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Thursday, March 18, 2021

What do spring training and sales training have in common?

Spring training is a baseball tradition that goes back as far as competitive baseball. For over 140 years, major baseball teams have been migrating to warm weather states like Florida and Arizona to practice before the season starts. What’s with all the preparation?

Spring training gives baseball teams time to prepare and get ready. It allows new players to try out for positions on the team and existing players to get in shape pre-season. It gives teams time to work out the kinks and practice the numerous different situations they may encounter when the lights come on and results matter. This is their time, coaches and players alike, to get in shape and win during the upcoming baseball season.

As baseball great Babe Ruth said, “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

So then, what do spring training and sales training have in common? A lot. In fact, it can be argued that sales training aims to do precisely the same thing as spring training.

A successful sales training program gets sales teams ready and aligned by:

• Reviewing and learning new products
• Discussing marketing messaging and positioning strategies
• Building cohesiveness and rapport between new team members and existing salespeople, as well as between managers and individual reps
• Planning the goals and approaches for delivering on those goals for the upcoming fiscal year

What better way to get your salespeople in shape and ready to win than sales training? The team leaves focused, ready, and prepared for the upcoming sales season.

Spring is a natural time of year for a sales organization to come together for training. Q1 is done, the organization has likely digested the previous year and has developed goals for the existing calendar, sales pipelines have been reviewed and cleaned up, and sales activity is becoming more and more important as teams head into April. Leadership is focused on wins.

Giving sales teams the proper preparation, knowledge, and motivation to hit sales goals is essential in today’s competitive sales markets. So, batter up and let the training begin!