Posts Tagged ‘Training’

How to Pay Less and Get More Results For Your Sales Training

March 10th, 2021

When earnings fall, most companies do the one thing that is easy to implement, and will make the earnings look better. That is to cut costs and budgets. And one of the first, if not the first, to be cut is the training budget.

However, rather than deciding to cut or postpone all kinds of trainings, some companies are trying to retain the “must-have” trainings, i.e. the ones that are critical to the company’s performance, such as sales, supply chain management, quality management etc. Still, the budgets available for such training are still very tight, and these companies are looking into ways of dong more with less.

Some companies have tried to use internal trainers instead of external ones to conduct sales training. Others have switched to less “expensive” trainers instead. Well, the question here isn’t so much about whom to engage as your sales trainer, but rather how you can plan and execute sales trainings that deliver your desired results.

To achieve this, you will have to first overcome some of the common weaknesses of most sales training initiatives:

* Sales training content is outdated OR does not match the current buying practices of customers
* Ineffective reinforcement or post-training coaching
* No measurement of improvements after the training
* Getting the wrong person to do the training, etc

Getting Your House in Order

While the purpose of sales training is to improve the selling skills so that they generate better sales results for you, to achieve such an objective may require the orchestration of a few other components as well. These are:

* Hiring: Do you have the right sales person for the right sales job that will fit into your corporate culture
* Promotion: Have you promoted the right sales person to be your sales manager whom will lead and motivate your sales team effectively
* Incentives: Is your sales team incentivised to go the extra mile and get better deals for you.

If you need someone to get new customers and get quick deals, it will be very painful to train someone who is more comfortable cultivating long-term relationships with customers and grow their business. Similarly, if you need someone to spend more time partnering with customers and create strategic sales, it will also be quite masochistic to train a sales person who is highly skilled in high-pressure selling. Here are some statistics from HR Chally:

* Only 19% of effective new business developers are effective at maintaining long-term customers
* Less than 15% of key account managers are comfortable developing new businesses
* Nearly 65% of salespeople who fail could have succeeded in the right type of sales position for their skills

According to HR Chally, less than 15% of superstar sales people succeed in management. The job of selling is very different from managing a team of sales people. Some superstar sales people are so good in what they do, they don’t even know why they are good, much less impart their skills to others.

Here are some of the criteria of what a good sales manager should be:

1. Directs and controls others in your team
2. Optimise the company’s profits through the actions of your sales team
3. Analyse customer behaviours, sales people’s actions and market trends effectively
4. Train your team members
5. Makes joint calls and then coach the sales person on how to deal with customers better

You may ask why is hiring the right sales person so critical to getting good sales training results. Well, according to research conducted by Huthwaite, 87% of what is learnt in a sales training session will be lost after 1 month upon completion of the training programme. And the key reason behind this is due to ineffective post-training reinforcement, coaching and monitoring by the sales managers. In fact some sales managers hardly, if ever, train or coach or nurture their teams!

Ultimately, it is said that the sales person’s mind works faster and more accurate than a super-computer when it comes to calculating their incentive payments. They know how to reach their targets and optimise their pay by taking the most efficient of all actions. What this means is what gets paid, gets done, and if you don’t provide the incentives for sales people to change their ways (or dis-incentives if they don’t), then your sales training effectiveness will be compromised.

Setting Your Training Objectives

If you were to ask any sales manager, what will be the objective of any sales training, the reply is likely to be “Get more sales (at higher prices)!”

While this is very much the ultimate objective of most, if not all, sales trainings, the question here is what areas need to be improved before you can increase sales?

Since sales revenue generated is an end-result, in order to improve this result, you will have to look into the processes that drive this results in the first place. Hence, instead on focusing on the final objective, look at which are the processes that need to be improved and work on those areas.

