How can a salesperson benefit from certification? (And how to choose the best one)

There are plenty of sales certification courses available online. But, how do you know which ones are worth your time? How can a salesperson benefit from certification?

Let’s face facts: there is no standardized sales certification that’s recognized globally.

Most salespeople learned the ropes through time and experience, without any type of formal training or course. Working with talented people and leaders who are engaged with sales coaching is a surefire way to gain valuable expertise.

So, why get any kind of sales certification? What are the benefits of sales training programs like these?

Let’s dig in and answer these questions:

• Why not just learn from experience? Why is sales training important?
• How can a salesperson benefit from certification? 7 benefits of sales training

Why not just learn from experience? Why is sales training important?

Experience is an essential part of any salesperson’s career journey. To execute consistently and effectively, you need to spend time honing your sales skills through real work.

That said, experience takes time. What if you don’t have time?

You might not have time to build experience over the years if you are:

• A new sales manager who needs to quickly learn essential skills
• A startup founder who is starting to do early sales for a new product
• A junior salesperson looking to quickly ramp up skills
• Someone transitioning into a sales position from a different role

In these cases, while experience is still valid and necessary, you need a faster way to build necessary skills. This is why formal sales training is important—you can build a foundation faster and start putting key skills into practice right away.

How can a salesperson benefit from certification? 7 benefits of sales training

Whether you’re a new salesperson, someone who’s been on the job for years, or a hungry startup founder, you can see real benefit from training to get a sales certification.

Here’s what you can expect:

1. Set yourself up with foundational sales skills

For sales reps, this includes:

• Prospecting
• Discovery
• Qualification
• Cold outreach
• Product demos
• Negotiation
• Closing

For new sales leaders and startup founders, basic skills include:

• Building an ideal customer profile
• Lead generation
• Lead management and distribution
• Building a repeatable sales process
• Creating sales enablement collateral, like email templates and cold call scripts

These sales skills are the building blocks of successful salespeople, and a sales certification course can set you off in the right direction.

2. Build better habits (or break bad ones)

Sales is constantly evolving, which makes it a fun, fast-paced environment for sales reps who enjoy challenging themselves.

If you’re new to sales, you need to build good habits like asking open-ended questions, talking value before price, or creating personalized demos.

The right sales certification can help build good habits like these and more.

But what if you’ve been around the block a few times? Have you fallen into a rut with your sales scripts? Are you having lackluster conversations that don’t go anywhere?

A key benefit of sales training is to break bad habits you might’ve collected over time, and implement new, up-to-date sales strategies.

3. Become a more niche-focused asset

The industry you work in and the type of company you work for have a huge impact on how you sell.

No salesperson is a jack of all trades now. When you build specific selling skills for certain industries or verticals, you can become a more niche-focused asset for your team.

For example, learning how to sell SaaS products is very different from learning how to sell insurance contracts.

When you get sales certifications for a specific niche, you become more valuable as a salesperson.

4. Avoid expensive mistakes

Whether you’re in the final stages of closing an important deal or trying to get your first customers as a new startup, a mistake can cost you and your business thousands of dollars.

If you want to know why sales training is important, simply ask the people who learned the hard way.

5. Get an aligned sales team

If every rep on a team is working with a different process, customer interactions will be inconsistent (and human beings don’t like inconsistency).

When the whole customer-facing team goes through the same sales training and gets the same sales certification, they’ll be working with values and strategies that are aligned with each other.

Alignment creates harmony and efficiency, and that makes the people happy and productive.

6. Improve win rates

No, we’re not just making that up.

Research done by Sales Readiness Group investigated companies who ran training programs for their reps, and separated them to see the difference between programs that exceed expectations and programs that needed improvement.

For the companies whose training programs exceeded expectations, win rates were found to be significantly higher (52.6% compared to 40.5% at companies whose training programs left a lot to be desired).

Whether you’re a rep considering a sales certification or a team leader looking for training opportunities for their team, win rates are an obvious benefit to sales training.

7. Enjoy selling again

Sales is tough. We get it. Sometimes it’s easy to lose motivation and get stuck in a rut of monotonous calls and emails.

One major benefit of sales training is that it can give you a new perspective on your job. If you’re learning new methods and strategies, testing them in the field, and learning from your experiences, you’ll be less likely to fall into the trap of simply going through the motions and get back to actually enjoying your work.

Ready to get your sales certification?

If you want to:

• Set up foundational sales skills
• Build better habits
• Avoid mistakes
• Enjoy your work again

Then, it’s time to get started and benefit from a sales certification program!