handles their queries and complaints. And this confidence stems from good dressing style, personal hygiene, deep knowledge about the product, and willingness to go the extra mile for the customers.

Be with them through thick and thin
You lead the team and your job is to get the most out of them. It’s okay. But keep reminding yourself that you are dealing with human beings and not machines. There would be days when a sales person would not be able to sell a single product despite all his or her efforts; those would be the days when he or she would need your support the most. So be there for your team and they will never let you down.

Training is the key to success in sales
A well-structured training program can make all the difference to your team’s sales performance. Arrange behavioural, product, and sales and distribution management training programs for your team. Training does not cost much both time and money wise, but it yields great results.

Take the tough decision
See in the end, it’s all business. Each one of you has to justify your existence. So if a member is not showing improvement despite all required support, you need to speak and tell him or her possible repercussions if he or she does not show results in a given time frame.

There’s more to building a more productive team. We’ll share all that in our coming posts. You can also check out our published posts to know more about sales & distribution management and skill development training programs.

Here’s what customer service training programs do for businesses

Organizations with a large customer base can get a world of benefits from customized and end-to-end customer service training programs. Whether they are branded retail stores or call centres or banking institutions, tailored customer service training programs are designed to help their people get equipped with the best practices, strategies and techniques for an improved customer experience.

Today’s evolved customer service training programs or customer relationship management programs are meant for all, whether they are new recruits or seasoned professionals. Through customized programs, businesses can ensure common minimum standards of service at their retail stores, or call centres, and thus can impact their key performance indicators in a pretty positive manner.

Here’s what a customer service training program comprises:

• Under the program, the trainers provide on-the-job training and audit of the stores, leading to improved customer experience and repeat business
• Trainers also conduct monthly knowledge tests to ensure customers are provided with correct information about products and/or services
• Store managers and staff are equipped to better manage new product launches

Customer service training programs are value for money programs and are designed to impact your business outcomes. But the business must ensure that its people are regularly trained on the required skill sets; one time training may not do much to up-skill your people.

What to do when learning & skill development solutions become obsolete and do not help you with your primary objectives?

Smart companies understand the growth that comes with training solutions. But, they are also smart enough to judge whether the solutions are helping them achieve their primary goals – their desired business outcomes, bottom line, KPIs to name a few. So, what options do they have at their disposal, if the training solutions, say sales and distribution management training solutions, do not impact their business outcomes?

Big and smart companies do not mind spending a great deal of their resources on looking out for a corporate training partner and arranging different training programmes for their people, but they want results. So, what’s the best way out when you’re not seeing results or improved performance among your people?

The very first step should be to “Speak to the training provider, communicate (once again) as to what you want out of the programs like sales and distribution management training, and develop a time frame in which you expect to see the results.” 

If the first step doesn’t help, you can take the other route that is to speak to some other training solutions providers. But this time you should be a little more careful in the selection of a training company. Ideally, you should hire a company that has been in the training industry for a good number of years, and understands your business the way you do. Whether you want the training providers to conduct a series of sales and distribution management training or some other skill development training programs, you must ensure that you’re hiring a company which is professional in its approach and knows what it is talking about.

To be on a safer side, we’d suggest you to visit the website of the training company so that you can understand whether the company is an ideal fit for your training needs. Once you feel the training company is offering what you need for your people, the next step could be to speak with someone from the company’s end. This telephonic/mail conversation should ideally pave way for an official meeting, wherein you’d be in a better position to decide whether you should partner with the training company.

There are more ways to react to solutions that do not help you improve your key business indicators; we’ll cover them in our future posts. So stay with us.

Discover how a proven training program can give your team the tools to be on the top of their game

The performance of your sales team is far from satisfying. You have done all you could have done, but things are just not looking promising.

How about the best sales, communication, and relationship program that your team has ever received? How about a program that is motivating, entertaining, and educational while also delivers results to help you improve your company’s bottom line?

We present to you a new world of corporate training programs that are amazingly simple and professional, yet highly inspiring, engaging and filled with solid content.

The smart breed of companies are increasingly exposing their sales teams (and other staff members) to these corporate sales training programs, and seeing a transformation in the very way their employees approach clients and close the deals. You too should not leave behind.