E.g. if you find that your sales people have a hard time dealing with customers’ pressure to cut prices, perhaps you can first:

* Identify the sales processes involved in a typical sale;
* Identify which process(es) actually caused our customers to focus so much on price discussions (e.g. did we quote the price too early, or we didn’t understand the customer’s business needs well enough, or we didn’t get the customer to buy-in to the value we provide, etc.)
* Set the training objective to be rectifying these causes of giving too much discounts
* Monitor and measure the improvements on these processes
* Then monitor and measure the improvements of selling at higher prices

Perhaps the biggest headaches faced by many sales trainers (internal or external) is that some companies decide to have sales training only when sales are really doing badly, and then they expect immediate improvements to the bottom line. Ironically, part of the reason that these companies are doing badly in sales is because they hadn’t paid enough attention to the sales processes that drive the eventual results. So it degenerates into a vicious cycle of the company wanting some “magic bullet” to improve sales, while the sales trainer tries in vain to explain it is the process improvements that will improve sales.

Engaging the Right Trainers

Typically, companies can choose between internal and external trainers for their sales training. Whether you are getting internal or external trainers, your selection criteria will have to be based on “what kind of trainer(s) will be a best fit to deliver our sales training objectives now?”, more so than any other criteria.

While it seems like common sense to select the right trainer for most training managers, there some selections that are sometimes bizarre. We know of companies who require trainers to have years of experience in their industry, when what they said they are looking is someone who can train them new ideas to meet future challenges as their industry is changing real fast.

There’s also a Fortune 500 IT hardware company in China that actually raised issues about the trainer’s accent, and then promptly fired the trainer, even though that trainer is a subject-matter expert who is real good in designing new training programmes from scratch. While it is true that the trainer has difficulty pronouncing broadcaster-standard putonghua, participants can understand him well, and have graded him highly in evaluation sheets for previous trainings.

Depending on your current situation, your sales training requirements can be:

* Designing a sales programme from the ground up (i.e. observing sales people in action, break down the sales processes, devise ways to improve each process through training)
* Implement existing training programmes (no changes, just do it)
* Emphasize role-plays and case study discussions in workshops, an then give de-briefings and pointers (sort of like a group-based coaching)
* Conduct train-the-trainer programmes for sales managers, so that they can train their own teams
* Audit current sales training programmes, and identify ways to improve on them , etc.

In fact, one of our key customers are engaging us to help them develop their their senior sales managers to double as internal sales trainers. Their challenges are

* Their sales managers don’t know how to train (and haven’t got any training experiences);
* They need external help to customise a sales training programme to their needs, and incorporating their CRM system into their sales processes;
* They need ongoing identification of new training needs based on their weaker links in their sales processes;
* They need advice on how to schedule their internal trainings so that their internal trainers are not over-burden with work;
* They need to audit their internal training, to make sure the time is well spent.

So we worked out a plan (that goes beyond the typical train-the-trainer programme) that will help them

* Reduce operational training costs (by getting internal senior managers to do the training);
* The trainees get more attention (it will be just 1 sales manager to 5 trainees);
* Their trainers are well-trained to do the job well;
* They get professionally designed training materials;
* They get updates and further coaching from the master-trainer

To choose the right trainer, you can create a score sheet of the list of proritised criteria for the trainer(s), that is based on your sales training objectives. Most companies, even those that have very structured learning methodologies, are still using gut feel when choosing trainers, and sometimes that may end up as bad, if not ridiculous, choices.

CJ is the trusted sales advisor who have helped international companies achieve quantum improvements in sales profits in China and beyond. So far, CJ has helped:

* A leading international hotel to produce the equivalent of an additional 5,000 room nights in China in the lull summer months of 2007
* A global leading architectural hardware company to increase the sales revenue of a key account in Shanghai by 10 times within 3 weeks
* The world leader in PC sales to transform their sales force to be more collaborative and solution-focused, and helping them to regain worldwide pole position from their nearest competitor.

Prior to this, CJ was Asia Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 logistics co

Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work – Is Your Training Program a Waste of Time and Money?

February 10th, 2021

Is your training program a waste of time and money?

