In this video, I am going to show you a system you can use for how to train sales development resources. I created this system while building and running our cold call outsourcing business because we had to constantly hire new sales development reps and frequently move them from one project to another. Because of the need to ramp up reps quickly and get them not only sounding good, but also performing, I had to figure out an optimized way to do this and I have broken that down into four steps and that go through those in this video and blog post.’
Cold Call Example
To show you how effective my system for how to train sales development resources is, I provide a recording of one of our cold calls in the video. If you listen to this cold call example, you might think the rep is fairly knowledgeable about the service she is selling, and that she is an extremely experienced SDR who is a full-time and established employee for the company. But all of that would be wrong because this is a part-time work-from-home SDR who was working for us on a part-time basis. Not only was she brand-new to this project and client, but she also had very little sales experience at the time of this recording.
It is the system I am going to show you that made her sound good and perform well, along with her hard work, communication skills, and great personality.
Questions to Ask
A big part of our sales training system is putting more of an emphasis teaching SDRs good questions to ask. Which might sound like a “no brainer”, but a lot of sales organizations focus more on teaching reps about the product and then leave it to the reps to figure out what questions to ask. We flip that around and spend more time on teaching the questions ask.
This is actually somewhat of a hack and trick because it is can be time consuming and difficult to teach all of the details about the product, and take much less time to teach a new rep what question to ask. In addition to that, if a rep asks good questions, not only will they seem more experienced and make a good impression, but they will also be more productive and more likely to uncover leads and opportunities.
Pain Points to Discuss
The next tip for how to train sales development resources is teach them what pain points to look for and discuss. These are the challenges and problems the product or service helps to solve. A lot of sales training programs will talk about pain points, but we try to make it more clear by providing a very clear and simple list of pain points to look for and talk about.
By making it more clear as to what pain points to look for, the rep will not only be able to get prospect’s talking more about their challenges, but they will also be able to identify when prospects fit well with what they sell.
Value Proposition
We try to get reps talking more about the value proposition of the product by providing a very clear list of benefits and improvements it provides. Not only does this provide good things to discuss in calls and emails, but talking more about the value offered aligns more with what the prospect cares about most, which is, “What is in it for me?”
Sales Message
The next tip for how to train SDRs is to create your sales message. This is the story you want your reps to tell when they are communicating with prospects. We are able to help you to create this because we have a structured step-by-step process you can go through to create an optimized set of talking points and questions for your product or service. I created and fine-tuned this process while interviewing all of the clients who hired us to perform cold calling for them, and here are the main steps:
- Product
- Target
- Value
- Pain Points
- Questions
- Customer Example
To show you what a message looks like, this is what I created for the salesperson in the cold call example in the video.
Product
Key details of the product, features, differentiation, and company.
- We provide a thorough analysis of AP looking for errors and overpayments
- We do a complete audit manual & electronic audit
- Can recover up to 1% of the amount you spend on payables
- Our technology allows us to customize our query’s when looking for overpayment in the data
- We require very little of your time
- We do this at no risk
- We’ve been doing this for 20 years
Target
The target audience the SDRs are going to be communicating with and trying to sell to. In other words, the audience for the story or message.
- Businesses
- CFO, Controller, Director, VP, Finance
- Director of Accounts Payable
Value
The improvements and benefits the product or service can deliver to the target audience.
- Identify weaknesses in their accounts payable systems
- Find errors and overpayments
- Decrease the time they spend checking for errors in invoices
- Improve profitability
Once we have a value prop for a product or service, we can use that a lot of different ways when performing cold outreach. And teaching an SDR on the value points of a product is usually easier than teaching them on how the product works. The value and improvements is usually what the prospect cares most about, answering the question of, “What is in it for me?”
Pain Points
We like to give SDRs a short list of pain points to look for and talk about. These are problems or challenges the product or service can help with.
- Errors can be easy to miss and time-consuming to find
- Can be difficult to find ways to improve profitability
- The areas of sales and use tax are prone to errors and overpayments
Questions to Ask
At the core of our approach for how to train sales development resources is teaching them what questions to ask. We like to break cold call questions into two categories: 1) Pain Questions and 2) Current State Questions.
Pain Questions
- How concerned are you about errors in your invoices?
- How do you feel about the amount of time you spend checking invoices for errors?
- How much of priority is it to find ways to increase profitability?
Current State Questions
- Do you currently have any initiatives to improve your AP processes?
- Are you familiar with AP auditing?
- Have you performed an audit before?
- When was the last time you found errors in your invoices?
Customer Example
A good story will include examples. Applying that to a sales message and selling, this would be examples of other customers we have helped with the product or service.
- Oil and gas: Apache, Archerwell formerly Allis-Chalmers, Eagle Rock Energy
- Entertainment: National Football League, Major League Baseball, Harpo
- Retail: Urban Outfitters, Ross Dress For Less, Safeway
- Manufacturing: Dean Foods, Steinway Piano, Solvay Chemicals
Sales Playbook
The next step for how to train sales development resources is to create and provide a sales playbook. A sales playbook is a set of documents that tells the rep what to do and say when they are interacting with a prospect. Here are some of the documents a sales playbook should include:
- Cold call scripts (outlines)
- Objection responses
- Email templates
- Voicemail scripts
If you use our process for creating your sales message, each step the process creates what we refer to as building blocks. You can then use those blocks to create many of the documents and templates in your sales playbook.
Training Modules
The next tip for training SDRs is to create training modules for some of the key areas where they will need knowledge and skills. We provided a lot of sales training to our reps, but here are some of the main areas we tried to provide tips and tactics when first onboarding a new rep:
- Cold calling
- Cold emailing
- Voicemail
- Objection handling
- Gatekeeper tactics
- Finding pain
- Building interest
- Qualifying
- Closing
Practice
The last tip for training SDRs is to practice and role-play common sales scenarios. The same situations occur again and again, and you can drastically improve performance and shorten new hire ramp-up time by simply practicing common sales situations.
You can practice cold calls, dealing with gatekeepers, responding to objections, and with your reps, and this will drastically improve the reps’ ability to know what to do and how to respond when they end up talking with prospects in live scenarios.
You can certainly implement some sort of schedule for role-play exercises during new-hire onboarding. But it can be easy not to spend enough time practicing, and this is one way that AI can help tremendously, in that AI does an extremely good job at playing a prospect. We have created a tool called Sales Simulator that provides an AI version of a sales prospect, and you can practice many of the common sales situations to not only sharpen your skills, but also warm up on an ongoing basis.