Look for new age sales training consultancy companies using Google or your business network, and see which ones provide customized corporate sales training programs. Select the training partner whose customized content is more likely to blend well with your company specific content. A standard training program often begins with a needs diagnostic study that helps the training provider discover areas for improvement which then helps the company come up with a unique training program for the attendees.

 Sales training programs, delivered by industry experts, help the sales people become more confident about reaching out to clients, handling customers’ queries better, and ending-up with more deals and more future business. Just make sure they receive these programs quite frequently as one-time trainings aren’t very effective, at least when it comes to long term benefits.

How to negotiate better? It is easier than you think

Negotiations are part of work life. It’s something you just cannot escape from. Whether you are dealing with employees or vendors, you are essentially negotiating and have to ensure that you get the biggest pie; however, at the same time you also have to ensure that you do not compromise on ethics and relationship with the other person. A negotiation skills training program is, thus, highly rewarding for those who deal with people day in and day out. Sales people are obviously the first to come to the mind.

A new age negotiation skills training program is ideal for professionals of all levels who want to gain negotiation skills for use in their careers. Such a program will help the attendees understand their personal negotiation styles, when to walk away from a deal, importance of relationships in negotiations, dealing with emotional and irrational situations, transforming competition into cooperation and a lot more.

If you too feel you often lose your ground while negotiating, a negotiation skills training program is possibly the best solution to take up. Companies that want to achieve more out of their marketing and sales people should also consider training programs such as negotiation skills training. The good thing is there are so many training companies out there which specialize in experimental learning training, negotiation skills training, and many other corporate training companies. You just have to see which training company makes more sense to your specific company objectives. Last, but not the least, you have to put in efforts to ensure that you put the learning (from the training) into practice (at the workplace).

The modern day corporate training solutions to enhance the skills of banking professionals

Where there is a will, there is a way; and where there is a corporate training program, there are many professionals getting equipped with enhanced skills/knowledge to do better at what they do every day.

The Indian Banking Industry is currently worth Rs. 81 trillion (US $ 1.31 trillion), and has the potential to become the fifth largest banking industry in the world by 2020; both public and private banks have begun to leverage on the latest technologies like internet and mobile devices to reach masses and make life simple for their customers. However, just like opportunities, the sector is also facing many hurdles to growth, the major ones being the lack of communication and customer handling skills in the banking staff.

To tackle the grave situation, banks continuously invest in their people and keep them updated so they can manage customers’ queries effectively, and build more fruitful relationships with the customers they come across every single day in their professional life. Many smart banks engage with highly professional and experienced corporate training companies to help their employees explore ways to understand a customer psyche and make him/her a walking advertising for the bank.


Whether a bank wishes to hold a corporate training in Mumbai or Delhi or some other city where it has its branches, or arrange a long term training program series for its employees, the modern day training companies have it all up on their sleeve. Many even customize their programs – say a customer relationship management training program - to make them highly effective for their audience. Banks just need to choose their training partner for corporate training programs in India wisely so their people can learn the best practices from the best in the training industry.

Kenya’s agriculture sector up on government’s priority list

In the words of Wikipedia, Agriculture is, “the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel, medicines and other products used to sustain and enhance human life.”

Of late, many developed as well as developing economics have come to realize the potential that their agriculture sectors hold. And with this realization, the governments have started strengthening their agriculture policies and opening ways to make their people skilled enough to enter the sector and capitalize on the opportunities that the sector has to offer.

Kenya is one such fine example of a country that has been putting tremendous focus on its agriculture sector’s development.

In a bit to train its people for various agriculture related roles, Kenyan government is introducing agriculture friendly policies and schemes. The key stakeholders, such as corporates, are also partnering with training specialists who can conduct agriculture sales training in Kenya to add value to the entire agriculture value chain.
   
It is to be noted that a standard agriculture sales training in Kenya program can be customized to improve the productivity of farm agents and seed distributors. Many other training programs can be designed and developed to cater to the specific needs of key stakeholders of the sector.

Agriculture already makes a significant portion of Kenya’s annual revenues. And with these new initiatives, Kenya’s government has shown its commitment towards a wholesome agricultural development. It just needs to introduce more polices and schemes to boost the sector and engage with the right partners for successful implementation and execution of those schemes.