Sales Effectiveness Training
Unlock the full potential of your sales team with Anthony Cole Training’s proven Sales Effectiveness Training programs. For over 30 years, we’ve helped banks, insurance companies, and financial service organizations build stronger sales cultures, develop confident sales leaders, and achieve consistent revenue growth.
What Is Sales Effectiveness Training?
Sales effectiveness training is designed to improve how well your sales team performs at every stage of the sales process. This includes prospecting, qualifying, presenting solutions, handling objections, and closing new business. At Anthony Cole Training, we go beyond traditional sales training by aligning skills, coaching, and accountability with your organization’s goals.
Our Sales Effectiveness Approach
Anthony Cole Training’s approach is different from other sales training companies:
Tailored for Financial Services – We specialize in banks, insurance agencies, and financial organizations, so your team learns strategies directly relevant to your industry.
Comprehensive Assessments – We measure sales skills, mindset, and behaviors before training begins to identify gaps and opportunities.
Ongoing Coaching – Training is reinforced through one-on-one coaching, ensuring lasting behavior change and stronger results.
Leadership Development – We equip sales managers with the tools to coach effectively, creating a culture of accountability and growth.
Who We Work With
Our programs are built for:
Banks & Credit Unions – Strengthening retail, commercial, and wealth management sales teams.
Insurance Agencies – Helping producers improve prospecting, cross-selling, and retention.
Financial Service Firms – Aligning advisors and managers to achieve sustainable growth.
Looking for Sales Results?
Today’s buyers educate themselves online and have already gathered most of the information they need by the time you meet them. But a consultative salesperson’s advice and guidance are still valuable differentiators that can be very effective.
That’s where we come in.
Our sales effectiveness training helps salespeople become more consultative, more targeted, and consequently more personal in their approach. Each salesperson will develop a process to uncover prospect pains and needs and will be coached in the best ways to ask difficult budget and decision-making questions.
We are Your Sales Effectiveness Training Experts
Our sales effectiveness training approach helps salespeople develop professional courage, build rapport so that they become trusted advisors. Today, effective selling is so much more than just focusing on closing a sale. Using the data warehouse of Objective Management Group, the number 1 sales evaluation company for 11 years, we know that there are 21 sales core competencies that a salesperson must master to be an elite producer. We will work with your sales team to focus on skill development in areas that contribute to their consultative selling approach and drive improved results. While all the skills are important, we often start sales effectiveness training improving these four sales skills:
 | 1. Effective Prospecting and Lead GenerationSuccessful salespeople have mastered the practice of prospecting or hunting for new business. Even when in a narrow market like agricultural banking, a salesperson must consistently and effectively define their target and then reach out, make calls and contacts, link in, and email. The first thing on their calendar each week and day must be prospecting time and their pipeline must be so full that when a deal doesn’t happen, they are not desperate. We work with salespeople on upgrading their call discussions, questioning techniques, asking for introductions, developing their centers of influence as well as utilizing social media and technology such as LinkedIn and ZoomInfo. Prospecting becomes scheduled time on their calendars each week. Participant comment: “This program is effective in creating a better comfort level while interacting with prospects.” |
 | 2. Differentiating with Value-Based SellingEvery prospect has parameters around what is important to them and their business so if your salespeople focus on your company’s products and service, the prospect will likely tune them out. Elite producers operate as business advisors and understand more than just the product area for which they provide solutions. Their value is defined by understanding their prospect’s business and how their products and services may interact and contribute to the growth of that business. Stop for a minute and reflect on the approach of your salespeople. Do they differentiate with a value approach? Participant comment: “ACTG’s training has helped me grow immensely professionally and has helped me become assertive and confident in value proposition and sales process.” |
 | 3. Consultative SellingConsultative salespeople in fact are not really selling. They are asking their prospect solid discovery questions to help the prospect understand if they need to make a change. And consultative salespeople are skilled at listening. It is very common for a salesperson to ask a question, hear one comment that validates that a prospect might need what they have to offer, and they go for the pitch. But a consultative seller will listen and then probe further, not offering a solution until in fact, by answering the questions, the prospect has self-discovered their needs. This is a skill that takes practice and a genuine interest and concern for your prospect. Consultative selling is key to becoming more successful in selling but it also means mastering enough of the right questions and using them comfortably. Participant comment: “I appreciate the specific examples and questions. There are practiced examples of being consultative and finding common ground, rather than sounding like a salesperson.” |
 | 4. Following a Consistent Sales ProcessWe demonstrate our sales process using a baseball diamond and compare selling to baseball. In baseball, the player must first hit the ball (hunt and find a prospect), then run to first base (uncover the prospect’s problems and severity of pain), then on to second (determine time, money, and resources to address the problem/pain) then on to third (gain commitment and timeline to take action) and then home base to score make the sale. So, what happens if a player runs from first to third in baseball? They get thrown out! And the same is true in selling. If salespeople do not effectively follow a sales process, they will miss very important steps in the decision-making process that a prospect must go through to discover if they need to make a change. If they miss steps in the sales process, salespeople will often lose the sales. Using our Effective Selling System, we will teach your salespeople how to follow a stage-based milestone-centric sales process that improves their chances of winning the deal. Participant comment: “The sales process takes into consideration the practical reality of changes in the field. It does not presume a canned experience.” |
Basic and Advanced Sales Training
Anthony Cole Training has developed the Effective Selling System (ESS) program to offer a customizable approach to sales effectiveness training. Our instructor-led programming is supported by our robust online sales learning modules, live Zoom-casts and highly effective personal phone coaching.
In many cases, our clients do not have a formal sales process so we begin by integrating their steps into an Effective Selling System and refining their approach to their target audiences. We then take salespeople through the Effective Selling System training. Even experienced salespeople are engaged with this approach when the company embraces it and integrates the steps with their stage-based CRM. Once the salespeople master the basics of prospecting, qualifying, and closing, we further immerse them in sales training developed to help take middle and top producers to the next level in their sales success. Our training is very interactive, with practice, drill-for-skill and role play segments for mastery of the skills.
The ultimate result of sales effectiveness training is that your salespeople will be able to work more closely with prospective business owners and C-level officers. By asking the right questions, they will help buyers make decisions to better achieve their goals.