No business can grow and thrive without people to push the benefits of its products or services to potential customers.

Yet the information technology industry makes the art of sales more challenging with seemingly never-ending change, especially for solution providers and the increased emphasis on generating recurring revenue.

Solution providers also have an advantage of being able to sell the offerings of several vendors.

"We have a whole tool belt as a solution provider," Carl Gersh, director of sales and marketing at Forthright Technology Partners, based in Miramar, Fla., told IT Best of Breed recently. His company "can bring multiple technology solutions to the table," he said.

That underscores the importance of training sales professionals in how to sell new product and service offerings, but also on how to approach a prospect.

Here are links to three web resources on training the sales staff.

YESWARE: 5 sales training techniques every manager should know

How effective is e-learning? How long can sales professionals retain what they learn in a training session? Andrew Fayad of eLearning Mind outlines techniques and real-world examples of how they were used.

BUSINESS 2 COMMUNITY: Maybe it's better to train the sales managers

Jason Jordan points out recent research that concluded: Businesses that invested more in training sales managers were more likely to exceed revenue goals.

SALES MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION: Can a great salesperson become a great sales manager?

Just as teachers need to be trained to teach, sales managers – who are in some cases "coaches" – need to be trained in the ways of coaching. Mike Fisher addresses the importance of developing effective sales coaches.