How to Get Your Team's Sales Training Just Right

Have you ever had the headache of trying to find a plumber, an electrician, a locksmith or a plasterer - but didn't have the first clue of where to start, who you could trust or if their recommendations were good, bad or a complete rip off?

I have to say - when I was a Sales Director - that's exactly how I felt about looking for a sales training provider.

Most Sales Managers and Sales Directors will happily tell you that it's not that they don't want some form of sales training for their team - an extra 10 or 20% in sales would do quite nicely thank you - it's just that they don't know who they can trust with regards to the people selling the training (never mind the people who eventually turn up to deliver it).

And we're all too aware that in any profession where the chosen individual can have a massive effect on the end result - think plumbers, electricians, plasterers, hairdressers, heart surgeons - there might very well be a few great ones out there (somewhere) - but that doesn't stop you worrying abut the knock on effect of accidently picking a bad one - and the devastating, long-term consequences that your final decision might have.

And leaving your sales team with a stranger - after spending all the time you invested instilling values and creating a team culture you can be proud of  - is far from easy.

So what do you do? Where do you start?

How do you ensure it goes as well as it possibly can?

Before You Go Looking for a Provider - Start By Finding Out What They Need

I've included a PDF download at the bottom of this article called Developing a Strategic Approach to Sales Training.

It's not a detailed report on training assessment or a fancy computerised aptitude test - just 3 simple diagrams to help you organise your team into ability levels and then get a better understanding of their actual training requirements.

Use the first diagram to help you split the team into groups based on Experience & Knowledge, and then do the same with the second which takes into account the amount of Customer Contact and Monetary Value for each piece of business they handle.

Finally all that information is brought together so that you have a snapshot of the types of sales training courses and workshops that would have the maximum effect for each group.

It's Quite a Handy Tool for the Learning & Development Team Too

Most HR professionals probably wouldn't describe themselves as seasoned salespeople - so there's often a hesitancy about recommending the next steps forward when the sales management team come a knocking.

And then, when they're asked to go looking for someone to deliver the training, they're met with a rather strange variety of choices.

The spectrum starts at one end with a group of entertaining individuals who think that sales training should be a cross between stand up comedy and a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street (is that normal in any other form of personal development?) through to the large organisations who initially appear impressive, but then send in trainers who the sales director would never dream of employing to sell anything - and who are rarely sure of how best to advise on specific issues raised by the people at the front line.

So, Has Selling Really Changed That Much in the Last 20 Years?

Well Yes and No - although I'm a little tired of so many people feeling the need to pretend they've reinvented the wheel.

From the Death of Cold Calling through to Sales 2.1 - you've got to wonder how many sales system reboots any organisation can actually cope with - and if you were forced to choose - how would you know which ones would genuinely improve the sales function?

But sales didn't become all new and shiny just because of the tools that were recently built around it.

The way people sold had to evolve because of the way customers started making their buying decisions - mixed with the perception that this generation has hardwired into its psyche of the way all "salespeople" are going to treat customers if they're allowed to get away with it.

The advent of the internet and transparency of choice has meant that the delivery of value and trust is now just as important as product knowledge and business acumen (if not more so). However the foundation stones running underneath every major business transaction - the human interaction bit - remain almost identical to exactly how they were before the technology appeared.

Which brings us neatly back round to how we feel when we're looking for someone to deliver sales training - the outcomes that most sales managers want to achieve is for the sales team to feel happy, successful, confident, motivated - while regularly smashing their targets - they want a partner they can trust to do the right thing for them in the long term.

What they don't want is some stranger who doesn't really care or can't deliver what they promised.

Because deep down, we all want to be treated in exactly the same way as our customers want to be treated - and as far as sales training goes - that's really not a bad place to start.

So just like when you're looking for someone to help you - like a plumber or electrician - a basic understanding of where you are right now, what probably needs doing and how you want it to look afterwards - can make a whole heap of difference to who you end up hiring and the eventual results they deliver.

To download the Developing a Strategic Approach to Sales Training PDF- with 3 simple diagrams to help you organise your team into ability levels and then get a better understanding of their actual training requirements - click on this link here.

Use the first diagram to help you split the team into groups based on Experience & Knowledge, and then do the same with the second which takes into account the amount of Customer Contact and Monetary Value for each piece of business or account each salesperson handles.

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My new book - Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction is now available from Kindle and as a Paperback.

If you'd like a preview, you can download the first 30 pages as a PDF document - completely free - by clicking right here

Click on these links to find out more about our Sales Training, Management Training and Customer Service Training workshops - or give us a call right now on 0844 293 9777 (UK)

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