Feel like your sales team is falling into a rut?
Sometimes repeating the same routines and sales strategies over and over again can start to feel mundane.
If you’re looking to add a little spice to your team’s workday (and help train them to sell better), then you’ll want to check out these 11 interactive sales training ideas. This list of fun sales training activities will keep your reps sharp, train junior reps to sell better, and ultimately boost the morale of your team.
Let’s dig in:
11 interactive sales training ideas (games, activities, & more!)
The best way to set up sales training activities for your team is to look for the ones that fit your team best and can be easily added to a busy workday without interrupting your team’s flow.
These sales training activities are all free, and most can be added to your weekly or monthly sales schedule:
1. Gamified cold calls
Materials Needed: Call recording
Time It Takes: All-day activity
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Cold calling
Make cold calls fun for the entire sales team by scoring points. Assign a point value to actions or events that happen in a cold call, and keep track of your team's scores. At the end of the day, pick a winner based on the points they scored. This game can be played on a regular basis with your team as a way to make cold calling more engaging and less of a burden.
2. Features and benefits
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Materials Needed: Instructions from Trainer Bubble
Time It Takes: 30 minutes with 5 people
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Sales communication
This group game prompts your reps to turn features into benefits. One person is assigned to give a brief description of a product they want to buy. The first rep lists one feature of the product they're selling and passes it to the next to create a benefit from that feature. This pattern is followed until your team runs out of features or benefits.
3. Ugli Orange
Materials Needed: Ugli Orange Activity Instructions
Time It Takes: 1 hour with 5 people
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Negotiation
Train your reps to be better negotiators with the Ugli Orange activity. Using this free sales training game (outline referenced above), your reps will be split into different character categories—the person who is selling the oranges, and the two groups who want to buy them. The goal of the game is to help reps learn how to negotiate to get what they want, and hopefully find a solution that makes everyone happy.
4. Cold call bingo
Materials Needed: Call monitoring software
Time It Takes: 30 minutes
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Cold calling
Build cold calling skills by having junior reps listen to more experienced reps while they cold call. Each junior rep will have a bingo card and has to listen closely for the common sales methods and conversation milestones listed there. This free sales training game helps train reps on the important cold calling skills they'll need to succeed and can be done on a regular basis with new and junior sales reps.
Pro tip: Looking for calling software that allows junior reps to listen in to their colleagues’ cold calls without being heard by the person on the other side? Try Close, the all-in-one CRM with built-in VoIP calling that allows juniors reps (or managers) to Listen, Whisper, and Barge live sales calls. Try Close free for 14 days →
5. Sales Jeopardy!
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Materials Needed: Jeopardy! template
Time It Takes: 1.5 hours with 5 people
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Can be adapted to various skills
Creating your own sales Jeopardy! is one of the best sales training ideas to help new or junior reps on your sales process, product, customers, competitors, and more. You can use Jeopardy! as a fun sales training activity to reinforce new methods or strategies for the entire team.
6. Match the product
Materials Needed: Pen and paper
Time It Takes: 30 minutes
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Consultative selling
Start by making two lists. First, make a list of the products you sell, features within your product, or the pricing plans of your product. Second, make a list of one-sentence descriptions of a prospect and their needs. Then, have reps match the right product to the correct prospect. This game is especially useful to train junior salespeople to listen closely to a prospect’s true needs and match them to the right product.
7. Elevator pitch
Materials Needed: N/A
Time It Takes: 30 minutes
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Sales pitch
This sales activity can be done with the whole group. It can be based on the product you sell, or (if you want to mix things up), have your reps create an elevator pitch for a random product, such as an object in the room, a competitor, or anything else. Split your team into groups of two, and give each group a set amount of time to craft their pitch. Reps can then vote on their favorite pitch.
8. Prospect detectives
Materials Needed: Lead generation and prospecting tools
Time It Takes: 30 minutes
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Prospecting
Reps are each assigned a name from their lead list. The goal—find as much relevant information about them as possible in a select amount of time. To give junior reps a bit more direction, you could create a premade template with a list of items to find such as name, company, etc., and whoever completes the most fields in the list wins. This becomes very important when you build your ideal customer profile.
9. Latest and greatest news
Materials Needed: Internal team communication tool
Time It Takes: Month-long competition
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Industry and market knowledge
Your team needs to stay up-to-date on industry knowledge and trends. This interactive sales training idea allows your team to stay on top of the latest news with a bit of friendly competition. Set up a Slack channel for your team where they can reference the latest industry news, whether it's the industry of your business, the industry of your prospects, or trends in sales. The rep whose news item gets the most Slack reactions during the month wins a prize.
10. Peer knowledge share
Materials Needed: Video recording tools, sales content database
Time It Takes: Less than 1 hour
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Can be adapted to various skills
Your sales team is a tribe, and when they work together to build their skills, the results can be incredible. Structure peer knowledge sharing by having a 'competition' for the best advice given every month. Give your whole team a question, such as 'what's your best response to a common sales objection?', and have each rep record a video response. The team can vote on their favorite video at the end of the month, and that video can be saved in your sales enablement content for future reference.
11. Product testing
Materials Needed: Cooperation with the Product team
Time It Takes: 2 hours
Primary Sales Skill This Improves: Product knowledge
When your reps know the product they're selling, they'll be able to sell better and more authentically. Especially for SaaS companies, getting the sales team to regularly test and play with the product they're selling will help them build current, in-depth knowledge of the product. This interactive sales training idea is a way for your reps to get hands-on experience with the product they’re selling. Talk to the Product team to see what's on the roadmap, and join forces to QA new features.
Make sales training fun with a bit of creativity
It doesn’t take a lot of work to make sales training activities fun for the whole team. The sales training exercises above are free and easy to start using with your team. All it takes is a bit of creativity and willingness to get a little silly during the workday. Make sure to also check out our constantly updated list of sales training programs from around the web!
These and other sales training techniques can help you build a more well-rounded sales team that knows how to close deals faster.
Looking for top-notch sales training material? Download your free Sales Success Kit today!
