SalesForceXP: September/October 2007 SalesU: Have The Wheels Come Off Of Your Sales Training Program?

SALESU

Have The Wheels Come Off Of Your Sales Training Program?

Fixing it isn't easy, but it's worth it

by Paul Nolan

SalesForceXP September/October 2007 SalesU

About the same time that you read this story, a major provider of life insurance and financial planning services will be hosting a two-day seminar for its independent sales reps on how to sell and market to minorities.

The sponsoring company nabbed some notable keynote speakers and decided to stage it in Las Vegas rather than San Antonio as an added draw. When registration for the event was first promoted last spring, the organizers estimated it would attract 1,000 attendees. When registration closed in late August, however, the sponsor had eliminated the $199 registration fee (and refunded the handful of those who had already paid it) and still had commitments from fewer than 300 people.

What went wrong? The sales trainers we talked with for this article say the organizers fell into numerous traps that will doom any training session to failure. They include (but are not limited to) settling on a topic that is not a major concern for the reps in the field; promoting the “flavor of the day” in terms of speakers and/or solutions; turning training into an event; and trying to convince participants that valuable training would occur in such a large group.

But before you chortle “Better them than me,” answer this question: If your sales training sessions were optional, would anybody show up?

"I can't just 'do' sales training. I want to know how much experience they have on their team, what the competitive climate is, what their challenges are, and what the corporate culture is."

- Louise Upshaw-McClenny
Achievers International

What's Your Point?

More and more companies are failing their sales teams - many miserably - when it comes to providing training. Many don't even attempt regular training; others provide it, but don't stop long enough to recognize its ineffectiveness.

"A lot of companies feel good about their training because it gets the salespeople excited," says Lee Salz, author of Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager (W. Business Books, 2007). "They're ready to run through walls and they go home that night and say, 'Tomorrow is going to be different because I'm going to...I'm going to...What am I going to do differently?' There is no channel for that energy, and those people who were very motivated to do something quickly fizzle out."

You must pinpoint specific objectives and areas to focus on before the training ever occurs. A good outside sales trainer will help set specific goals, explain what will be taught pertaining to them, and specify how attainment of the goals will be measured on an ongoing basis long after the training is completed.

If your company provides its salespeople training on a regular basis, pat yourself on the back. You're doing better than most, experts say. But if you can't answer "yes" to these questions, you still have work to do.

Are your training sessions regularly scheduled and not the panicked result of falling short of forecasted numbers?
Do you set aside time specifically for training rather than tack on an afternoon of training to an annual team event?
Do you have a clear idea of what you want each training session to accomplish and an equally clear idea of how to measure its effectiveness?
Are your objectives for each training session clearly stated to all participants and do you ask participants if these objectives are on target?
Do you monitor your reps in the weeks and months after each training session to ensure that the strategies you discussed are put to use?

"Many companies call asking for training and when I ask why, they say it's because they haven't done training for a number of years. If they're just training so they can check off the box next to 'training,' they probably aren't going to accomplish a darn thing," says Bill Stinnett, President of Sales Excellence Inc., (www.salesexcellence.com) and the author most recently of Selling Results! (McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Stinnett helps his clients drill deeper to discover their needs and then trains to those needs. With one, he suggested tracking revenue per customer, the average percentage off of list price that they sell, and how much is spent on trade support. He then designed a training session to improve all three areas, thereby increasing profits.

"Now all of a sudden the training has a purpose," he says. "There is a goal that we can measure both before and after. That was a hard sell to get them to start thinking about. They should have been thinking about it all along, but they weren't."

Other areas he has focused training on include how to increase the average deal size, reducing the sales cycle, and how to forecast more accurately.

That sort of preparation requires that you begin putting a sales training program in place long before the sales training ever occurs. Louise Upshaw-McClenny, President and co-owner of Houston-based Achievers International (www.achievers-international.com), says she spends six to eight weeks researching a client before creating a training program for them. She pokes and prods sales managers for information and often sits in on sales calls with reps.

It's extra steps, to be sure, but one that these experts say reaps rewards both in the quality of training you provide to your sales team and the results they provide back to the company..

Illustration by Travis Foster.

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