What is advanced sales training?

Advanced sales training is the process of equipping your team members with progressive skills to drive bigger and more complex sales. Generally, sales agents must thoroughly understand the basics before attending more complex training sessions.

Without a solid foundation in sales training, salespeople may not be able to adequately grasp the concepts being relayed to them. Therefore, many organizations choose to upskill their senior salespeople and top performers with more advanced skills through targeted training.

Upskilling is one of the many tactics that you can use to motivate your sales team.

Advanced sales training differs from more basic upskilling efforts in that they focus more on the customer experience. Advanced sales training allows agents to move past the financial implications of a deal. Instead, these skills allow them to build a rapport with clients so that they can influence their purchasing decision.

Advanced sales techniques to skyrocket revenue

Here are a few of the most popular advanced sales techniques:

1. Improving nonverbal communication
2. Use social media effectively
3. Practice active listening
4. Negotiate intelligently
5. Be assertive, not pushy
6. Focus on the customer
7. Ask the right questions
8. Let the client define value

1. Improving nonverbal communication

According to the University of Text, 55% of communication is nonverbal. During advanced sales training that focuses on nonverbal communication, agents will learn the importance of physical cues, facial expressions, and the tone they use.

Improving nonverbal communication can help display professionalism, interest, and general understanding of the customer's pain points without saying a word. This will keep the conversation about the customer and not about how the salesperson feels.

2. Use social media effectively

An incredibly effective sales strategy is to implement social media selling. However, your team members may not be leveraging social media platforms to their full potential. In light of this fact, many organizations create advanced sales training courses focused on enhancing each agent’s social media skills.

When used strategically, social channels are a great way of establishing stronger personal connections with prospective clients. By maintaining an active social media presence, you can increase brand awareness and create a sense of familiarity with the client. During that first meeting or call, sales agents can use this “familiarity” to their advantage.

In addition, agents can use social channels like LinkedIn to research their prospects, identify pain points, and tailor their sales pitch to address the potential buyer’s most pressing concerns before reaching out. This strategy saves a lot of precious time during these meetings and helps your employees be brief and get right down to the matter at hand.

3. Practice active listening

Younger or less experienced agents may be so eager to make a sale that they inadvertently over talk prospective clients. Fortunately, you can use advanced sales training to enhance their communication skills and teach them to listen to clients actively.

While there are many ways that agents can practice active listening, a proven selling technique involves restating information provided by a client. They can reiterate a prospect’s concerns to ensure everyone in the conversation is on the same page.

Active listening will help agents get a feel for each lead’s mindset and manage the conversation accordingly.

4. Negotiate intelligently

When composing advanced sales training programs, many organizations like to include content on intelligent negotiating. High-level sales agents are concerned with much more than simply closing a one-time deal. 

The best negotiators are forward thinkers that view the initial sale as a stepping stone toward a long-lasting partnership. While giving a brand-new client a great deal may not seem ideal at first glance, it generally encourages them to make additional purchases in the future.

With that being said, most negotiations are won long before the sales agent ever sits down with a prospect. During advanced sales training, team members will learn the importance of knowing their audience. This means understanding the prospective client’s budget, needs, and business goals.

5. Be assertive, not pushy

Another common advanced selling technique is helping agents understand the balance between being assertive and pushy. During a client meeting, agents must set clear boundaries and be firm on important topics. However, they must do this without making the prospect feel rushed, as this can create friction and ultimately cost the agent a sale.

After particularly tense negotiations, agents must follow up with prospective clients to smooth things over and hopefully salvage the sale. Your agent should express their interest in making a deal and reiterate that they value the opportunity to have them as a client.

6. Focus on the customer

In the heat of the moment, less experienced sales agents may get caught up talking about the product or service they are marketing. While there will come a time for that eventually, the majority of the conversation should be about the client's pain points and needs.

Advanced sales training is designed and reserved for your more seasoned agents to develop this skill. It serves as a reminder that every meeting should be about the client’s needs first and the sale second.

