Sales Training comes in two categories; ideas that only work sometimes and ideas work almost every time.  Obviously, learning the ideas that work almost all of the time is the most valuable sales training.

It's all about CLOSING THE SALE.  A salesperson can spend a lot of time in hunting; opening up the lead; and presenting the product to no result.  When this happens the salesperson loses confidence and interest; and the company that this person works for has just paid the salesperson to do a lot of things, but not the thing that will ultimately bring in income and keep the company growing.

So, constant training in closing sales is revitalizing to the salesperson and valuable to the company.

There are really only a handful of ultra-workable principles that go into the broad blueprint of what makes up effective selling and closing.

A few of these principles are:

Just before starting to work with any particular prospect, make up your mind that your #1 job is to help that prospect find and buy a product, service or idea that will enhance his/her life or, in the case of B2B sales, it will enhance the goals and production of the company you are selling to.

Maintain excellent communication with your prospect throughout the sales process.

Demonstrate yourself as helpful, caring and interested, and you will win trust.

Discover what is needed and wanted, in relation to your product or service, before asking any self-serving questions OR ...beginning your presentation.

Structure your presentation so that the features and benefits of what you are presenting parallel the needs and wants you have discovered your prospect has for your product.

Handle any and every concern or objection your prospect has, either with communication alone, whenever that is possible, or with 'real world solutions', when needed, until your prospect either buys your product or clearly is no longer a legitimate prospect for your product.

And perhaps the single most valuable sales training tip of them all:

PERSIST! If a salesperson did almost everything else wrong, but simply persisted to try to interest his prospect in his product, service or idea, eventually that prospect would become sufficiently interested in the product, service or idea to buy it.

Of course, there are ways to persist that work a whole lot better than other ways, but the bottom line is to somehow manage to continue to persist until your prospect is ready to buy.  Handling Objections and Other Trouble Shooting, is an essential skill that will enable a salesperson to continue to persist despite any amount of sales resistance he may run into, and more importantly, to continue to persist in a way that the prospect experiences as smooth and agreeable.

Handling objections is the single most challenging part of a sale for most salespeople.  The reason for this is two-fold.  The first, and most important of these, is that most sales people have not been trained on the right tools for successfully handling any and all objections that might come their way.  And the second reason most salespeople find handling objections so difficult is that they don’t have sufficient confidence in their own ability to go in and smoothly handle the objection when the prospect manifests it.

The reason the first issue (lack of tools) is more important than lack of confidence, is because  confidence is itself built upon the successful use of the right tools.  The more a salesperson sees himself going in and handling the objection successfully and making the sale, the more confident he grows and the more willing he is to go in and face the next objection.

That said, what are the right tools for handling objections?  Objections can be slight or substantial, frail or formidable, and can come at you at any time, and in every form imaginable.  The variations of techniques on how to go about handling objections, which sales professionals have devised over the eons to try to overcome this seemingly infinite variety of objections, are almost too numerous to list.  Time has demonstrated which techniques and basic principles, truly have – or not have – a place in a sales strategy which can stand up to the tests of time.

Objections themselves come in only two basic categories, and there is a four-step formula that successfully handles virtually all objections that can come the way of the salesman. The reason this simple four-step formula is so universally and consistently successful in smoothly removing objections out of the way of completing the sale is that it is based squarely upon the powerful principles of human communication itself.

There are an infinite number of rules and guidelines about what goes into making a salesperson successful; with the ability to close a high volume of sales and maintain high customer satisfaction .  Just be sure the focus is only on the most consistently workable sales training techniques.