Top 40 Sales Training Programs and Techniques That Will Help You Win In 2021

If talent acquisition, development, and retention are top-of-mind for you as a sales leader, here are 45 of the best sales training programs to check out. We carefully curate and update this list every year to include only the programs we know are highly respected.

High performers deliver as much as eight the output of their peers, according to McKinsey. No wonder recruiters go ballistic trying to attract the best salespeople. The gap between a mid-performing sales team and a high-performing one is vast.

Making do with average performers leads to average results. Only a team of superb talent can move your business ahead of the competition.

The same calculus especially applies the sales team. Allow a band of inexperienced, untrained, and desperate salespeople on the sales floor and you open up the floodgates of failure. Unleash a team of smart sales reps and success pours like rain.

And that is why excellent training for sales teams has become not only a competitive advantage but the primary driver of business excellence.

What Are the Types of Sales Training?

There are basically four types of sales training: inside sales, field sales, service sales, and sales management. Sales training programs are usually grouped into each type. Although many sales training programs have different names and categories, they can usually be categorized as one of these four.

Inside sales refers to selling via phone, email, or online, rather than traveling to meet prospective customers. This includes prospecting, referrals, and consultative meetings.

Field sales, in contrast to inside sales, literally means selling out in the field where sales reps meet prospective customers at trade shows, conferences, and on-premises office meetings.

Service sales is based on customer service and building customer loyalty, extending the lifetime value of existing customers. This may include consultative selling and storytelling.

Sales management training helps sales managers become better sales development coaches and to build stronger sales teams that achieve business objectives through effective pipeline management.

Why Is Sales Training Important?

Sales training programs help sales teams and their managers achieve their objectives faster and to increase bottom-line revenue. Investments in sales training are critical in developing sales teams, whose representatives fulfill their potential while better understanding the needs of their potential customers.

Sales training programs also help sales reps communicate the benefits of their company’s products and services more clearly and in a more compelling manner.

5 Sales Training Techniques To Include In Your Program

You might see literally thousands of sales training techniques on the Internet, and it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. We’ll make this easy for you. Before we go through our list of 40 sales training programs, we list the most basic five sales training techniques to grow your sales team and develop the skills of your newer sales reps.

1. Break sales training into smaller chunks

Instead of throwing all your sales training programs at your new reps and overwhelming them with too much information all at once, give these to them in bite-sized chunks and allow them to digest the material before moving them to the next step. Yes, this takes advance planning and you may even need to design a curriculum, but the time invested into a little pre-planning will definitely pay off!

2. Let new reps shadow your jobs

Many people learn better by example. Give your new reps a chance to shadow the more experienced team members in their daily job. Once they get a feel for the day-to-day, you can continue giving them more training materials to fill in the gaps.

3. Back theory with real-life success stories

Theory backed with real-life examples tend to stick more than just theory. Nothing fires up a sales rep more than an inspiring success story that they themselves can look forward to. That is, when they follow a detailed roadmap of what works while avoiding doing what does not work.

4. Give your reps some hands-on experience

Just like success stories, hands-on experience sticks in the mind much more than theory or just reading about sales. No matter how much your sales rep may learn on their own, they won’t reach their objectives or KPIs without actual field training and hands-on experience.

5. Have sales leaders share insights with your reps

You can set up some sales workshops where top performers share their tips and tricks with everyone else. Once a month should be enough, and make sure that your sales reps actually use the approaches they learned from these workshops in real life. This will help make their own preferences and talents much more apparent to themselves — and to the sales team manager.

Great Sales Training = The Best Sales Outcomes

Data abounds, and offers solid proof:

  • 80% of high-performing sales teams consider their training process as “very good” or “outstanding”.
  • Organizations with high-performing sales teams are twice as likely to provide ongoing training as companies with poorly performing sales teams.
  • US companies spend more than $70 billion per year on sales training.
  • Salespeople who complete excellent training programs deliver 10% higher win rates.

Demand for sales development training will intensify as more and more companies opt to strengthen lead qualification.

Clearly, training will be a game-changer for sales organizations in the years ahead. But choosing the best one for your team can be a tough nut to crack.

To make it easier for you, we’ve created a (not-so) shortlist of training companies that have been generating buzz across the industry. More importantly, the sales training programs listed here also generate significant value for the learners and companies who use them.

The 40 Best Online Sales Training Programs

We put all the best sales training courses, resources, and programs into the following three categories to help you navigate the list:

Full-Service Sales Courses

Advantage

Advantage Performance Group offers a three-pronged program to enhance skills at every level: corporate leaders, sellers, and businesses as a whole.

The company’s products and services align with these audiences. For sales reps, Advantage provides learning experiences for every role. They cover diverse topics such as sales negotiation, customer empathy, task prioritization, emotional intelligence, and B2B sales acceleration. Advantage is part of the BTS Group.

Altify

Change is always difficult in business. Because sales teams thrive on habit, driving your sellers to change behavior and lift performance is especially challenging. Altify has mastered the process, offering a proprietary and proven approach for full sales team transformation.

Altify builds the matching enterprise support and trains everyone on the team on how to maximize the benefits of improved sales effectiveness. It’s one of the best full-service sales classes you’ll find.

Ariel

With customers gaining control of the sales process, salespeople need to adapt and grow opportunities through empathy and authenticity.

These are the two crucial sales skills that Ariel focuses on. The training firm provides holistic solutions that blend technology and experiential learning. Programs include:

  • Storytelling for Professionals
  • Sales Effectiveness
  • Coaching for Improved Sales Performance
  • Problem Solving Negotiations
  • Effective Finals Presentations

ASLAN Training & Development

If you feel as though your approach to the market is truly unique, ASLAN might be a good training partner for you. ASLAN hyper-customizes its training solutions for each organization and learner.

The company’s training solutions aim to transform sellers into sales professionals who can orchestrate the desired outcomes for both buyers and vendors. Among other offerings, there are robust training programs for inside sales, field sales, telesales, and sales coaching for managers.

Brian Tracy is among the most widely quoted sales gurus on the planet.

Aside from writing books and delivering keynote speeches, the bestselling author also offers training programs designed to help you learn how to walk the talk. One of the more notable training programs in his library is his 21st Century Sales Training for Elite Performance.

It’s a three-month virtual course that teaches you how to win every stage of the selling process: from B2B sales prospecting to renewals.

Aspireship

Aspireship is an industry-recognized reskilling and job placement platform that helps you pivot your career into SaaS sales. Aspireship partners with SaaS companies all over North America that hire Aspireship graduates directly into roles as Sales Development Representatives, Account Executives, and Account Managers.

Aspireship’s flagship course, SaaS Sales Foundations, teaches you everything you need to know to succeed in this competitive field.

For teams, Aspireship offers access to 50+ hours of on-demand SaaS sales content from the industry’s leading voices, covering a wide range of topics including multi-channel prospecting techniques, writing great emails, leveraging the latest tech solutions, and more.

Corporate Visions

Corporate Visions provides innovative selling solutions that match the changing dynamics of business and buyer experience. The company’s solutions will help your team Create, Elevate, Capture, and Expand value at every stage of the selling cycle — from lead generation to customer success.

Through skills training, your people will gain the ability to keep pipelines full and flowing, build winning proposals, and improve deal profitability and lifetime value.

CustomerCentric Selling®

The name says it all: CustomerCentric Selling® (CRC®) designs sales classes and courses and provides training workshops based on a buyer-driven sales dynamic. A good choice if you feel your reps are more worried about their quota than their customers.

The company’s three-and-a-half-day instructor-led training workshops can be customized for the needs of each specific team or organization. Skills targeted include:

  • Business development
  • Creation of unique business value
  • Lead qualification
  • Sales process control and negotiation

DoubleDigit Sales

Known for its simple, but impactful approach to training, DoubleDigit Sales partners with organizations to customize pragmatic training solutions.

Some of its courseware include:

  • Finding New Customers
  • Aligning and Executing Sales Strategies
  • Articulating Your Unique Value
  • Expanding Relationships

GoSkills

GoSkills’ online sales training can help sales professionals master proven sales techniques, secure valuable clients, and increase revenues. The course is presented by award-winning author and business coach, David Brownlee.

Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, start-ups and entrepreneurs, both individuals and teams can benefit from GoSkills’ bite-sized business-focused courses. They also provide training for essential skills like Excel, project management, customer service, and public speaking.

IMPAX

IMPAX helps B2B companies achieve high performance and drive growth by providing a full stack of training and consulting solutions. With more than three decades of servicing clients, IMPAX delivers its learning programs via onsite workshops, public seminars, and self-paced online sales classes.

