I want to discuss what I see as 4 critical to quality aspects of sales training.
- Tap into existing team’s knowledge and skills
- Have frequent, periodic, training
- Measure sales performance
- Try different sales training strategies
You don’t teach a child to ride a bike by riding around yourself while they watch. You have to get the child on the bike with your support and advice. Effective sales training is handled the same way.
Most professional sales training providers teach sales strategy at the 30,000 foot level. Though this might be helpful to the sales management team, it isn’t very helpful for the individual sales people. Each sales person has different skills and knowledge, strengths and deficiencies. Teaching at the 30,000 foot level will not be effective in addressing this uneven terrain, which exists at the 10 foot level. To be fair, an outside sales trainer does not have the time or resources to leverage this knowledge into their training program.
Bringing in an outside sales training professional is not a bad idea if you are targeting the correct people in your organization. The right people will probably be your sales management team, in a train the trainer approach. In other words, teaching your sales management team how to teach sales. This approach leverages the sales training professional’s knowledge into your organization’s sales domain knowledge so that it can be brought to bear over the long haul instead of over a brief training session.
Actually, the best available resources to teach the individual sales people in your organization are your own most skilled and knowledgeable sales people. Leveraging their knowledge with that of the business’s sales domain knowledge is a potent way to develop your sales staff.
Training should be done periodically and often. This training is part refresher training and part skill development training. A well managed sales team is like a well maintained hedge. When maintained daily and carefully, the hedge stays attractive. But, if you neglect it, it will grow out of control and lose its beauty. Additionally, if after neglect you try to rein it in, you may kill it. Having frequent, periodic, training for you sales team will keep the team focused, nimble and effective. We have a sales training hour every Wednesday morning at 8:00 AM. We also have an hour of standardization training every other week in small groups.
Measuring performance sounds easier than it actually is. Are you measuring the right things and are your measurements accurate? Bernie Smith has made a post on this blog titled, “Measuring Things? Here’s a Way to Scare Yourself”. This is good piece and should be read by anyone who is in the measuring business. Check out Bernie’s blog at “madetomeasureKPIs.com”. The key is this; make sure that the measurements you use to gauge your sales team’s performance, incentivizes them to do the things you want done. For example, closing percentage targets are easy to make if you are giving margin away. Profit margin per sale is easy to make if closing percentage is not important.
Not everyone learns the same way. Some learn best by seeing, some by hearing, and just about everyone by doing. What this means is that sending email, giving away books, and talking are never going to be enough. No matter how you approach a particular training session, always include “doing” as part of the learning process. By changing the learning media from time to time, as well as the trainer, the learning process stays fresh. A while back I wrote a sales tip on the bathroom mirror at the office. It only took minutes for the message to get around. It was new and fresh, and the sales staff was eager to share the tip. I waited two weeks and changed the message. The change was not noticed for several days. The original tip became old and stale, which lead to the sales staff ignoring it. When I changed the message, no one was paying attention to what was written on the mirror anymore.
Here is the key tip regarding training anyone to do anything. People need coaching, not programming. Trainees need information that is relevant to them, fresh, and requires practice to integrate into their personal processes.