Sales Training: Getting Buy-In

The Top Three Ways That Work Every Single Time

INTRO:?Have you ever struggled with getting buy in from your team? Well, after 9 years of selling, installing, training and working with Grant Cardone’s clients I have isolated the TOP 3 ways to get buy in from your salespeople, especially when it comes to ongoing training and development.?I was thinking about titling this “An Open Letter to Sales Managers” or “A Love Letter for Management” but I went with a more SEO friendly title…

Also, because it is actually a love letter, I should preface this with sometimes you have to tell the people you love some stuff they may not want to hear or confront.?Basically, sh*t’s about to get real so just know the only place it’s coming from is a place of love. I am incredibly passionate about Grant’s sales training and personal development because Grant has helped me (and still is) on so many levels (ask me about that sometime) and I know in every company I reach out to there will always be people we can help and who are literally waiting for us to come along and do just that.?Help. So with that in mind, it is my sincere desire that this gives you what you need to make sales training work in your company and if there’s anything I can do to help you, whether you’re doing business with us or not, please feel free to reach out.

1. Model the desired behavior

Leading from the front has, nor will it ever, never hurt you or your people. If you want your people to have a growth mindset, buy in on sales training and personal development, you need to be doing the exact same things you’re expecting from your people and they need to know you’re doing it.

A few years back I had a client who was the manager of a team of just over 20 salespeople.?He called me to cancel our program because he couldn’t get his people to do the training.?First thing I noticed when I looked at their reporting was he hadn’t even logged into our program in over 3 months.??

When I asked him why he responded, “I’m too busy for that stuff and besides, this is for them not me.”??

I then asked him what kind of excuses he gets from his people as to why they don’t train and he tried to leave it at “because they’re lazy” but when I pushed for an actual answer he finally said, “they tell me they’re too busy and they already know what they’re doing so they don’t need anymore training.”

Sound familiar??Eventually after a long and awkward silence I suggested he give us 90 more more days where he leads from the front and does the same required number of training segments he’s expecting from his team, because when he prioritizes the time (about 12 minutes in this case) and can make sense of him doing it, his people, literally have no excuses here.??

[QUICK SIDE NOTE: ?If you’d like to eliminate excuses from your life and your salespeople’s lives, there are 7 questions you can ask anyone, including yourself, that will literally eradicate any and all excuses.?Shoot an email to [email protected] for more on eliminating excuses]

THE BOTTOM LINE:?Remember, the only thing, “I don’t have time” means is you haven’t made it a priority yet.?Hold yourself to the exact same standards you hold your people to because when you do it a certain way, you give yourself permission to ask other people to do it a certain way and without that you won’t push them to be great because you’re not doing it yourself.?And lastly, whatever reasons (excuses) you have for not doing it, most likely will be the exact same BS excuses you get from your people.

2. Make Daily Sales Training A Condition of Employment And Attached To Compensation

Sales training, ongoing development and saw sharpening should never be an option.?Find me any other profession where training and continuous improvement is not standard operating procedure.?Training and ongoing development needs to be part of the company culture and that may require a little more effort than you initially bargained for but the payoff in terms of volume, profit and customer satisfaction will be massive.

Consider looking at it this way, managers are like farmers and salespeople are like crops.?Think of your new hires like a seed. First you plant that seed in the soil. Then you need to water and nurture that seed.?It sprouts and starts to grow and you keep watering, nurturing and cultivating it until it bears fruit. But what happens if you were to stop watering, nurturing and cultivating??It stops bearing fruit, it withers and it dies. What happens when the seasons or climate changes or your crops get a disease or parasites? You have to continually protect, cultivate and nurture your seeds and your crops.?They’re your money.

Now would you ever plant a seed and then expect it to water itself??There are no plants that can water themselves. So to expect the majority of your salespeople to happily train themselves without your help and “encouragement” probably isn’t going to happen.?In fact, there will be some seeds that just don’t sprout, some plants won’t grow, some will get a disease, some will die and so you’ll need to prune, pluck, pull and replant.??

This is ongoing and fundamental.

