Field sales training is the key to success for sales teams that thrive on in-person interactions. This face-to-face dynamic allows for stronger relationship-building but also brings unique challenges, such as managing travel and reacting face-to-face, in real-time, to customer concerns.
It goes without saying that field sales training is one of the most important factors in preparing reps to manage any and every one of these challenges with skill, resilience, and confidence.
But what is field sales, and what makes for a successful field sales training program, and how can it make or break the performance of your sales force?
Understanding the Customer
At the heart of every successful sales process is the depth to which your sales team understands their customer. When sales reps are in the field, they need to quickly identify their customer’s needs (which can be very different to previous assumptions or customer statements), while simultaneously building strong relationships by being empathetic and proactive. Techniques such as active listening, asking open-ended questions, and showing interest in customers’ challenges go a long way toward establishing trust.
The more reps know about their customers, the better they can tailor their sales pitch to meet specific needs. And the more skills that reps have in gathering this information, the better the sales pitch and process.
Techniques for Gathering Customer Information
As the saying goes in sales, “you should mostly ask the questions, not respond to them.” The most effective field sales reps listen much more than they talk.
Learning effective customer engagement techniques is the backbone of successful field sales training. Using platforms such as Bites, field reps can brush up on these techniques via social media-style, bite-sized content pieces. Even better, these micro-lessons can be consumed on the go, on any device, so make for the perfect “bite” of learning between client meetings, helping reps stay sharp and ready for their next interaction.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Face-to-Face Sales
Field sales have one huge advantage over remote sales teams: building immediate trust and personal connections.
Face-to-face sales allow sales reps to pick up on visual cues like body language, helping them establish rapport and credibility. However, this also requires sales reps to think literally on their feet, handling any objections that may come their way, and overcoming challenges as they arise.
Effective Communication and Listening Skills
Great communication in field sales is about more than talking—it’s about listening. Reps need to master active listening techniques, such as summarizing customer concerns and responding thoughtfully and on-topic. This level of engagement makes customers feel heard and valued, increasing the likelihood of closing the deal.
Your sales reps can use platforms like Bites to quickly refresh their communication and listening skills with short, interactive modules on topics such as how to overcome client objections or the best open-ended questions to ask. These lessons are designed to keep training fresh and accessible, making it easier to recall and access, and be able to seamlessly apply these skills in real-world situations.
How to Train Your Field Sales Representatives
Field sales reps are the literal faces of your company. Not only do they need to make a solid first impression, but they also have to juggle travel, client meetings, and administrative tasks, all while maintaining a high level of customer interaction. Their entire skill set relies on adaptability, resilience, and time management.
Key Field Sales Skills and Qualities
A successful field sales rep is resilient, adaptable, and an expert in time management. They are also excellent communicators who can think on their feet and manage a complex schedule of meetings and follow-ups.
Time management is critical for field sales reps, who often spend much of their day traveling. Tools like Bites allow field sales reps to improve their time management skills with micro-courses they can access on all of their favorite platforms and devices, helping them optimize travel schedules and manage their workload more effectively.
How to Implement an Effective, Ongoing Sales Training Process
Field sales training isn’t just a one-time event—it needs to be structured and ongoing. This allows reps to put their skills into practice, while continuously improving, learning and even upskilling.
An effective training program addresses every stage of the sales cycle, ensuring that reps are fully equipped to close deals, and teaching them more than just product knowledge.
A good field rep training program could include –
- Role-playing real-world scenarios
- Feedback loops
- A structured set of processes that reps can follow from lead generation to closing.
The training program should involve a range of different learning techniques and semi-interactive activities, in order to deliver the training information in a way that its intended audience will engage with the most. With more traditional methods of training—think static PDFs or PowerPoint presentations—engagement is low, and learning retention suffers. That’s why innovative solutions like Bites are the key to transforming your field sales training process.
Bites offers a microlearning approach that delivers short, engaging video content, allowing you to seamlessly provide structured microlearning sessions tailored to each stage of the sales process, ensuring reps have access to training modules as and when they need it.
Closing the Deal: Striking at the Correct Microsecond
Closing the deal is where preparation meets opportunity. Field sales reps need to recognize the exact right moment to apply the right technique, turning prospects into customers.
To do this, they need a unique set of highly attuned skills. Effective closing techniques include creating urgency, addressing objections with confidence, and asking the right questions at the right time. It often takes a whole set of extra “closing” training to hone these skills, and continuously improve them.
