sales training ROI 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.