This scene plays out in hotel conference rooms every week: A team of national sales reps convenes to go through a few days of product training and perhaps some skills training as well. They are subjected to hours of presentations and pep talks, loaded up with packets of information and, at the end of the event, patted on the back and pushed out to the world to…to…
To do what, exactly?
“We can run sales training and have participants leave with new knowledge and increased confidence. But are we being too optimistic in expecting they will apply the knowledge, left to their own devices?” asks Stuart Ayling, managing director at Marketing Nous, an Australian sales performance improvement consultancy (MarketingNous.com.au).
Ayling says too many companies continue to be fooled by a Sales Training Illusion in which information is disseminated, the sales team appears to have increased its capabilities and audacious goals are set with great anticipation. When those goals are not met, everyone wonders where things went wrong.
How to make an impact
To truly affect behavioural change, says Ayling, a process is required that extends beyond the training event to support the individual participant to adopt the desired new behaviours.
“It’s important to recognize that not all drivers of sales performance are improved through training. Sometimes coaching is required, or the development of more effective systems, tools or support mechanisms,” he says.
Based on observation and feedback from working with hundreds of executives and sales training participants within client organizations, Ayling has identified these five main causes of the Sales Training Illusion:
1. Management is not committed to change.
In many companies’ training programs, evidence of management’s scattered approach can be seen in:
• Lack of strategic vision — Conducting training without the guidance of strategic vision is like hiking without a destination. How do you make effective choices if you don’t know where you are heading?
• Absence of support for new sales behaviors — As a manager, do you provide your team with the necessary coaching, support and opportunity to practice selling? People don’t change unless they have a system that supports the change.
• No clear expectations for improvement – Have you communicated what you expect of them? Too often, sales training is conducted and participants return to the field without a clear picture of when they should use the new skills or who they can ask for support.
2. Your training is not relevant for the team.
Unfortunately, there are still many sales training programs that present “standard” sales concepts, processes and techniques with the expectation that your team will adapt the theory and apply it to their own situations. Ayling says this type of training is often more theoretical than realistic, and can frustrate your team by leaving them to fill the gap between the classroom concepts and their workplace experience.
Your training must reflect how your salespeople make contact with prospects and how they interact with decision makers.
It also must cater to your participants’ learning needs. Most business development teams have a mixture of experience and skill levels. To fully engage the entire team, it is important for training to be designed and delivered in a way that draws on everyone’s personal perspective, provides alternate learning options and caters for specific skill gaps that exist in the team.
3. Your team is not committed to improvement.
Do your salespeople want to change or do they feel pressured to change? If they don’t see a compelling benefit for themselves, why would they change their behavior?
To maximize stickiness and impact of sales training, participants should see the training as helping them achieve their own goals. This can run the gamut from feeling more confident, to creating new sales opportunities as well as new opportunities for their career.
4. There is no sales process or methodology.
The sales process defines how to best manage sales conversations and clarifies the desired outcome at each step. This information is invaluable to define the sales skills required for your team. Sales training should be delivered with due recognition of what the salespeople will actually be doing during the sales process.
The ability to create and reinforce the perception that your company is best suited to serve a particular client is based on having a competitive difference or a competitive advantage that offers a tangible benefit for the prospect.
“To win new business, your sales team needs to understand your point of difference and be fluent expressing it,” says Ayling. “A sales process provides the structure that guides the communication of your competitive advantage through sales conversations.”
5. Vague position descriptions and key performance indicators.
When it comes to their sales activities, does your team clearly know what they are responsible for? One of the most important functions of a position description (PD) is to provide a guide as to what the incumbent should be doing and what they are actually responsible for achieving.
The PD defines who the role reports to, resources available to them, and can indicate how much time should be spent on certain categories of tasks, such as “40 percent of time each week to be spent on investigating new business opportunities.”
Key performance indicators (KPIs) must be seen s relevant, achievable and rewarding. They need to clearly state the expectations of sales activities (inputs) and results (outputs). Examples include:
• Number of client visits/meetings to discuss new business
• Number of contacts made
• Number of proposals submitted
• Conversion rate of meetings to proposals or proposals to orders
Take action
Companies do not intentionally create sales training that is quickly forgotten or not relevant for their team, Ayling says. It happens because there is not sufficient attention paid to the real drivers of sales success within the company.
“Often, the thinking at management level is ‘we need to give the sales team more information to help them sell more.’ In reality, it takes time and effort to determine the contributing factors to higher sales performance. However, the executives who make decisions on training may not have the time available to really understand the issues, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.”
Ayling adds, “It’s hard to dispute that sales training is an important — even essential — element for business growth. As a leader in your organization, the challenge is to plan training initiatives that not only engage your team during the training, but also encourage the transfer of learning into the workplace and provide the measurable business impact.”