Quick Quiz

Which of the following statements best describes your feelings about the training programs you have taken or have put your Sales Team through?

1 = Completely satisfied – training always yields visible and measurable results 2 = Fairly satisfied – training seems to be beneficial, but does not always yield the required results 3 = Unsure – The Sales Team is generally happy and business is moving in the right direction, but I’m unsure whether training is a contributing factor 4 = Fairly dissatisfied – training is something “nice to have” that my Sales Team could probably do without 5 = Completely dissatisfied – training is an expensive waste of time and resources

Common comments from Sales Managers

If you’re like most managers who arrange sales training for your Sales Team, you’re unlikely to report being “completely satisfied” with its worth.

We regularly survey senior Sales Managers in medium-to-large sized organisations and the following comments are, unfortunately, very common.

“They seemed to enjoy themselves, but two weeks later we saw very little change.” (Regional Sales Manager, Automotive Manufacturer)

“Overall the training was good, but the problem is in getting the guys to implement the new skills. Nothing really seems to have changed much.”(National Sales Manager, Building Industry)

“My people go on these courses and get pumped up for a day or two and then their performance slips back to what it was before the training – and in some cases even worse because they’re confused” (State Sales Manager, Retail)

If you’ve ever attended a training course yourself, it’s not hard to see the reasons why.

You enjoy the course and leave energised, with great intentions and a list of things you want to do differently once you’re back at work. But, by the time you get back to two days’ worth of unanswered emails, calls to return and proposal deadlines to meet, it’s another ten days before you even stop and think about the training. The moment for change has passed you by.

Training impact studies confirm that the knowledge gained at a seminar or workshop falls off significantly within just a few days of finishing the course.

And given the way people actually learn, this isn’t at all surprising. Even so, we continue to expect that the sales training event itself will make a measurable difference in light of strong evidence that this is unlikely to happen.

Let’s think about this logically. Would you send your child to a two-day course to learn to play the piano, and expect them to good enough to compete or pass exams with their new skill? Of course you wouldn’t.

Yet isn’t that the expectation we have when we send our salespeople on a two-day training program, our Sales Manager on a course to “Improve People, Productivity and Motivation”, or our Call Centre Manager on a two-day “Financial Management for Non-Financial Managers” course?

Why most sales training just doesn’t work

Whilst the right sales training course is a key ingredient in changing behaviour, the sales training event on its own is and can never ever be the “magic bullet.”

Change is a process; it’s not an event

Achieving a sustainable and real change in sales behavior requires much more than sending your salespeople off to be trained. To get salespeople to measurably improve and begin to do things differently requires a different approach. If we want to see “real” behavioral change and get a return on our investment, we need to use proven adult learning strategies and behavioural change tactics to boost their knowledge and enhance their capabilities. This means making a departure from the traditional way we approach sales training.

Historically, very little thought or effort was made in terms of preparing the participant to get ready to learn prior to the training event taking place. In most cases, when the participant returned to work, only “lip service” was given to the follow up process to make sure they integrated the things they learned during the training.

Generally, most of the learning is expected to occur during the sales training event itself. This is where the participant is exposed to new information, tools and tactics. Most Sales Managers live in the hopes that the sales training event will be engaging; the participant will emerge with a new vision of what is possible and pick up a few key tools that they will make a part of their sales routine.

Through its many studies and reports, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) has shown that after a typical training event, the participant’s performance actually tends to drop as they attempt to apply and integrate their new knowledge and behaviours back in their work environment.

The problem is that most sales environments are not set up to support the participant and it isn’t long before workplace pressure, and the individual’s natural resistance to change, pulls them back into familiar territory and habitual ways of working and selling. The new knowledge is quickly forgotten and it is not long before performance returns to former levels.

Is it possible to actually guarantee a return on investment from training?

For sales training to deliver on its promises, the “sales training event” must be seen as only one element of the learning process.

