For many companies, creating sales training course content is a painful process. You may look for third-party off-the-shelf content, in which case you’re paying a lot for generic content that will soon be out of date. Alternatively, you could spend many stressful hours creating the content yourselves. Neither option is that appealing or effective.
Fortunately, there’s a third option that’s not painful or costly. Developing your own sales training course content with internal experts. Developing tailored sales training content then becomes an amazing opportunity to gather institutional knowledge, showcase top-performers’ skills, and demonstrate your distinct sales strategy in action.
In this week’s lesson in our MasterSaaS sales training series, Google’s Head of Sales Training, Brendan McGeever, is here to show us Google’s six steps to building amazing sales training content tailored to their sales team’s needs.
How to produce your sales training course material, according to Google
1. Identify the right contributors and partners
Building engaging and informative sales training content isn’t just a task for your L&D or sales enablement teams. While you might be in the driver’s seat, developing this training content is a chance to rally the company and draw knowledge and insights from a range of individuals.
According to Brendan, this inclusive approach is what helps Google get the most out of its content. “One way to scale your impact is to recognize all the different partners that can contribute to great sales training. That’s exactly what we do.”
“We have a relatively small team owning the process, but they pull in knowledge experts and people who have specialization in learning management systems and implementing e-learning. These partnerships help us have an outsized impact on the organization.”
By asking for input across your whole business, your training material becomes a summary of all the valuable institutional knowledge and skills that exist within your organization.
And how do you make sure this sales training course content achieves your sales objectives? Set clear goals.
2. Set clear goals to keep track of your sales training progress
As Brendan explains, building great training content is an ongoing process. Instead of just having your salespeople complete their training and get to work, you need to set clear goals for reps to stay current with regular training.
“One critical thing we’ve been doing is using tools for managers to have powerful conversations with employees around their top priorities for training content,” says Brendan. “For example, a manager can select from a menu of options for what a salesperson will complete over a given quarter or year. This is done through conversation with that employee, and it gives people an important sense of accomplishment.”
Businesses can use a dedicated learning management system to track this training progress, but they don’t have to. “If you’re in a smaller organization,” says Brendan, “you can just keep track of these goals on an individual basis. The critical thing is to give people a chance to customize their sales objectives and feel the satisfaction of completing them.”
3. Put your subject matter experts to work
Developing a sales training course is a great opportunity for your subject matter experts to shine. They’re the ones with the specialist knowledge and expertise, and it also makes your life 10x easier.
As Brendan explains, this subject matter involvement is crucial. And it's okay if these subject matter experts are not learning experts and don't know how to structure learning materials. In fact, you should split up those two functions. “When we start developing a new piece of our curriculum, whether it’s on the product side with helping people understand a specific ad product they’re going to be selling, or if it’s a core skill to being a great salesperson, we involve a curriculum manager and a curriculum designer.”
“The curriculum manager is someone with an intimate understanding of that product or skill based on their own experience in the company,” says Brendan. “The curriculum designer is someone with a core skill set around how adults learn and how to structure that learning to be most impactful.”
The team can then develop detailed training content to match the needs of Google’s salespeople. “These two are the captains of the ship, and over the course of developing the training, they reach out to different constituents for input. This includes salespeople, because we want to have very real feedback. We’re always making sure our knowledge experts within the company play a role.”
One other technique used by Google to develop great sales training content? Involving people both inside and outside the business.
It's okay if these subject matter experts are not learning experts and don't know how to structure learning materials. In fact, you should split up those two functions.
4. Use a mix of external facilitators and internal high-performers
To create truly engaging training content that helps your teams achieve their sales objectives, you need to look both within and outside your business for the knowledge and skills you need.
“One opportunity is to think about how you can integrate the best external facilitators for your live training, as well as your internal ones,” says Brendan. “Right now, we’re hiring a small set of external facilitators and pairing them up with existing Google employees.”
The goal of these match-ups, Brendan explains, is to spark new opportunities to learn. “You have the Google facilitators that understand our best principles for great facilitation, but then they’re partnered with external facilitators to get industry-wide perspectives. That’s where the magic happens.”
This highlights the benefits of a mixture of facilitators: you can test your company’s approach against wider trends in sales training.
“You have the Google facilitators that understand our best principles for great facilitation, but then they’re partnered with external facilitators to get industry-wide perspectives. That’s where the magic happens.”
5. Listen to salesperson feedback when developing your curriculum
In sales onboarding, there’s no better test of the quality of your training content than what your reps have to say about it. As Brendan explains, even if you’re confident in your material, it pays to listen closely to their reactions.
“No matter how rigorous you have been in developing your sales content, you need to remain humble and incorporate feedback from your salespeople in developing your curriculum.”
There are a couple of great reasons for this. “First, the environment is continually changing,” says Brendan. “You have to stay up to date with what’s going on, and feedback helps you to do this. There are also a lot of things that sound appealing to a sales leader in concept, but when they start seeing the storyboards and classroom activities, they give you a more precise set of feedback.”
If you can stay open to this kind of feedback, your sales training course will have a much stronger impact in the long-run.
“You have to stay up to date with what’s going on, and feedback helps you to do this."
6. Be present during training - and engage your salespeople
Brendan left us with one last tip for great sales training course content: don’t forget to actually be present and engaged during your training.
“In sales training, we all face the risk of getting a little bogged down in all the details that go into delivering a great experience,” says Brendan. “But my advice is to carve out time to be present and actually engage with participants in your training.”
This isn’t just a way to make people feel more welcome and engaged - it also helps you to see how your training content is being received in reality.
“Walking the hallways and checking in with folks is a really rich source of knowledge and feedback,” Brendan explains. “It’s something you might not get in the formal structures of a survey or a focus group. I encourage you to recognize these opportunities to really be present and hear from your constituents.”
This isn’t just a way to make people feel more welcome and engaged - it also helps you to see how your training content is being received in reality.
Stay tuned for next week’s lesson on how to build your sales onboarding path!
If you don't want to miss the upcoming classes, make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter (below 👇).
Would love to know what you think about this MasterSaaS with Brendan. Share your reactions and thoughts in the comments section!
Our weekly newsletter of the best insights from L&D peer to L&D peer.
By providing your contact info, you agree to receive communications from 360Learning. You can opt-out at any time. For details, refer to our Privacy Policy.