Welcome to the wild world of B2B sales training! If you're a B2B sales trainer, you no doubt came to the position with years of experience.

As a B2B sales consultant who travels the globe helping sellers improve sales performance it is easy to pack on the pounds. Here are five tips on ways to burn some calories when you are on the road:

1. Take the steps!

When given the option to take an elevator, escalator or steps, always take the steps. A great way to end a busy day is take the steps instead of the elevator even if your room is on the fifteenth floor!

As B2B sales consultants and trainers we are constantly faced with the challenge of finding new customers so we can drive growth of our firms. A trend to stimulate growth is to do this organically via thought leadership.

According to recent media reports the world is full of zombies.  In fact in my town—Columbus, Ohio—there are enough zombies to form a zombie run. I guess zombies care about their health as much as non-zombies.

It doesn’t stop there, I can’t get away from zombies on TV, at the movies—even at B2B sales training workshops! Simply put, some of the folks who conduct these workshops are zombies. Perhaps you are a B2B sales consultant zombie and you don’t even know it!

Five signs you might be a B2B sales consultant zombie:

1. Your B2B sales training resources are old news—crusty and musty.

2. Your presentation skills put people to sleep.

3. Your workshops are 100% lecture and 100% boring.

4. Death by PowerPoint is your favorite means of engaging your prey—I mean workshop participants.

5. Your B2B sales training expertise is limited.

How to Transform Yourself from Zombie to World-Class

Creating and delivering an onsite workshop are not easy tasks for B2B sales consultants and trainers. Unfortunately, some people cut corners when developing a training session for a couple of reasons:

• Time—they don’t have the time to do it correctly
• Expertise—they don’t know how to do it correctly.

Here’s a list of mistakes made by consultants that lead to not-so-good outcomes and negatively impact the overall ROI of a workshop:

1. Skip Pre-Learning

It is always a good idea to expose workshop participants to the course materials before the onsite workshop. A great way to do this is have the salespeople take an online course that provides an overview of the key concepts to be covered during the onsite workshop.

As a B2B sales consultant, there is no better feeling than being part of improving the sales performance of a customer—especially when a customer was initially less than eager to follow your advice and use the B2B sales training expertise provided to them.

If you are a B2B sales consultant or trainer perhaps you’ve had a ticket to this movie that involves a VP of sales at the corporate level who decided to hire your firm to improve performance without engaging the sales leaders down the line during the decision making process. This type of shotgun wedding often begins on a less than positive note filled with tension.

Step by Step! 

Here are some things you can do to turn tension into traction: 

Every strong sales organization uses periodic tactics to drive activity and ultimately sales. Tapping into your B2B sales training resources to help clients makes a great deal of sense. Here’s a clear path to follow if you are a sales consultant and have a client who wants to make things happen and drive measurable results:

• Determine the focus: What is the best opportunity to focus on? Is the desired outcome to create a specific amount of revenue from a specific customer sector? Is it based on a certain time of year? Is it tied to the launch of a new product or service? A new category of business? Perhaps the goal is to increase the number of quality face-to-face sales calls.

B2B sales consultants and trainers appreciate the value—and the revenue—of an onsite workshop. When workshops are conducted properly the sellers who receive the training also appreciate the experience because of the revenue created!

World-class B2B sales training organizations know how to create powerful on site workshops that deliver knowledge and enhance the expertise of the salespeople on the receiving end. Here are some secrets to creating powerful onsite workshops:

• Start with the end in mind—determine what you want the sellers to learn as a result of the workshop.

While there are many ways to approach building a sales meeting kit, here is one approach that will help you deliver a quality sales meeting every time. Follow this process and build your B2B sales training resources:

Begin with the end in mind.

Before building the sales meeting, think through what it is that you want salespeople to learn and what you hope they will be better at once the meeting is over. Start by completing this statement:

When salespeople leave this meeting, they should be better at (fill in the blank) and I’ll know they are better because they will do (fill in the blank) more consistently.

When conducting a multi-hour workshop it is always a good idea to add an activity—also known as a group energizer—to the event to the enhance engagement and energy level of the participants. The best energizers involve two elements:

• Some type of physical activity

• Something that causes participants to focus and think.

Here’s an energizer you can try the next time you are conducting a B2Bsales training session—it is called Group Juggling! This energizer works best with 10-12 people, but it could work with smaller groups as well. If you have a larger group split into groups of 10-12. You will need 6-8 Koosh balls for each group of 10-12 people.

Here are the instructions: