FAQ: Who needs to attend sales training?

Not all members of staff necessarily need to attend training. Some members of your team may not deal with clients at all and unless their job role is likely to change to involve customer interaction, sales training is not needed in these cases.

So who actually needs to attend sales training?

We recommend that anyone handling all or any portion of inbound telephone calls should attend training. These calls may include enquiries, requests for information and appointment bookings.

Anyone making outbound calls to prospects after an initial call has been made should also attend training. This may include providing information, booking and reconfirming appointments and staying in touch with existing clients.

The 3 Act Call Process

We base our telephone selling model on the 3 Act Call Process. This breaks each telephone call that may contribute towards a sale into three stages, which cannot necessarily be split up:

• Act 1: Greeting
• Act 2: Opening
• Act 3: Closing

If some members of your team take calls and then pass them on to other colleagues for the next step in the selling process, you may decide that it is not necessary for them to attend sales training. However, the early acts in the process impact on the end result and so trying to isolate them can result in poor conversion rates.

The greeting (Act 1) will apply to every telephone call but an effective close (Act 3) cannot be performed unless appropriate information has been gathered during the opening stage (Act 2).

Why is it vital to open the telephone call in the right way?

If lead information has not been obtained from the call opening, the team member making or taking the call will have no insight into the motivations behind the lead. Objection handling in this case is very difficult, as the sales person can only rely on their own knowledge and experience, rather than leveraging the motivations of the lead.

Lack of lead knowledge is a common cause of pushy and inappropriate sales practices that may well alienate the prospect and result in lost leads.

The opening phase of the call is a vital step that allows sales people to use selling techniques that are customer-centric, rather than company centric. For this reason, we recommend that the entire call handling team is trained in all 3 Acts of the call process. 

Our training is designed for teams and individuals who are taking calls or making a call to a prospect with which initial contact has already been made. It is not however, designed to train anyone making cold calls.