7. Ask the right questions

While asking questions may be considered to be a rudimentary aspect of the sales process, this is simply not the case. Asking the client questions is a genuine art form that introductory level and intermediate sales agents may not have mastered just yet. From the moment an agent introduces themselves to a client or makes a phone call, it is essential that they are asking carefully curated questions.

For instance, starting a phone conversation with the question:

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” decreases the chances of booking a meeting by 40%.

“How are you doing today?” makes agents 3.4x as likely to book a meeting.

Questions should not only be meticulously structured but also used judiciously and sparingly. Bombarding prospects with questions can make the entire conversation seem bland and overly regimented. During advanced sales training, team members will better understand how to incorporate meaningful, open-ended questions into sales conversations.

8. Let the client define value

Typically, entry-level and intermediate sales agents dedicate a portion of their pitch towards discussing the ROI of their product offering. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, letting the client articulate what they consider to be valuable is far more effective.

Sales agents can set the stage by asking questions like “What are the biggest pain points your business is facing this quarter?” They can follow up by asking how resolving those issues would increase the organization’s profitability.

After the prospect provides detailed answers, the agent can explain how the product resolves the described challenges. Since the client (not the agent) provided the “value-added” number themselves, they are more likely to treat that information as fact.

Benefits of advanced sales training

Now that we have outlined several advanced selling techniques, let’s focus on the benefits of advanced sales trining for your team members. Some of the most notable advantages of advanced sales training include:

Increases understanding of customer

Many advanced sales training programs are intended to help agents better understand customer behaviors. This skill is extremely important in the world of sales.

Agents have to realize that no two prospects are exactly alike, and treating every client the same will be devastating to sales efforts. 

Even when meeting with clients in similar industries, the agent must tailor the conversation around each person’s unique needs and goals.

Advanced sales training will equip agents with the skills to read nonverbal cues, ask better questions, and focus the entire interaction on the client and their unique needs.

Improves the buyer experience

While “no” does not always mean no in the world of sales, a negative experience with one of your agents can cost you a lucrative deal with a top-tier prospect.

Conversely, advanced sales training will give your agents the tools needed to provide a world-class experience to clients, even if they do not make a purchase that day.

By keeping your eye fixed on the buyer experience and not the outcome of the meeting, you can leave the door open for future interactions. Fostering positive buyer experiences will also improve your brand reputation throughout your respective industry.

Enhances sales enablement strategy

Top-tier training is an essential component of your sales enablement strategy. In addition to training, you should ensure that your team members have the systems and tools necessary to make more sales. By doing so, you can give them a competitive edge over other organizations operating within your industry.

Cumulatively, sales training, client management tools, and quality technologies will dramatically increase employee productivity. These results will translate to a better consumer experience for your clients and higher revenue for the organization.

Generates more revenue

The most notable benefit of advanced sales training is that it leads to more deals, resulting in higher revenue. Expertly trained team members can close larger deals more efficiently. This will open the door for future growth opportunities and allow you to expand your business.

Encourages growth

While advanced sales training gives a clear advantage to your business and the clients you serve, it also benefits your individual team members, which feeds back into the business. Sending your sales agents to advanced training courses encourages personal development and growth.

Attending these training sessions can also renew their commitment to being productive for your organization. In addition, you are demonstrating that you are committed to their success. By investing in your sales team, you can boost staff morale, reduce turnover, and retain top talent.  

Using a modern LMS for sales training

As you can see, advanced selling techniques training improves the client experience, makes your team more productive, and increases profitability.

However, many organizations are unsure how to implement their own advanced sales training programs. Legacy learning systems simply provide sales training materials to your team and that's basically it.

That's where a modern learning platform like Continu comes in handy. Continu's Learning Amplification Platform™ comes with powerful features and solutions to upskill your sales team, such as:

• All-in-one enterprise learning and sales enablement software
• Design entire sales training programs in one place
• Consolidate all learning materials in a single platform
• Track and measure sales training progress
• Deliver training materials to anyone, anytime, anywhere
• Host virtual workshops and webinars
• Integrations with your favorite online tools
• Generate detailed reports
• And much more...