How to Overcome Objections
Every sales rep will face objections, but the best reps know how to handle these while keeping the conversation focused and in their favor. Being prepared with responses to common (and not so common) objections could make all the difference between a “closed: won” and a “closed: lost” after all.
Tools like Bites allow field reps to access any type of generalized or specialized deal-closing strategies in an engaging, video-based format, wherever and whenever they need them. These quick lessons help reps sharpen their skills on the go, ensuring they’re always prepared to close, or can top-up their training in case of a sales closer’s absence, or for upskilling purposes.
Growth Via Business Development and Long-Term Relationships
Field sales isn’t just about closing one-time deals—it’s about building relationships that lead to long-term business growth. By regularly checking in with customers and providing ongoing value, field sales reps can hopefully turn clients into long-term partners, ensuring customer loyalty and most importantly, repeat business.
Field reps can use Bites to continually improve their relationship-building skills, accessing content that keeps them focused on customer engagement and retention. This allows them to consistently deliver value, even after the initial sale.
Knowing How to Identifying Opportunities for Business Development
Field sales reps are usually the best-placed of the whole sales team to identify opportunities for upselling or cross-selling. That’s because they often have an understanding of a client’s needs on a deeper level than remote sales team members, allowing them to recommend additional services or products that will most likely provide value and be a must-sell. Training programs that emphasize these opportunities can significantly improve overall revenue.
How to Continuously Improve Sales Performance
Assessing and improving the performance of your field sales force is the key to ensuring your business’ ongoing success. Regularly evaluating your sales team’s status, close rate and more will highlight clear areas for improvement, meaning you can stay on top of potential new customers, and your sales reps stay aligned with the company’s sales goals.
There are two main factors when it comes to continuously improving your team;s sales performance:
- Setting Key Performance Indicators
Sales managers should automatically track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as deal size, conversion rates, and sales cycle length to understand how well their team is performing. Field sales teams should be assessed not only by how many deals they close but also by the quality of the relationships they build (including tracking how many returning customers, size of each returning customer deal, and so on).
- Ongoing Sales Coaching
Sales training doesn’t stop after onboarding, but has to continue and grow alongside your sales team’s changing needs, and your company’s changing strategy and otherwise.
Continuous coaching is crucial to keeping reps at the top of their game. With Bites, sales managers can offer bite-sized coaching sessions that provide timely, actionable feedback, teach them about new products, or share important or urgent knowledge in easily digestible, super accessible bite-sized chunks of video content.
The Direct Correlation Between Team Collaboration and Sales Efforts
Field sales might sound like it’s a solo role, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Teamwork is the key to achieving success when it comes to all aspects of a sales team, but especially so with field sales. That’s because collaboration helps field reps fluidly share insights and best practices, growing a culture of continuous improvement. A rising tide raises all ships, after all.
Sales teams that work together to strategize and share techniques are more likely to meet their targets. Whether it’s through team meetings or shared learning platforms, collaboration has been proven to be an important aspect of sales performance.
Bites easily helps sales teams to work collaboratively by enabling sales reps to share quick training videos and tips with each other, creating a collective learning environment that benefits everyone.
Planning for Winning Sales Strategies
Successful field sales are driven by strategic planning and flexibility. That’s because your field reps have to develop and refine their strategies based on the real-time, in-person customer needs and the decision-makers they encounter.
Winning sales strategies are those that put the customer at the forefront, focusing on identifying and addressing their key needs. Another important winning sales strategy: making sure your reps are pitching to the right person. The decision-making structure within the organizations being sold to can make or break the entire sales process, and your sales reps need to adapt their approach to fit the personalities and priorities of each stakeholder.
The Bottom Line: How Bites Can Transform Your in-Person Sales Team
The foundation of any successful sales team is the quality of its field sales training. With a solid, accessible and engaging program in place, sales reps can effectively handle the unique challenges of working in the field, build stronger customer relationships, and consistently close deals.
Yet, in today’s fast-paced sales environment, traditional training methods no longer cut it.
Bites is the tool that will allow you to instantly revolutionize your field sales training by offering quick, interactive microlearning sessions that engage your reps and provide immediate value. With TikTok-style training modules, Bites is designed to meet the needs of on-the-go sales teams, helping them retain more knowledge, reduce ramp-up time by up to 67%, and increase engagement by 90%.
Ready to see how Bites can transform your sales team? Book your Bites demo today and see how it can upgrade the way you implement your field sales training.