How would you design a sales enablement training that incorporates both teaching sales techniques/skills and learning product knowledge? Or should they be separate trainings?

For most products, especially more complex ones, it’s beneficial to keep sales training and product training distinct. However, I recommend starting with product training, then sales training.  That way you are incorporating role-play scenarios focused on selling the product. This ensures that the sales training is practical and allows participants to engage in feature-benefit and business value conversations using real products rather than hypothetical ones.

By separating the trainings but connecting them, you create a strong foundation for learning. The sales dialogue becomes grounded in real-world applications, making it even more effective when practiced with your product. This approach not only enhances role-playing exercises but also reinforces the product knowledge, ensuring that your team is well-prepared to succeed.

This is a hot topic for me. What do we do when we hire new sales reps or launch a product? We teach them all about our products. It is incredibly important that they fully understand the product/service they are selling. Where it goes wrong is when we fail to give them sales skills so they don't just tell everyone why your company is so awesome. The sales rep needs to be asking great questions to understand and ultimately find the fit and add value. Both need to occur and the distinction needs to be made.

I have always found that having a team member shadow a sales rep during sales calls/meetings, is a truly invaluable way for a new hire to learn sales techniques/skills, while learning product knowledge presented within the sales call.

Certainly a good way of combining the two by there are additional opportunities to isolate sales techniques/skills training and learning product development. I am not sold that they need to be separate, however.