Notes for owners · Sales management
How to train a new salesperson on your sales process: three real deals and a deal-reading sheet
Teach a new salesperson your stages by walking through three past deals with a deal-reading sheet. Includes how to pick the deals, a first-question box, a first-week plan that points to a role-play exercise, and a sign-off checklist.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
On this page
Train a new salesperson on your process by sitting with three of your own past deals: one won, one lost, one that went quiet. Put the real messages, quotes and call notes next to your stage list, and make the newcomer say where each deal stood at every message. A slide deck says what the stages are. The deals show what each stage looks like when it goes well or badly. A short role play in the first week, using the exercise linked below, then tells you whether it stuck.
Which three deals should you pick?
They carry the whole lesson, so choose with care.
- A won deal that was typical. Not your biggest, and not a lucky referral. One a competent person could repeat.
- A lost deal where you know why. A buyer who said "your delivery was late" or "the other quote was lower" is worth more than one who vanished, because the reason is on record.
- A deal that went quiet. This one teaches follow-up: what was sent, how long the gap ran and what finally happened.
Strip out anything private first: the buyer's mobile number, margins, a rate quoted to some other buyer. The newcomer needs the sequence, not your price list.
How do you walk through a deal?
Print or screenshot the whole trail from first enquiry to decision, with your stage list beside it. Stop at each message and ask two questions. Which stage is this deal in now? What should happen next, and who does it?
Let the newcomer answer first. A wrong answer is useful because it shows which stage they have misread. Pencil each correction on the stage list itself, so the page grows from real misreadings and not from your guess at what they might get wrong.
Give them a sheet to fill in while you talk:
| Message or event | Stage the deal is in | What should happen next | Who does it | What went wrong or right |
|---|
Blank rows, one per message. After the third deal, ask them to read the sheets back to you without the paper trail.
For example: a machine dealer in Shimoga
Imagine a dealer in Shimoga who sells areca-leaf plate machines to small units. His new salesperson, a former tractor-parts counter assistant, took his first live enquiry in the second week and quoted a machine. The buyer wanted a plate of a larger diameter than the machine's die allowed. Nobody had asked. The quote went out, the buyer found the mismatch from a competitor's brochure, and the dealer lost a ₹6.5 lakh sale (an invented figure) and some standing in the market.
The mistake was not carelessness. In the three deals the owner had shown, the plate size was asked in a phone call that never reached the written trail. The newcomer saw a quote follow an enquiry and copied the order of events. Now the owner adds a line to each training deal: "what was asked by phone before this message". He also puts a first-question box on the sheet, and the newcomer fills it before any quote leaves:
| First question | Answer from the buyer | Asked on |
|---|---|---|
| Plate size wanted | ||
| Power supply at the unit | ||
| Daily output wanted |
What does the first week look like?
| Day | The newcomer | You check |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reads the stage list; hears two calls live | Can they name the stages in their own words? |
| 2 | Works through the three deals | Right stage at each message? |
| 3 | Learns where an enquiry is logged and what gets typed | Is the first entry complete? |
| 4 | Role play, two rounds | Do they ask the first questions unprompted? |
| 5 | Takes one or two real enquiries with you listening | Qualifying questions in order? |
Treat this timing as a sketch, not a rule for everyone. Some products need a week of product knowledge first; a machine tool seller may need a plant visit. Move the days around, but keep the order: stages, deals, records, role play, live calls.
For the role play on day 4, use a role-play exercise for a sales team that does not feel like school, which has the buyer card, the hidden problem and the scoring. This post covers the deals; that one covers the exercise.
What are the usual mistakes in training?
The first is teaching your own habits as if they were the process. If you always phone and the stage list says WhatsApp first, the newcomer will copy what you do, not what the page says. Fix the page or change the habit, but do not leave both.
The second is showing only won deals. Someone who has seen only wins thinks the process is a ritual. The lost and quiet deals show why each stage exists.
The third is leaving a trainee alone with a CRM login on day two. If your records are hard to fill in, they will be filled badly. Why people avoid the CRM lists the usual reasons.
When is this approach not enough?
If the product needs deep technical knowledge, say hydraulic presses or specialised packaging lines, three deals will not teach it. Add a product session with someone from production, kept separate from the process training. And if your process is not written down at all, decide the stages first from the sales process pages, since nobody can learn a process that exists only in the owner's head.
Signing off the newcomer
Keep a short checklist for yourself: stages named correctly, first records complete, role play passed twice, first three live calls reviewed with feedback. When all four are ticked, they work alone. Then you look at their records in a short sitting every few days until you trust them. Your first task is to pick the three deals this week and strip them of private details. If you want help building the onboarding for your trade, sales team onboarding is the work, and you can tell us what you need.