Here are the elements of a proven and results-oriented sales training system that guarantees ROI from sales training by blending five key pieces of the learning puzzle.

1. Relevance – Prior to any training being delivered, the content, case studies and exercises need to be vetted to ensure its relevance to workplace outcomes.

2. Pre-workshop preparation – Prepare the participant prior to their attendance at the sales training event to accelerate the traction of the new tools and learning.

3. Event Engagement – The sales training event must engage the participant, delivering both insight and inspiration to transform behaviour.

4. Post-sales training execution – The individual learning outcomes must be followed up on and coached to ensure integration of desired behaviors into the workplace.

5. Accountability and measurement – Fine-tune the learning effort, tweaking until complete behavioral change has been achieved.

1. Relevance

Relevance checking is the first step.

Adult learning theory tells us that adults want reality and that adults are motivated to learn and apply only that which is relevant to them.

Malcolm Knowles, one of the most respected names in adult learning and author of The Modern Practice of Adult Education, reports “adults are most interested in subjects that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life”.

Research by the Huthwaite Research Group reports that, “Learners remembered more than four times as much from sales training sessions that were perceived as highly relevant to their jobs than they did from sessions that were seen as low in relevance.”

Relevance significantly accelerates learning, increases retention and makes learning more fun and interesting.

Questions to ask when investigating relevance include:

o Can the sales training be customised?
o Does it validate learners’ current knowledge?
o Will it reflect learners’ on-the-job experience?
o Does it include relevant case studies?
o Does it allow learners to benefit from the knowledge of other group members?
o Will it reflect and reinforce your preferred business processes?

2. Pre-Workshop Preparation

Pre-workshop preparation begins the change process by helping participants to “buy in” to the learning experience up front, before the learning event.

It sets the stage for the sales training event by creating a context for the sales training and matching it with the participant’s performance objectives and selling skills gaps.

During pre-workshop preparation, the learner should be asked to gather data about their current challenges and successes, and any examples that can be used during the sales training session. When a salesperson is cognisant of their skill gaps and how those gaps impact their ability to write revenue, it helps to speed up the learning process.

Our experience shows that by completing pre-workshop preparation the learner is more likely to become an active participant in the training.

Pre-workshop activities may include:

o Research
o Reading background material
o Completing practical or written exercises
o Completing assessments, profiling or diagnostic tests
o Connecting the salesperson’s learning objectives with those of the course content and their job performance
o Identifying internal support and resources
o Formal activities designed for recognition of prior learning (RPL)
o Creating a “learning agreement”

3. Event Engagement

The sales training event itself is where most sales training organisations expend most their time and energy.

A training event will have most impact when:

o The topic is relevant to the learner’s needs and builds on their previous experience
o The training offers a new perspective that expands the learner’s concept of what is possible
o Participants can easily see how mastering the content will improve their workplace performance
o Participants are able to experiment and practice new behaviours in a safe environment
o Participants expand their network and develop learning relationships with other attendees
o Participants are inspired and motivated to change their behaviour
o Participants develop an action plan moving forward to begin to change their below par behaviours

On its own, the sales training event will not increase performance, but a powerful “learning event” can be the catalyst for organisational learning where individuals are inspired to share their knowledge and teach others.

4. Post-sales training execution

Organisations that are serious about achieving a return on their sales training investment make sure that the training content is integrated into the workplace. To help do that they make sure they provide individual follow-up and support.

This phase ensures that measurable results can be achieved. By providing follow up coaching and support to assist individual salespeople to implement and apply their new knowledge and skills, Sales Managers ensure that the time, effort and resources invested in the development and running of the sales training bears measurable” fruit”.

Post-sales training execution and follow-up tools may include:

o High-Performance Coaching
o Post-Sales training Execution Plan & Learning agreements follow up
o Post-Sales training accreditation, assessment and/or diagnostics
o Follow up, self-paced learning modules
o Follow up workshops
o Mentoring program
o “Teach others” program
o “Buddy-coaching” Program

High-Performance Coaching