Tailoring sales training to millennials

You may not believe that training millennials should be any different to training older staff within your workforce, but younger generations are subjected to rapidly advancing technology from a young age that is shaping how they interact with the world and what they expect while in the workplace.

If your business deals with sales, you need to tailor your sales training to those millennials you have hired to ensure you maximise their potential and of course improve lead generation and closures. Here are a few tips on how to do this:

Use tech
Allowing millennials to use the latest tech to advance their understanding of sales techniques is a good idea. By all means, use a Powerpoint but ensure it features plenty of relevant things to get them involved.

Outsource your training
Millennials love experts. With Google at hand 24/7 they’re used to getting the facts from reputable sources immediately, so sending them to a training course with Salestrong or to an industry event with a thought leading speaker will elicit a better response than sitting them in the meeting room with someone who has been working for the company for a long time but doesn’t have the charisma to make a training day engaging.

Utilise eLearning
Not only does eLearning encourage trainees to utilise new technology and online resources, it allows them to be flexible with where and how they work. More and more businesses are opening their eyes to flexible working, encouraging employees to work where they feel comfortable and at times that work for them. If you don’t want to implement this within your business allow it to occur within training, allow them to undertake their learning in an environment they feel comfortable in – whether that be at home or in the office and at a time that suits them.

Keep things brief
No one wants to spend three days in training, so it’s a good idea to find a way of reducing the time it takes to teach your new recruits to ensure they don’t get bored. Millennials are great at multi tasking but a dull, long session will diminish their attention span and prove fruitless in the end.

Put them in the shoes of the customer
Millennials are quick to jump on Twitter these days and make everyone aware of poor customer service they have received, so ensure they understand that this could actually happen in them in return if they don’t follow your training protocols. Teach them to adapt to every customer that comes through the door and ensure they understand how to implement a variety of approaches when dealing with queries.

Hiring millennials is a great option for any business, they’re tech savvy, resourceful and great when it comes to discovering new ways of doing things – just ensure you tailor your training to encourage these qualities out of them.

VERCIDA works with over one hundred clients who are committed to creating an inclusive work environment. If you are an employer and interested in working with VERCIDA to promote your diversity and inclusion initiatives and attract the best candidates, please call 02037405973 or email [email protected] for more information.

We are also officially recommended by Disability Confident as a step on achieving Employer status, please click here for more information.