Sales Training and Coaching Archives - Kona - Sales and Management Training

The 5 Requirements to Maximize ROI on Sales Training - Business 2 Community

One of the many questions we get asked a lot, and often from sales leaders and learning and development experts, is:

how do we make sure the skills gained in the sales training are applied to drive long term results?

According to Gartner research, B2B salespeople forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training.

And moreover, 87% will forget it within a month.

SO, HOW?

But the answer is not to avoid sales training altogether. No, that would be most ridiculous and detrimental to the performance of your team.

Because in doing so you risk underskilled salespeople staying on in your organisation.

But even more damaging, is you also risk losing valuable people because they are not being developed to their full potential.

So what is the answer to how do we make sure skills gained in the sales training are applied?

Well, it’s DB-DD-MA. Define Before, Development During, Measurement After.

1. DEFINE BEFORE

Before you embark on sales training for your team, begin by actively involving each person in their learning development.

That means defining exactly where their challenges are and how the training will benefit the growth of both them professionally and the organisation.

This is an important step because if you have not defined the expectations of your training program then how do you expect to hold your people accountable? Tell everyone who is going on the training. Clearly define outcomes.

Next, complete an analysis of the skills of your existing sales team. Good training organisations will offer this as part of their discovery sessions.

Fundamentally, involve your Sales Leaders! These valuable team players are so important in making this work.

It is your sales leaders and managers who will play the biggest part in embedding the learnings from the training and making it last the long term.

2. DEVELOPMENT DURING

There are plenty of sales training techniques and sales methodologies to learn to sharpen the skills of your sales team, all the way to managers and executives.

But here are a few additional thoughts to consider during training sessions.

Teach your people how to give and receive feedback on the training and their learning ability
Get everyone to commit to the next steps, that is what they will do next with the information they have learned
Instill a value of note taking and instant knowledge application
And the biggest win! As a Sales Leader – be at the training as well. From our feedback of salespeople, nothing says ‘this isn’t that important’ to your team more than if their Leader is ‘too busy to attend. It’s also a massively missed opportunity on your behalf to see first-hand the team in a different setting to the day-to-day grind.

3. MEASUREMENT AFTER

Once training is over, have your sales managers track the follow-up commitments made by their team. Here is how.

Coaching, Coaching, and More Coaching

At the start, you defined the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact.

Stay true to this effort and see the process through. Now is the time to double down on coaching activities around those competencies.

This is where you get the value from the training. Set out coaching objectives based on the training for the sales leaders and their teams and make sure they adhere to it. This must be treated as a priority discussion point in your weekly meetings.

Follow-Up

Plan a follow-up internal communication campaign.

That includes highlighting areas of best practice and who’s doing well implementing their new skills.

Also, note the stories of achievement using the new learnings.

Visualise the Learnings

Part of keeping your training alive, we encourage sales managers and their teams to do a video replay of what they’ve learned.

This has proven so successful and is much more beneficial that than a ‘test’ to ensure the knowledge is embedded.

Record their learning takeaways and have their managers take note on areas they need to focus on in follow up coaching.

Additionally, make sure you maintain their active involvement in the learning process.

That means have each salesperson also include their plan in how they are implementing the new knowledge.

This embeds the learnings and is crucial for accountability.

Peer Support

Continuing from the point on active involvement, give your sales teams an opportunity to be heard.

Peer support learning is a strong way to embed and reinforce new ideas.

If a new win was influenced by what was taught in training, have the salesperson write up an internal brief using the terminology.

Share the knowledge and the rewards.

Hearts and Minds Sales Methodology Outline

Book your Sales Team on their Value Sales Training Workshop. Gather the team and we will take care of the rest.

Call us at KONA on 1300 611 288 for a conversation, or email info@kona.com.au anytime.

LAURETTE WITH HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY ON IT FOR KONA GROUP SALES TRAINING SALES HEALTH CHECK

3 Questions That Identify Why Demonstration is the Key to Sales Coaching

In a recent blog One of the best Sales Managers I ever had was a Rubbish Removalist called ‘Cowboy’ we stressed that just because an employee has experience in a certain area of business it doesn’t mean they will be successful in a new role or new project. Look at how many successful people fail when promoted to managers; or how many corporate high flyers fail when they go into business for themselves; or how often a new employee headhunted from your competition doesn’t achieve the same success in your organisation. HR and Recruiters will point to Behavioural Event Interviewing techniques (a technique that asks the candidate to describe a situation or an experience they had in a previous job) and say that “Past behaviour is an indication of future success”. However, this isn’t effective if the role is different or new to the person. As a Manager and Coach it is critical that Managers don’t have the attitude that because an underperforming employee ‘should know better’ they actually know how to perform. Managers who are having coaching conversations with their people from behind their desks, and discussing what the underperformer should be doing, instead of actually getting out on the road and seeing them in action, are letting their people down and taking the easy way out. In a recent article 4 Things to Consider When Promoting Your Top Sales Person to Sales Manager it was stressed that KNOWING WHAT to do in a job is very different to actually DEMONSTRATING HOW to do the job, and yet far too often Managers and Leaders are taking past results and current office conversations on face value. Until you actually see your people demonstrating the skills and tasks they need to be successful, Managers must stop delegating and empowering, and start providing sales training and coaching to become better Managers as Coaches. So here are 3 questions to see how well your people are being coached: 1. How many days a month do your Managers spend with each of your sales people, actually on the road watching them in-front of customers, so they can see and hear them in action, to be able to provide Sales Training and Coaching. In a recent on-the-spot survey in a KONA Sales Management Training workshop, 12 managers, who were managing 60 sales people between them, had collectively only spent 8 days on the road coaching in the last 4 weeks – less than 1 day each a month. And they were blaming their sales people for being below target! NOTE: Coaching is not offering a better price that you haven’t allowed your people to have, or dropping into a Key Account for a Royal Visit, or spending a couple of hours with your sales person, before “having to get back to the office for an important meeting”. 2. Coaching Professional Sales Skills involves many stages to Sales Proficiency, in addition to the core skills of Cold Calling and Making appointments; Questioning and Listening; Presenting; Negotiating; Closing; and Account Management. So how clear are your Managers and People on the 4 specific and exact Key Skills and Capabilities they need to be proficient at to help them Hit KPIs? (Not to be busy and fill their diary, but to Hit Their KPIs.) 3. What are you going to do as their Manager, Trainer and Coach to improve the way each of your people demonstrate their 4 Key Skills?

Additional Question

Is the blunt, honest truth that the problem with your underperforming people is that their Manager is suffering from Imposter Syndrome – The fear of being exposed as not being up to the job because they actually might not have the Sales Skills or Sales Management Capability they need in the position they are now in?