SalesForceXP magazine: March/April Coverstory: Smarter Salespeople Aren’t Built In A Day

FEATURESTORY

Smarter Salespeople Aren’t Built In A Day

Few companies have the wherewithal to assemble an in-house training program like the one New York Life Insurance Company has in place, but most businesses can strengthen their sales training without a dramatic increase in spending. It's a matter of dedicating time and resources as much as money, say the trainers we talked with.

Todd Youngblood, a sales and training consultant who works with business-to-business sales teams, all but cringes when he states that a significant chunk of his income comes from one- and two-day seminars. Results from these one-shot seminars are a far cry from what you get from continuous training, yet they remain the option of choice for many companies. Sales managers nod their heads in agreement regarding the increased value of continuous learning, but revert to the one-time or annual training event under the guise of pragmatism and affordability, says Youngblood, CEO of the YPS Group in Acworth, Ga. (www.ypsgroup.com).

"The concept of bringing in an out-of-town guru for a two-day seminar - 'Youngblood is going to fly in and sprinkle magic pixie dust and everything's going to be great!' - to be very blunt, that's dumb," he says. "Adult humans cannot absorb more than 15% of what they hear and learn. One month later, that's down to single digits." Some sales managers may be concerned that continuous training is primarily a means to increase the trainer's revenue, but Youngblood says the right return on investment yardsticks will validate that approach.

What ’s the Mark of
Successful Training?

Measuring the effects of sales training has always been a high hurdle. "In most cases, it's been about the 'smiles test' - asking participants, 'How well did you like the program and the facilitator?' " says Mark Shonka of IMPAX Corp.

IMPAX poses four questions to clients that help measure its success:

1.	How did you like the class itself?
2.	Have any skills improved coming out of the workshop?
3.	Are managers seeing behavioral change down the line?
4.	Are you realizing business results?

"The client has the keys to the kingdom because they have the financial information both before and after the training," Shonka says. One IMPAX client got a before-and-after snapshot of his sales team's close rate by reviewing every proposal in the pipeline the year before the IMPAX training and comparing it to all of the proposals in the pipeline in the year following the training. The result: the sale's team's close rate soared from 7% before the training to 50% afterward.

Rick Howe, manager of training delivery at Knotts Co., a New Jersey-based distributor of industrial manufacturing equipment, is a Youngblood client and a believer in year-round training. "It's a way to stay ahead of the competition," he says.

Youngblood works with Howe's six-person sales team once a month, sometimes as a unit and sometimes individually. Howe admits that his salespeople - four of whom have been with the company for more than 10 years - are not always as energized as he is by the training. "We wrestle with complacency and comfort levels," he says. "It's a struggle and it falls on my shoulders to make sure they see the value of it." One way to make training more meaningful is to encourage salespeople to bring real-life situations to the workshops, says Mark Shonka, co-president of Connecticut-based sales consultant IMPAX Corp. (www.impaxcorp.com).

IMPAX training is a four- to six-month process that begins with classroom work and ultimately includes an IMPAX trainer accompanying each salesperson on a sales call.

A major component of the IMPAX sales process involves teaching research techniques that allow salespeople to take consultative selling to a new level, Shonka says. "When we work with salespeople on their own accounts, they quickly recognize they don't know what they really need to know to be of value to that prospect or customer."