Its sales skills programs cover various areas such as:

  • Account management
  • Presentation
  • Value-based negotiation
  • Dealing with gatekeepers
  • Competitive strategy formulation
  • Lead qualification

In 2019, SellingPower named IMPAX a “Top 20 Sales Training Company”.

Mandel Communications

Mandel Communications enables people to deliver high performance by providing focused training on the different aspects, uses, and impacts of communication. In other words, they focus on teaching the so-called “soft skills” for salespeople. This is something many sales classes neglect.

The ideas behind Mandel’s award-winning approach are simple:

  • Effective communication is the most powerful tool sellers can use at all stages of the sales cycle.
  • Ask the right questions, spark meaningful conversations, articulate their unique value, present compelling demos, and confidently close a deal.

Mercuri

Mercuri International has a strong reputation and a pretty big footprint. They provide training to countless individuals and around 15,000 organizations in 50 countries and in 30 languages.

Mercuri follows a five-step method when building tailored learning solutions for its clients: Analyze, Design, Train, Change, Consolidate.

They offer blended learning and impact training on a broad range of areas and selling skills.

New Velocity

New Velocity is a comprehensive sales training platform that provides ongoing, online, and onsite learning experiences.

The company’s curriculum centers on four sales pillars:

  • Prospecting & Approaching
  • Closing & Presenting
  • Follow-up & Referrals
  • Leadership Development

New Velocity caters to businesses of any size — from small startups to global leaders such as Google, SAS, and Oracle.

RAIN Group

This award-winning training provider offers a proprietary approach to achieving selling success.

Serving hundreds of thousands of sales professionals in more than 70 countries, RAIN Group designs training programs not only to build skills but to drive behavioral change across the sales organization.

The company partners with clients to uncover opportunities, accelerate processes, and engineer growth. RAIN Group’s learning library provides a comprehensive range of courseware for every stage in the selling cycle.

Sales Readiness Group (SRG)

SRG enables individuals and organizations to achieve optimum sales performance using customized skills development programs.

Some of the company’s courseware include programs for improving:

  • Basic selling skills
  • Advanced training for value-based selling
  • Sales management training

The Brooks Group

The Brooks Group designs and delivers award-winning sales classes and training courseware for B2B professionals.

Formed in 1977, the company is known for introducing IMPACT Selling®, a results-driven sales methodology based on decades-long research and validation.

The six-step process has been taught in more than 350 industries. The IMPACT® Sales Team Training workshop can be delivered onsite, online, or both.

ValueSelling Associates™

ValueSelling Associates™ is the highly acclaimed and multi-awarded sales training provider which created the ValueSelling Framework®. This is a sales acceleration formula used by startups, mid-sized businesses, and Fortune 1000 corporations.

At the core of the framework is the idea that selling on value instead of price actually works. The ValueSelling training program blends:

  • On-demand courses
  • Instructor-led workshops
  • Video-based reinforcement method
  • Activity-based coaching

Self-Service Training Resources

Action Selling

Founded in 1990, Action Selling provides a broad range of training resources to hundreds of thousands of sales professionals.

The company was among the first in the industry to incorporate big data into its learning infrastructure, focusing on critical selling skills and the best ways to reinforce these proficiencies.

Cegos Group

Formed in 1926, the Cegos Group helped pioneer the modern skills development industry and currently trains 250,000 people annually in 50 countries.

But even though they’ve been around for a long time, they continue to be the leading driver in learning innovation. The training giant supports organizations in implementing their growth and transformation strategies.

Their E-Learning and In-House training solutions provide skills development in areas such as:

  • Customer Relationship
  • High-Performance Selling
  • Sales Negotiation
  • Key Account Management

Factor 8

Factor 8 is sales training built by sales leaders. The curriculum focuses on how to book appointments, add value, land and expand new business – and none of it with the luxury of a face to face appointment or lots of time and attention from decision-makers.

Factor 8 is known for being pretty hands-on, so as soon as reps learn new tactics, they hit the phones to try, coach, win & repeat. Most training days have higher activity and results than regular sales days. Then Factor 8 trains your managers on how to coach and keep the skills alive. This approach is what makes it one of the most intense sales classes.

Plus, the entire team gets access to The Sales Bar – ongoing training, scripts, audio samples, and coaching guides to keep skills improving after training.

FranklinCovey

Serving clients in more than 150 countries and 30 languages, FranklinCovey’s Sales Performance solutions can be delivered in many formats, including:

  • Self-paced online courses
  • Consultant-led onsite training
  • Sales coaching platforms.

