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What are some tips for improving the level of sales training and coaching for your team?
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8 Answers
Craig you're so right to talk about coaching in the same breath as 'training' . Classroom training is expensive and completely useless on its own. Within 30 days of the average in-house 'course' most delegates have returned to their previous behavior. A regular planned and mandated field coaching and reinforcement programme is what brings permanent behavior change.
Such committment is very very rare.
I once asked a senior manager at Huthwaite (SPIN Selling) how many Fortune 500 customers actually stuck with the accompanied field coaching and on-line reinforcement programmes they paid for 'up-front'; he told me it was less than 10%.
In fact I have only known one company to do it -almost like a religion; that was Xerox my sales alama mater nearly 40 years ago. As a result we all became excellent at selling and quite rich in the process.
Learn to coach (Buy a copy of Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager it's a thin book but it's all in there) Get a coaching program going. stick with it. Get rich along with your team.
Inspect what you expect. If the leadership team is not engaged in the training program it will have little chance of succeeding. Salespeople aren't stupid, they'll do what they feel there is either a reward or a punishment for. I don't mean to be so cold but I've seen too many times where a sales training program is rolled out and people go through it and then poof, it's all put away on the shelf because management doesn't follow through with the sales team to help reinforce, coach, motivate, and measure how people are doing.
3 Things to Discover:
-Make sure the training is practical.
-Ask how in the past they have measured an increase in performance? If they are not measuring an increase in performance then there likely isn't one. This will also help in determining ROI.
-Find out how in their training they get people to adopt their training
Ryan Alex
B2B Sales and Sales Management
http://www.ryanwalex.com
I'm agree with Bob. The fact that you have developed a sales program that includes coaching is a best practice.
There are generally two ways to bring the coaching in -- a) create groups b) 1:1 Some will be inspired by the groups others could use 1:1, too. I think it's best to offer them both.
However, what I would add is creating a plan -- vision, obj, strategies, and action plan for what they already knew and integrate it on what they learned.
Mastermind type groups work well, too. Especially since they're focused on helping the participants take action.
Mark,
You reminded me of a time where a companny I worked at offered the executives a suite of managment courses. However, every time I went to do something I was taught in the class I was called in to talk to my boss.
What I learned is that it (training) was all a smoke screen, something offered "just because" it looked good.
You don't want to get involved in that sort of thing.
Maria, your response is far too typical. It's a sad comment but for many senior managers they believe any problem can be solved with training when in fact the solution is not training of the employees but a fundamental change in the managers.
Here are ESR's most important tips:
1. Stay away from reactive, event-based, tactical training. It must be strategic to have any sustainable impact.
2. Make sure you have the right people in sales management positions. Behavioral change is hard for salespeople. It needs to be supported by management.
3. Make sure you understand the selling requirements based on how your customers buy. What are their preferences, tendencies, alternatives, etc.?
4. Make certain you have a pragmatic and flexible sales process in place.
5. Select the right training company for the right reasons. This is a lot harder than it may seem. Most companies get it wrong.
6. Measure the impact of training. That will allow you to validate the effectiveness of your sales process, training, and reinforcement. It will also help justify the investment in training to senior management.
7. Consider a blended (live and virtual) delivery approach. Only virtual doesn't get the job done. Neither does only classroom.
8. Make certain reinforcement and coaching processes and resources are in place. Train your managers on how to effectively coach to your sales process.
9. Invest in the tools and resources to support salespeople's new post-program behaviors. (Messages, leads, tools, playbooks, competitive analysis, etc.)
10. Keep your salespeople away from tips and tricks that are all over the Internet. They will distract your people from doing the right things.
1. Remember that learning is the acquisition of knowledge and performance is the application.
2. Effective sales training includes role playing and opportunities for practice in between sessions.
3. Schedule 5 or 6 1 to 1.5 hour sales training sessions instead of a one day event because repetition and practice is necessary for training to stick and the brain absorbs only what the butt will endure.
4. Focus on the buying decision making process and how that is aligned to your sales process.
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