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What is your opinion on sales training?
I have come across a few different companies where the training of their new sales reps is drastically under appreciated, and new hires are more often left to figure out the job on their own. What has your experience been with sales training? What can these companies do to ensure that their new hires are getting the proper amount of training?
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3 Answers
I've had sales jobs where the first day was literally "here's your office, there's your phone, there's the phone book, and here are a few old customer files." Absolutely zero training. In 20 years of being in business, over 90% of their salespeople lasted less than 12 months.
If you're hiring rookies, there should be a 2-3 month training period that emphasizes:
1. Phone skills
2. Networking skills
3. Managing a funnel
4. Creating an action plan
5. Tracking results of activities
6. Relationship skills
7. Follow-up
8. Organization
9. Goal-setting
10. Accountability
If you're hiring veterans, it's more about the new company, industry, or customer base. As successful salespeople (why would you hire anybody that wasn't successful?), they've got those basics down.
No matter the experience level, they should meet with their sales manager 2-4 times per month for account and activity updates. On a monthly basis, there should be a training session of 4-8 hours to review selling skills and new announcements about industry trends, new products, etc.
Sales training is an absolute must. You wouldn't go to a doctor that wasn't trained, would you?
I love this question...
When a sales person gets hired, it's typical that whomever did the hiring assumes that every salesperson hired should be able to sell anything, to anyone, anytime. And when it doesn't happen? Well, they just move to assuming that it was a bad salesperson and move on to the next one - always wondering why their larger competitors seem to "get all of the good ones".
But here's the flip side, because there's always two...
Most of the slick-interviewing sales people feed into it. They don't want to be trained on a sales process (think Solution Selling, etc.) or learn a bunch of "product stuff". They want to be left alone - and a lot of times this has to do with the fear of having to change their style, or the fear of actually having their results measured.
Plenty of the best salespeople I've ever hired or encountered weren't the CEO's version of sales superstars. They were organized, socially intelligent, and process driven. All of which can be trained for optimal effect.
Most companies I have worked for have not cared much for sales training. You get the basic 1-2-3 steps to selling, a 1-2 day course and then you are on your own.
At the company I work for now we do a bit more at least.
We start with a 2 day course, but then during 2 weeks our salesmen work with constant supervision and feedback.
Once they are done with the two week course, they will receive at least 15 minutes of coaching/day + we run a 1 hour workshop each week.
If they need more, we give them more of course.
This has worked very well for us, giving our salesmen room to improve whilst still being able to focus on spending time in front of customers.
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