Sales Training Framework Meant To Enhance Your Sales Skills

New to sales?

Today we are going to share a sales training framework that you can follow to improve your sales skills!

Start by Reading These Three Books

Sale techniques have been extensively studied by academics and relentlessly refined by practitioners. 

There’s no reason to waste time trying to reinvent the wheel when you can simply get up to speed by reading these three books:

• “Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini
• “The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible” by Brian Tracy
• “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others” by Daniel H. Pink

Let’s take a closer look at each of them:

“Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini

“Influence” is arguably the best book on the psychology of persuasion. 

And considering that sales is just persuasion applied to business, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s widely considered to be a must-read among salespeople.

It’s also worth noting that the author isn’t just preaching from his ivory tower. Back in the 1980’s, he spent three years working “undercover” in car dealerships, telemarking companies, and charities. That allowed him to observe how influence works in real life when money is at stake.

This book is a distillation of everything he learned both from practical experience and through scientific research.

We recommend getting the latest edition, “Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion”, because it’s more up-to-date.

“The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible” by Brian Tracy

“The Psychology of Selling” is arguably the best book on classic sales theory. 

The author explains both how to manage your own psychology and how to leverage the psychology of potential customers.

He also goes over various timeless sales techniques that worked well when the book was first published in the 1980s and still work well today, more than three decades later.

“To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others” by Daniel H. Pink

“To Sell Is Human” is arguably the best book on modern sales theory. 

The author explains that before widespread access to the Internet, the sellers used to have an advantage over the buyers. Why?

Because the seller knew everything about the product or service that they were selling while the buyer only knew what the seller chose to share with them. 

Today this informational asymmetry is pretty much gone: buyers can read reviews, watch unboxing videos, see what people are saying on social media, etc.

Pink argues that in the digital age, being honest with your target audience is not just the right thing to do, but the only way to build a sustainable business!

Take Time to Research Your Target Audience

The most effective salespeople are the ones who understand their target audiences the best. 

That’s why it’s so important to conduct extensive customer research:

• Who are your dream customers?
• What are their demographic traits (age, gender, nationality, education, occupation, location, etc.)?
• What are their psychographic traits (values, beliefs, interests, hobbies, goals, dreams, etc.)?
• What are they struggling with and what language do they use when they talk about those problems (e.g. specific words, expressions, slang, etc.)?
• How can the product or service that you are selling help them solve those problems?

Figure out where your dream customers hang out online and then observe the conversations happening there.

That can mean registering to online forums, subscribing to subreddits, following social media hashtags, etc. 

You also want to start consuming the content that your dream customers consume: reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube and TikTok videos, etc.

This will help you keep your fingers on the pulse of what’s important to your target audience and make it much easier to build rapport, position your offer, and close sales.

Make Sure That You Understand the Product or Service That You Are Selling

You should also take time to make sure that you understand your offer. 

If you are selling a product, then you should know its features, use cases, limitations, etc.

If you are selling a service, then you should understand its scope, deliverables, time frames, etc. 

In both cases, you also need to be crystal clear as to how your product or service can make the potential customer’s life better. 

This will help you position your product in a way that makes it appealing, present it in a manner that sets realistic expectations, and answer the questions that potential customers might have.

Learn How to Prioritize Leads

You need to develop lead qualification criteria and use them to prioritize leads that are the most likely to convert into paying customers. 

Here are the five classic lead qualification criteria:

• Need. Do they need your product or service?
• Interest. Are they interested in your product or service?
• Budget. Can they afford your product or service?
• Timing. Are they willing to make the purchase within a time frame that works for you?
• Authority. Does this person have the authority to approve the purchase?

You want to learn as much as possible before making the cold call so that you won’t waste time pitching your product or service to someone who was never going to buy anyway.

Follow This Cold Calling Framework

Patrick Dang is an international sales trainer who has helped over 70,000 students across 150+ countries improve their sales skills.

