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Sales Readiness: How to Get Your Sales Team Ready to Sell

Sales Readiness is a continual process of improving and adapting to the changing marketplace. It’s achieved by investing in your sales team and giving them the tools they need to succeed. This blog post teaches you how to get your sales team ready in order to close deals whenever opportunities arise.

Sales Readiness Definition

Sales readiness is the state of having the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitude to be able to sell a product or service.

This includes understanding the product or service, knowing the customer’s needs, and being able to effectively communicate the value of the product or service.

Being “sales-ready” means being able to take advantage of all the training, tools, and information at your disposal. By being “ready”, you can increase your effectiveness through prac

Sales enablement vs training vs readiness

Are your salespeople prepared to interact with customers and clients at every stage of the sales process?

Most companies have never heard of sales readiness. They may provide onboarding training or sales enablement, but they don’t train readiness in their sales team.

It doesn’t suffice to provide sales training and enablement tools for your sales team. They must also know how to combine these skills to make sales effective. Many companies offer sales training and enablement tools, but fail to bridge the gap.

It’s the combination sales training and knowledge of how to use a sales enablement tool, that makes sales readiness possible.

Both Sales Readiness and Enablement are key factors for encouraging success among your sales team. Here, we will explain both of these important concepts, as well as provide strategies to promote them.

Sales Readiness and Enablement are processes to help your sales team become more effective.

The two terms are used interchangeably, but technically, they’re referring to two completely different things.

Get your sales team ready to sell

Sales readiness is being ready to engage customers at the point where they interact. Salespeople who are ready to sell know how to use both their skills as well as their sales enablement tools when making a sale.

Many people don’t understand the difference between sales training and enablement. They offer training and enablement tools for salespeople but never allow them to move into readiness.

3 Steps to Prepare Your Sales Team for Success

But how do you make your sales reps sales-ready?

Here are steps you can follow to push your sales team towards sales readiness.

1. Sales enablement training

Continuously training and knowing how to use the right tools for selling leads to more success.

The goal of providing your salespeople with useful skills is to teach them how to use your tools, like CRMs, effectively. Providing them with effective training on these tools is a great way to do so.

As your sales team gets more training, they’ll be more ready to sell.

2. Equip your sales team with the right sales enablement tools

There are a ton of different online sales enablement platforms. They all have unique features and benefits. So, how do you decide which one to use?

Sales tools should be easy to use, easy to access, and easy to find.

3. Train and coach your sales team regularly

Just like the best athlete, you can’t expect to nail your pitch the first time you say it. You need to rehearse your script and go through it over and over until it becomes second nature. You should also role-play your conversation with a friend or colleague so you can work through any objections or questions.

The path to becoming a good salesperson is the same. It requires coaching and practice.

Here are some ways you can further your B2B sales reps’ learning: Create short, digestible videos that cover the basics. Use role-play to practice overcoming the most common obstacles. And review old recordings of successful and unsuccessful calls for inspiration.

You can also use sales coaching platforms.

Continuous sales training programs will ensure that your salespeople are always prepared for their next sales opportunity.

Sales readiness tools performance

Now that you know what sales readiness is, and how it has evolved, let us take a look at the simplicity and strategy of sales enablement tools. Sales readiness is complex and multifaceted, as we have already shown. We are here to help you make informed sales-readiness decisions.

These functionalities are essential for anyone looking to get sales readiness software.

Microlearning

Our attention spans are shrinking, and our need for small-sized information (like tweets, TLDRs, and texts), is growing, whether we like it or otherwise. It makes sense to train salespeople with this universal desire to have consistency and quick access.

Microlearning is a method of training that focuses on learners being able to absorb and retain information in small doses. This could be a 10-minute lesson and a quick quiz, or sales readiness assessment after a week-long training course. You could also make a 2-minute video training instead of a 40-minute one.

You could practice one mock phone call per day on an online sales training platform, instead of inviting reps to in-person training or role-play meetings. Microlearning breaks down complex information into manageable, engaging, and understandable pieces.

Accessibility

Salespeople have access to the best sales tools at their fingertips, in their time of need. Both new and experienced sales reps will find it invaluable to be able to access training, practice scenarios and get quick feedback from one sales training software tool.

Sales readiness platforms make it easy for sales representatives to access training when it is convenient for them. Sales reps can access training wherever they are, whether they are at work, on the road, or at their home. Accessibility also means that sales leaders and trainers can access the right sales readiness platform at any time.

They can customize it and then edit it at scale.

Feedback and coaching

As we mentioned in the Accessibility section, feedback loops are an important part of the sales readiness process. How can novice sellers sell better without the best practices and insights of more experienced sellers? Sales readiness is about practicing essential skills and deepening the knowledge of each rep on the product they are selling.

Reps will be able to sell and upsell confidently, accurately, and with poise when they are actually talking with prospects.

Sales teams can only get so far without feedback. Sales readiness software, which allows reps to practice calls, video and email in real-time, is a simple way to keep the feedback loops open.

    Conclusion

    Sales readiness is key to success in any sales organization. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can be well on your way to being sales ready in 60 days or less. With a little bit of effort and guidance, anyone can learn how to sell effectively. So don’t wait – get started today!


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    Justin McGill: This post was generated for LeadFuze and attributed to Justin McGill, the Founder of LeadFuze.