Buckle up folks and get ready to learn how sales training will change your life even if you don’t want to go into sales.

I stumbled upon an old packet that I had received from a sales training course I did during my days in college. The name was very similar to one of the events we do called “The Art of Persuasion.”

There was no mention of sales in the title but it was clearly a sales training seminar. It got me thinking: what are the benefits of sales training even if you aren’t in sales?

Here we go…

Communication skills

Verbal communication is extremely important for everyone to be comfortable with. Practice makes perfect. And sales training gives you plenty of practice for your verbal communication.

Written communication and listening skills are also absolutely crucial to sales training.

Why?

For written communication, you are sending countless emails to people. One of the many things I’ve learned from Gabe is to “ be very intentional with your communication.” This makes you think very carefully about word choice and phrasing. There are different connotations associated with words that mean the exact same thing. Word choice is extremely important and it is crucial to use words situationally based on a few different factors. As a result, you’ll see better reactions to what you say.

With regards to listening skills, you will not succeed in sales if you have poor listening skills. Since you should be asking questions (think Richard Harris’ N.E.A.T system https://www.saleshacker.com/evolution-sales-welcome-neat-selling/) then you have to listen carefully to how the prospect responds. Imagine you’re asking about their core needs for a product and they respond saying “I need x, y, and z.” If you aren’t able to listen carefully then you won’t be able to uncover all of the information needed to succeed. Answer questions that are asked to you by the prospect. Don’t answers ones that aren’t asked to you. Harder than it sounds on the context of SaaS.

We all think we’re good listeners until you meet someone for the first time and you forget their name 5 minutes later.

Persuasion

May as well stay on communication skills, although this is a little more specific. Having the ability to persuade others can be a useful tool when you are trying to get others to see your perspective.

Let’s think of a few examples.

Example 1: Someone in marketing wants to try to a new digital marketing strategy but needs approval from their manager.

Example 2: A product manager wants to increase the # of products from 3 to 5.

Example 3: Your significant other wants to see a movie that you don’t want to see.

Being able to handle objections and get people to support you are extremely useful skills to have.

Interviewing

One of our core beliefs at Always Hired Sales Bootcamp is that most things in the professional world are a sale.

Your resume is a sale.

Getting your team on board with an idea is a sale.

An interview is a sale. The product you are selling is yourself. The buyer of the product is the company. The cost of this product is your salary.

If you are able to sell yourself then you will get more job offers.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Empathy

Now you may think that salespeople are sleazy, dishonest, and greedy. But that means you didn’t read my blog post death of a salesperson. That era is over.

The internet allows people to talk about their experiences. So if a salesperson makes a claim, then a prospect can do a quick Google search to see if they’re telling the truth. And if they aren’t then the salesperson will get bashed online and their reputation is trashed.This has ushered in a new era of salespeople showing empathy to the prospect. Empathy is a crucial skill we teach in our sales training and is quite a useful skill for people to learn.

Empathy is a building block for strong relationships.

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In conclusion, sales training is incredibly useful even for people who aren’t extremely interested in sales as a career. Sales will help your communication skills, persuasion, interviewing, and empathy.

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We also have free training videos on our Teachable.

The online sales training videos will help you learn some sales skills as well as give you a preview of what our bootcamp training is like.

And if you're asking yourself: "How can I find a boot camp near me?" Our real sales bootcamp that includes live, instructor-led curriculum from former SDRs at Salesforce, Linkedin, and IBM, can be done virtually!