Sales training to drive behaviour change and results

Every year business leaders spend $billions on sales training because it matters to sales performance and people engagement.

• According to CSO Insights 2015 study of sales training impact, enabling your salesforce with structured high quality sales training increases (a) share of sales reps meeting their quota, (b) average win-rates and (c) lowers employee turnover rates.
• High performing sales teams are 4.8x more likely to rate their sales training as good, than poor performing ones, according to Salesforce 2021 State of Sales report

Sales training matters and with all the changes that are happing these days to way buying gets done and selling can happen, research also shows that it probably matters now more than ever.

A 2022 Mckinsey study showed that 97% of sales leaders see reskilling -and upskilling as a top-priority with more than half of them not seeing that the majority of their salesforce has the skills required to succeed today.

Good sales training matters to performance and especially in a fast-changing selling -and buying environment.

The challenge isn’t so much lack of investment. With average sales training spend per salesperson having gone up 38% from 2015 to 2020 companies are spending more than ever on getting their sales organisation trained.

The challenge is that about half of salespeople don’t think their training is very good (Salesforce State of sales report 2021).

Knowing that good sales training leads to sales performing and people engagement, that we need it now more than over and given how much money is being spent on sales training each year;

How do you design, build & deploy the right sales training for your organisation to deliver the performance improvements you need?

1. Design sales training to enable change

Imagine that writing and written communication was a big part your daily work life and you wanted to become more effective and efficient at it. You researched online and found two options both teaching the same thing but in two different ways

• Option 1: Two-day course with everything taught in one go
• Option 2: 4 x half-day courses over 4 weeks, each focusing on a new capability to become a more effective and efficient

Which would you choose to maximize the amount of learning and development that translated into new behavior and habits for improved results?

The purpose of sales training is to change behavior and habits for performance improvements and as anyone working with change knows it doesn’t happen over night and its hard to succeed with when you try to change multiple things at the same time

For this reason effective learning & development journeys for capability development, that translates into behavior change and sustained impact, are designed around two key principles

1. Focused development: Break your training into smaller parts with each development sprint focused on learning a specific thing and developing the behavior associated with it. Don’t try to change everything in one go.
2. Leave space for behavior change: Spread out the learning & development journey to allow time for practical application of new behavior and new habit formation. Don’t try to change everything at once.

People best learn and develop by focusing on getting better at one thing at a time instead of spreading themselves out thin over multiple development areas and to be effective your sales training program should be designed around how people best learn and develop

Break your sales training into smaller learning & development sprints and spread it out over longer time to allow for behaviour change and sustained impact through new habit formation

2. Build your sales training programs as learning & development journeys

To make learning and development effective we design learning journeys that make use different types of learning -and development interventions to drive capability development and change forward for the people involved.

Self-study, Quiz, tests & games, instructor led trainings, application practice homework, peer-to-peer coaching, change communication etc.

Driving forward learning and development for change in behaviour and improvements in results is like change management; it doesn’t come from just one activity (e.g. classroom training).

It is the product of different types of interventions spread out over longer time, to allow for new things learned to translate into new actions and habits

3. Measure impact

Whether you invest in external expertise to design, develop, and implement sales training programs or manage them in-house, such initiatives demand resources. Like any investment, they need to deliver tangible business results to justify the expenditure.

There are three reasons why we want to measure the impact of the investments we make in capability development and training:

1. To demonstrate the business value of people development so you can justify why the business should keep investing in it
2. To learn what works well when doing capability development so you can continuously make improvements to how you design, build & run it
3. To be able to identify potential challenges that needs addressing as you run the capability development program so you can intervene as it is happening.

That said, identifying the direct impact of training on business performance is challenging.

Training is only one of many factors influencing sales success.

If the product doesn't meet market needs, or if sales enablement and sales management are not well run, even the most thoroughly-designed training program won’t achieve desired business outcomes.

Companies wanting to measure the impact of their training can set up a multi-level framework that links training to business results across five levels:

1. Business results: We can show improvements in overall business results. Forexample, linking the sales training to ultimately changes in sales generated revenue.
2. Objectives: Participants show improvements in the performance indicators linked to what they were trained in, due to changes in behavior. We can measure objectives in the CRM system across the sales process.
3. Behavior: Participants show changes in behavior that is closer aligned with best-practice required to succeed. Behavior can be measured as the on-the-job changes ideally through verifiable outcomes from sales activity matrixes to give good indication.
4. Ability: Participants are able to show that they are capable of applying new learnings to the tasks in scope that they are responsible for. The evaluation should be done on an individual level, managerial level, and via structured tests.
5. Knowledge, understanding & attitude: Assess the participants' initial reactions to the training. Ideally the training should resonate as enjoyable, stimulating, and directly relevant to their work. This is the first step to see if training is on the right track.

Think of your training impact framework as a pyramid.

Start at the top with the business goals you want to achieve, then break these down into specific objectives by asking 'how' you'll reach these goals. Next, look closer at each objective to understand the behaviors that will help you get there.

Just like that, from the bottom up, ask 'why' the skills learned in training matter. What actions will they lead to? Why are these actions important?

In sum, make sure to sense check your training plan by asking ‘why’’ from top-down and ‘how' from bottom-up along the impact framework.

Download the Sales Training Design Guide to learn more

To learn more, download the +50 page Sales Training Design Guide through link