We recommend using his 5-step framework for cold calling:

1. Research. Make sure to do your homework. Does it even make sense to call this person?
2. Building rapport. You have to first get them to like you if you want them to listen to what you have to say. And that starts with the right tonality, cadence of speech, energy level, etc.
3. Setting the agenda for the call. Explain why you are calling, show them the value that you bring, and give them a reason to stay on the call until the end.
4. Uncovering pains. Ask questions to understand the problem that they are struggling with, see if you can help them solve it, and figure out the best way to position your product or service so that it would be obvious to them why they should buy it.
5. The next step. Say, if your next step is a discovery call, you can end the cold call by setting it up.

You might also want to watch this video where Patrick explains this framework in detail and provides an example:

Follow This Discovery Call Framework

We recommend using this discovery call framework:

1. Begin the call with rapport-building small talk.
2. Set the agenda for the call and ask the potential customer for permission to get started.
3. Reiterate what you have learned from your previous cold call conversation and ask them if you understood their situation correctly.
4. Ask more questions to understand their situation better and determine whether they meet the five classic lead qualification criteria (need, interest, budget, timing, authority).
5. Explain how your product or service can help them solve the problem that they are struggling with. Make sure to position it in a way that addresses the pain points that you have uncovered.
6. Preemptively address the most common objections and then answer any questions that they might have.
7. End the call by encouraging them to take the next step. That next step will depend on how your sales pipeline is structured. You might be able to close the sale then and there or you might need to schedule another call so that you could do a demo.

Make sure to put the interests of the potential customer first. Would you recommend this product or service to them if they were a friend or a family member?

If after talking to them you realize that your product or service isn’t a good fit, just be honest about it. You can even recommend a more suitable alternative if you are aware of one.

Honesty can help you avoid problems further down the road such as refund requests, bad reviews, and brand damage. Plus, it’s a great way to build goodwill, which might pay off in the future!

Record and Analyze Cold Calls and Discovery Calls If at All Possible

Ideally, you want to record cold calls and discovery calls so that you can analyze them later.

This isn’t always possible, though. Asking the potential customer for permission to record the call might spook them, especially in the cold calling context.

Meanwhile, recording a call without the other person’s permission is not just ethically questionable but also potentially illegal depending on the jurisdiction that you are in!

Set Up Cold Call and Discovery Call Roleplaying Sessions

If recording real calls isn’t an option you can set up cold call and discovery call roleplaying sessions with your colleagues where one person plays themselves and the other person plays the potential customer.

This should be done using the same medium that you would use for real calls: phone for cold calls and the software that you use for discovery calls.

Record these roleplaying sessions and analyze them. Hearing how you sound on calls can be immensely valuable because it can help you notice issues that are extraordinarily difficult to catch any other way.

Say, we are all accustomed to our patterns of speech, so you may not realize that you are using filler sounds (e.g. “umm”) or filler words (e.g. “like”), that your cadence of speech is too slow or too fast, or that you are coming across as low energy.

But all that will be immediately obvious once you listen to the playback!

Focus on the Process, Not on the Results

We recommend setting daily, weekly, and monthly cold call quotas for yourself and then focusing on the process (meeting the quotas) and not on the results (closing sales).

After all, the only thing that you have complete control over in entire the sales process is how many cold calls you make. 

Fortunately, it’s a numbers game, so if you make enough cold calls, you’ll probably end up closing some sales. 

Of course, your sales skills matter as well, but the fastest way to improve them is to get as much practice as you can. And that means making a ton of cold calls!

Want to Learn How to Generate UNLIMITED Leads?

Generating leads via cold outreach can be extremely time-consuming.

Moreover, you are setting yourself up for an uphill battle when you call someone out of the blue. Of course, they are going to be on guard. Wouldn’t you react the same way?

That’s why ideally, instead of chasing potential customers, you want to get them to come to you. It sets up a completely different dynamic right from the start. And it’s much easier to close the sale when that person has already expressed interest!

You can achieve that by building a lead generation funnel for your business and then driving traffic to it. Of course, that is easier said than done. So where should you start?

We recommend joining our 5 Day Lead Challenge where our co-founder Russell Brunson will walk you through it step-by-step.

You will:

• Create your first lead magnet.
• Build your first lead generation funnel.
• Set up a six-email welcome sequence.

…and launch your funnel in just five days!

So don’t hesitate. Take action now. It can change your life!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

P.S. This challenge is completely FREE!