In times of challenging market conditions companies look to pull more value from their existing resources. It is a time to regroup, to re-engineer and to make sure that the cogs of the organisation all move smoothly. The ability of the sales team to bring in new business or maximise opportunities from existing relationships becomes more prominent and skill lacks and deficiencies in customer engagement come sharply to the fore.
Inevitably sales training becomes more important as those gaps emerge.
So, how can you make the most of sales training whilst keeping the focus of the business squarely on productivity? What should you expect? Why does sales training often fail to become the ‘magic bullet’ your declining revenues is hoping for? By examining some of the background aspects and reasons for organising training programmes the answers become a lot clearer.
Why train?
Simple, because people need to learn. In reality this is not the objective from training – it is a symptom of a larger need to create revenue or deepen relationships. Training is often seen in isolation as an instant remedy to all ills. We all know that training by itself is not enough – it is the application of the lessons and the practice of the skills learnt that is key.
Train me please!
And who should you train? Curiously, much training is allocated to ‘under-performing’ staff with the tacit intention that training will suddenly make them super sellers. Training will help in some situations but using it to avoid confronting deeper management issues is often flawed. Frankly its money badly spent. There may well be an implicit training need, but until the salesperson is committed and facing the right way, there is little chance of a wonder cure.
Conversely the top performers receive less training. Of course, they have less need – or do they? Markets are continually changing and as a sales leader can you afford not to have the best skills with the most enthusiastic and able people in the team?
And no matter how good they are – if you don’t invest in them, someone else will want to.
The worry of course is the “time off the road” argument. Like the man who always took the long walk home because he didn’t have time to see whether the winding lane was actually a short cut, many business get somewhat nervous about releasing staff in case they lose the all-important deal. The fact that the course may energise them and educate them to produce significantly in the future goes largely unnoticed.
A common failing of training is the mix of delegates put through it. Inevitably your team will be of differing sales abilities and experience but the trainer has to pitch the training to the slowest learners or least experienced. Often this means that those with greater skills (and better ability to bring in greater revenue) learn less. In small teams this is best addressed by looking carefully at coaching and mentoring programmes within the company. For larger teams, take a step back in analysing skill needs and consider what each delegate needs to learn before signing off a training programme.
What should they learn?
To be different you have to train differently. Doing the same old thing may have worked well in the past but part of the reason for even thinking about training is to engage your clients better now. Buyer’s sophistication levels have changed massively over the last few years. They expect more from sales people. They seek not only an answer to today’s problems but suggestions on how they can use your products and services in the future to drive their business.
Many training courses are already out of date. Putting your team through an in-house training programme designed some years ago may offer some help but it’s probably not the best you can do.
Please click on part two
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