Sales Training - What's Your Goal - Exposure or Behavioral
Change?
by Alan Rigg
Published on this site: December 10th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
When your company invests in sales training, what is the expected
outcome? Is it a change in how your salespeople perform their
daily activities - in other words, a change in behavior?
Unfortunately, most companies drastically underestimate the
amount of time and effort that must be invested to accomplish
behavioral change. Sitting in a class for a couple of hours
or days is a good way to expose salespeople to new
skills and techniques. However, new skills and techniques
often feel strange and uncomfortable. Many salespeople worry
that attempting to use the new skills and techniques with
real, live prospects or customers will cost them sales and
hard-won credibility. So, they abandon the new skills and
techniques and continue to rely on "old" behaviors
that are comfortable for them.
Here is a real-life example of a sales training program failure:
Executive management at a company I worked for invested more
than $600,000 to teach the entire sales team (100+ salespeople)
a new sales approach. However, at every turn they looked for
ways to reduce training costs and time out of the field. As
a result, the sales manager training session was cut from
a full day to half a day, and the sales team training was cut from three days to
a day and a half. Plus, post-training conference calls (intended
to reinforce key concepts) were rescheduled multiple times
and eventually cancelled.
What was the return on the company's $600,000 investment?
Only 10% to 20% of the salespeople ever applied the new sales
approach in the field. The training project was considered
a failure.
If you want your sales training investments to produce changes
in your salespeople's behavior, your company's entire management
team, from top executives to individual sales managers, needs
to make a different level of commitment to sales training.
The skills and techniques that are taught during training
sessions must be repeated and reinforced on
a regular and consistent basis. Plus, you should provide your salespeople with a
non - threatening environment where they can practice new skills
and techniques until they become second nature.
To further demonstrate the level of management commitment
that is required to accomplish behavioral change, consider
these two scenarios:
- Scenario : A top executive mentions the importance
of a new sales approach in a company meeting or conference
call. They mention it again occasionally (once a month or
once a quarter). The sales manager also mentions the new
approach in a few sales meetings before or after the training
session(s). However, the focus soon returns to "business
as usual".
- Scenario : A top executive explains the importance
of a new sales approach in a company meeting or conference
call. From that point on, they repeat the message in any
conversation they have with any member of the sales or sales
management team. The new sales approach becomes part of
the executive's daily dialogue, and they mention it multiple
times a day.
Sales managers invest the time required to become proficient
in using the new sales approach. They also explain to their
salespeople that each salesperson will be held accountable
for using the new approach effectively in the field. They
help their salespeople become comfortable using the new approach
by conducting repeated role plays in individual and group
meetings. They also inspect for use of the new approach in
a consistent and predictable fashion.
This level of management commitment causes the salespeople
to recognize that the new approach is not "the flavor
of the month", and it will not go away if they ignore
it. As a result, the new approach eventually becomes part
of the company's sales culture.
Do you see the difference in the level of commitment described
by the two scenarios? Do you see why the second scenario is
much more likely to produce lasting behavioral change?
In summary, if you want to change your salespeople's behavior,
your company's entire management team needs to demonstrate
a different level of commitment to sales training. Here are
the recommended steps for this process:
- Any significant new sales approach becomes part of top
executives' daily dialogue.
- Sales managers learn how to execute the new approach.
- Salespeople are trained in the new approach.
- Sales managers hold salespeople accountable for using
the new approach.
- Sales managers increase their salespeople's comfort with
the new approach by conducting repeated role plats in a
non-threatening environment.
- Sales managers consistently and repeatedly inspect salesperson
activity to confirm they are using the new approach.
When new skills and techniques become second nature to your
salespeople, they are more likely to apply them effectively
in the field. Designing training curriculums to produce behavioral
change is the best way to ensure that your company receives
its desired return on sales training investments!
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of
How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople
Don't Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20
Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and
managers DOUBLE sales by implementing The Right Formula™
for building top-performing sales teams. For more information
and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com
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