Skills and topics covered include boot camps for sales leaders, customer success, lead qualification, and deal closing.

Imparta

Imparta’s training content has been translated into more than 30 languages and delivered to ambitious sales teams across all industries in more than 60 countries. Its clientele includes some of the best-known brands on the planet such as Intel, Telefonica, Canon, and the WPP Group.

Imparta’s sales training solutions are modular and highly customizable to match each organization’s selling environment, challenges, and needs.

You can choose a single hyper-specific course such as consultative selling skills or opt to build a comprehensive learning infrastructure such as your very own Sales Academy.

Kurlan & Associates

Serving clients in five continents and across 200 sectors, Kurlan & Associates provides tailored training solutions that follow three simple steps:

  • Understand
  • Apply
  • Implement Baseline Selling Strategies

Among the firm’s more popular learning programs, Live Online Sales Training is a 12-week course that teaches sellers how to have better conversations and close higher-value deals.

Miller Heiman Group

Miller Heiman is a global organization serving individuals and organizations around the world with game-changing technology and a broad range of sales classes and training courses.

The Miller Heiman Group Academy offers the company’s top-notch signature courses:

  • Strategic selling
  • Large account management process
  • Conceptual selling
  • Professional selling skills

SalesBuzz.com Online Sales Training

Nobody likes rejection. Good thing we have a fix for that. Our Live, Online Instructor-Led Sales Training Program for B2B Sales Teams eliminates call reluctance, builds team confidence, and increases sales. Our unique one-hour a week workshops (for 8-weeks) allows inside sales reps the ability to learn a specific phone skill for each step of the sales process and then put it into practice. Our tracking system provides weekly training reports showing managers in which sales reps are engaged, learning, and performing the best.

Sales Hacker

Sales Hacker develops, curates, and partners with industry leaders to provide actionable learning resources and organize ground-breaking learning events for B2B sellers.

Sales Hacker hosts two free, no-pitch webinars every week – each designed to teach sales reps and managers a new, crucial skill. Sign your team up and you’ve got an ongoing training program. Bing, bang, boom.

Sales Hacker also publishes thought leadership content.

Sandler Training

With more than five industry-blazing decades already under its belt, Sandler Training continues to provide innovative insights into the world of selling excellence.

The company’s learning methodology pioneered the concept of “reinforcement training” which remains a crucial component of the most effective sales training programs on the market.

A steady stream of fresh content and actionable coursework make the Sandler Training library one of the most popular destinations among sales practitioners.

The Sandler Selling System is embraced by B2B organizations of any size — from small companies to Fortune 500 enterprises.

Sales Training Consultants

AltiSales

Need a sales team for a startup or a rapidly growing business? AltiSales specializes in helping businesses design, improve, and scale top-notch sales organizations.

AltiSales can build a team from scratch, add highly skilled talent to your existing team, or partner with you to train your sales team for optimal performance.

DSG

DSG can work with you to design practical, tailored, and effective playbooks in the areas of sales strategy, messaging, sales process, and coaching.

These playbooks can then serve as the core training assets businesses deploy to drive learning and mastery of its messaging techniques for:

  • Client engagement
  • Sales processes
  • Selling frameworks
  • Technological tools

GP Strategies

GP Strategies was founded in 1966 to provide best-in-class performance improvement, with programs developed for 16 specific industries.

That industry-specific approach is what makes this program unique. GP Strategies’ sales training programs can be easily integrated into your specific industry, business model, sales culture, process, strategy, and branding.

Its eLearning, technical, and sales training solutions aim to transform people and processes to deliver efficient and maximum performance.

Integrity Solutions

As its name implies, Integrity Solutions goes beyond merely building skills. Instead, they also seek to transform the behavior and mindset of sales professionals.

The consulting firm partners with clients in filling the pipeline, retaining existing customers, and growing revenues by helping businesses deliver meaningful and authentic value to their customers.

Janek

Janek provides sales training and consulting services designed to elevate team performance, orchestrate measurable outcomes, and deliver significant ROI for its clients.

In partnership with clients, the company’s continuous learning and knowledge reinforcement solutions establish hyper-productive individual and organizational behavior.

John Costigan

John Costigan believes most sales classes and curriculums are too long, complicated, and impractical.

So he developed his training programs with an overarching theme of keeping it simple, and keeping it real. And as a part of his process, he shows that the techniques work in the real world, with his “LIVE” approach. It includes real calls, real prospects, and real meetings.