My longest lasting clients will have training as a qualifier for any bonus program and then set a standard of expectation with a gradient of consequences for “non-compliance.”?One of my clients has a 3 strike policy. Miss training 3 times in a month and you, as he puts it, “get promoted to customer.” I have another client who has a reserved parking spot for the most trained with the highest passing percentage.?Another client will randomly check the reporting, call an emergency meeting and reward the most trained with movie passes or something fun. Another client, has his team required to get their training done before they’re allowed to talk to a customer.?“I don’t want my people practicing on my ad budget” she said, “Their work schedule is designed to have them do 3 training videos at the start of their shift.” When I asked her what happens if she catches an untrained salesperson with a customer she said, “I’ll take them off the deal and give it to someone who has trained today.?That’s happened only once.”

What about in Grant’s office??First offense gets some stink eye.?Twice in a month and we’re having a conversation about your barrier to getting better.?Third time and we have to document the incident. Now it’s plain awkward. Fourth time and we assume you’ve quit but don’t know how to say it out loud so we just help you make it official.

THE BOTTOM LINE:?Sales training must be prioritized, scheduled and mandatory.?You want to view it with the same perspective as a coach of any sports team would view practice.?There’s not a pitcher in any league, from Little to the Majors, that doesn’t warm up before taking the mound.?You’ll never find a martial artist trying to learn a new technique during a fight.?A surgeon or a lawyer would not show up to the table or court room and just wing it or see what happens.??

3. All Sales Meetings Should Involve Video + Discussion + Role-Play

If we go back to the farmer analogy, how are you tending your soil??What is your culture like?

Because you have a culture of learning no matter what.?Customers are using mobile and the internet to shop and buy and your salespeople are using mobile and the internet to consume information.?Most salespeople have NEVER read one book on selling and the average person spends 9.73 hours per day looking at stuff online. You need to have real skin in this game because if you’re not providing your people with daily solutions, training and motivation so they can properly handle today’s buyer with today’s technology, where are they going to get it and who are they getting it from??If not you, who??

So this formula is a time tested strategy.?Video, because studies show that watching a video demonstration has a retention rate of over 50% where as reading or just listening is as low as 10-20%.?Discussion because if you can talk it out and teach it back, retention goes up to 70% and when you practice or simulate the activity or behavior you’re after, retention and duplication gets as high as 90%.

Recently, when one of our clients implemented this formula, within 2 weeks their gross profit margin went up 9% and stayed there while one of the salespeople they we’re thinking about letting go due to poor performance, spiked 20% in production and is now one of the top producers in the company.??

Another client was usually at an average a total of $200,000 in sales per day. Their biggest day at that point had been $340,000. After putting a huge emphasis on this formula in their morning huddle, they hit a new record of $500,000 of sales in one day!

CONCLUSION:?Let me wrap this up with three simple questions for you.

One, could you??If you knew the results will be a better culture that sells more product at higher margins with happier customers, could you make your own personal development and training a prioritized non-negotiable daily habit??Is that possible? Could you lead from the front and show your team how it’s done? And because you’re doing it, could you make training and development a part of the company culture???

Two, would you??Just because you can doesn’t mean you will.?Would you implement a structure, like ours, that maximizes retention and duplication to a degree that allows everyone to make more money, become better providers at home and positions leadership to make a real difference for the better?

Regardless of the answer to the last two questions, the third question is, when??When will you do it? And if not now, when? You’ll never have the right people (crops) until you make (grow) them.?The only right time is now. You’re in sales, you already know this.

So would it be a bad idea to simply try our program.?You may be one of those people that when they go, they go all in and that’s fine too but if you want to get a toe in the water, here’s what I’m proposing, 7 days access to our program.??

Here’s what we’ll do on a short call.?I’ll give you a username and password to our cloud-based program, go over the pricing options, take you to our leadership portal, show you some material to work on you with and then show you where to go to work on team development and then cut you loose to go make sense of it all.?You’ll get a few extra deals per person from this.??

Ultimately, this decision will be yours and yours alone.?My job is to help you make the right decision and then execute on that decision.

To take action, call 310-777-0352 or email [email protected] and for more information visit https://cardonesolutions.com/10xyourteam

David Bradley is a Sales & Marketing Manager with Cardone Training Technologies. For more information on creating a culture of learning, development of proficiency, handling objections and real time situational training solutions, call??310-777-0352 or fire off an email to [email protected]