What are going to be the hot training topics for Inside Sales teams in 2011?

Our clients point to three trends:

1. People are 'sales methodologied' to death. We're seeing a trend toward more training that emphasizes the front end of the sales process: building pipeline, getting in the door, lead generation, filling the top of the funnel, creating more opportunity from marketing leads, effective qualifying and questioning, prospecting, etc.

2. Inside sales reps are thirsty to see practical application of skill. They love seeing live calls on speakerphone into their targeted accounts as part of the training and coaching process. Sticking your neck out there with live calls dramatically increases the buy in and attention levels of reps who have been trained to death with power points on products and services. One live call into a prospect or customer is worth hours of talking about it. Unless you have a person on the team who can fill this role and show them what good looks like on the phone, seek outside help.

3. We’re seeing a shift away from training as a one-time event to training followed up by inside sales coaching and reinforcement. So many companies drop the ball on this and fail to make that last mile investment that yields the greatest payoff. This will capitalize on the way that inside sales reps naturally learn. Please see our two most recent blog posts for more on that: http://www.vorsight.com/blog