Having trained thousands of sales professionals in more than 30 countries to companies such as Google, Oracle, Tommy Hilfiger and Gilead Pharmaceutical, Costigan Companies provides comprehensive courseware for every stage of the selling cycle.

Revenue Storm

Using a holistic, science-backed approach, Revenue Storm provides training, coaching, and consulting services that are designed to transform your team.

The company aims to wean businesses from being too dependent on buyer-initiated purchases and to enable them to proactively create demand. Revenue Storm partners with clients to build tailored learning, tracking, and coaching solutions.

Richardson

Richardson partners with some of the best known global brands to identify and understand the specific selling skills and behaviors needed to deliver the best sales outcomes.

Now that they know the secret sauce to selling success, they’ve built a robust and impactful learning curriculum designed to reinforce those skills and behaviors in aspiring sales professionals.

Designed to equip learners for the next levels of excellence, all training programs can be customized and fine-tuned for each unique organization and seller.

The Harris Consulting Group

Founded amid dramatic shifts in the buying process, The Harris Consulting Group delivers hyper-pragmatic skills training and tailored learning experiences that help sales teams grow their revenue.

The company partners with clients to assess unique situations and build matching and scalable sales training solutions for unique needs. Tracing its roots in the SaaS B2B sector, Harris Consulting focuses on:

  • Sales Development
  • Account Executive 2 Customer Success Teams

Clients include small businesses, mid-market companies, and enterprise-scale corporations.

Tyson Group

Because there is no one secret to sales success, Tyson Group believes that achieving high performance and sustainable growth through team training involves a four-step process:

  • Assess
  • Design
  • Train
  • Coach

And that is exactly what Tyson Group does best:

  • Partner with B2B clients to probe their needs
  • Build tailored playbooks
  • Cultivate critical skills and behavior
  • Orchestrate measurable success

Wilson Learning

Helping sales professionals achieve excellence for more than 50 years, Wilson Learning enables businesses to grow revenue, improve margins, and expand market share.

The company provides hyper-customized consulting, training, coaching, and skills reinforcement services to ambitious organizations in 50 countries and 30 languages.

Training programs cover crucial topics such as:

  • Buying behavior
  • Strategic business calls
  • Selling as consulting
  • Negotiation techniques
  • Inbound sales excellence
  • Managing competition

Winning By Design

Winning By Design enables SaaS and B2B organizations to design, build, and scale high-performing sales teams to achieve dramatic revenue growth.

Through consulting, training programs, and technology implementations, Winning By Design drives positive transformation in hundreds of companies around the world.

Their Sales Academy hosts dozens of skills-building courseware and actionable tips from the best players in the game. Course titles include:

  • Provocative Selling
  • Account-based Prospecting
  • Selling as a Science

Vengreso

Vengreso is the digital sales transformation company enabling B2B sales organizations to create more sales conversations with more qualified buyers, to build more sales pipeline through content for sales strategies, LinkedIn Profile Makeovers for teams and digital sales training. Course Titles include:

  1. Selling with LinkedIn for Teams or Individuals
  2. Selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Teams or Individuals
  3. Selling with Video for Teams
  4. LinkedIn Profile Makeovers for Teams
  5. Selling with Social Networks

Are There Other Sales Training Programs to Consider?

A quick online search will turn up thousands of sales programs. Above, we listed out some of the best, but there are many, many more. The list is not exhaustive.

Business moves fast. Skills that worked in the past may become obsolete as new market realities and challenges set in. Only relentless training enables people to learn the skills they need to discover new opportunities and build pathways for sustained growth.

So don’t lose out in the war for talent. Sales training is not a trend. It is the top-of-mind agenda for businesses looking to win the future. Start with these best sales training programs and build out from there.

Max Altschuler is the General Partner of GTMfund. He previously founded Sales Hacker, a premier B2B sales media company, and scaled it to over 150,000 monthly visitors before its acquisition by Outreach.io. At Outreach, Max served as VP of Marketing for four years. During that time, he built an incredible team that helped the company 3.5x ARR in under two years, while building and becoming the leader in the Sales Engagement Category. A recognized thought leader, Max has been featured in Forbes, Time, Inc, Harvard Business Review, and Quora. He is also the author of “Hacking Sales: The Playbook For Building A High Velocity Sales Machine,” published by Wiley.

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