Flexibility Is Key To Successful Training Service Offerings
Each B2B sales organization faces unique challenges in terms of changing buyer expectations, organizational/GTM structures and roles, and sales competency gaps. For this reason, sales training service providers must take a flexible approach to sales skills and methodology training. Leading providers take a variety of approaches to customization, including consulting with B2B customers upfront to conduct extensive discovery prior to designing a learning plan, shadowing top performers on sales teams to understand what works for them, and leveraging AI to better understand top seller behavior and to develop personalized learning plans at the individual level.
Our Three Key Findings: Learning Reinforcement, Buyer Focus, and AI Capabilities Are Critical Characteristics of Leading Vendors.
Sales training can’t be “one-and-done.” Sales knowledge transfer and the mastery of competencies are too critical to be relegated to a single half-day classroom session. Top training vendors follow a comprehensive learning strategy that includes heavy doses of long-term reinforcement. These vendors take the time to arm sales coaches to sustain the change, they provide tools that quiz sellers on individual knowledge gaps over time, and they make their content available in the flow of the sales process, so that reinforcement can be provided in real-time and just-in-time.
Sales methodologies must focus on modern buyers. Buyers are increasingly demanding more competent, knowledgeable B2B sellers and higher-quality buyer/seller interactions. Buyers are evolving – they are completing more of the buyer’s journey independently through digital means and buying in larger buying networks. Buyers are also increasingly from generations made up of digital natives (Millennials and Gen Z) who have a different perspective on the buying process from their Gen X and Boomer counterparts. Forrester data shows that buyers are often not engaging with sellers until they are almost 70% of the way through a traditional buying process – preferring to self-serve and leverage AI to learn about a provider’s offerings. Training providers who recognize this shift in buyer behavior and demographics and adjust their methodologies to prepare sellers to meet buyers where they are will increasingly hold an advantage.
AI should be leveraged to deliver personalization at scale. Sales training providers have progressed beyond offering simple online course catalogs to leveraging AI capabilities in various ways to support learning. Some use generative AI (genAI) to develop outlines for personalized learning pathways. Others leverage AI for live role-play simulations with sellers who wish to practice new skills or messaging. AI is also used to score these role plays or to score recorded customer interactions, augmenting the bandwidth of front line sales coaches. AI is used to recommend next actions to sales coaches or sellers. Enterprises should explore the AI capabilities of the vendors within their sales tech stack, including sales training providers, and experiment with solutions. At a minimum, the innovations delivered by the most forward-thinking of these training vendors may lead to personalized, just-in-time learning at scale, which is the adult learning holy grail.
What’s Next?
While it’s not too late…we hope to see sales training providers recognize that buyer preferences are changing. The expectations that buyers hold for seller interaction is changing, and so must sales methodology. If buyers are increasingly preferring to self-service in the early stages of the sales process, how must seller behavior and associated sales motions adapt? Can we still rely on the ability and the access to consult, prove value, and build relationships across the buying group in the early stages of an opportunity? Maybe not – so how does the methodology change to adapt?
Related Forrester Content
