Boost Your Sales Training Results
Can you believe that 1 in 3 UK businesses – even in 2019 – offer no training or development for their employees*? From our experience, the other 2 businesses that do often don’t see the return on investment they expect.
So how can we ensure a positive return from our training? We’ve asked our creative designers for a few suggestions;
The general view is that training is often viewed as a tick-box exercise, an opportunity to address a single issue. Whilst this strategy may successfully plug a skills gap, it also misses the specific focus on what issues exist in the sales team or business. By missing this we don’t fully understand what investment needs to take place.
Take your MOT for example, your car goes in for an assessment and you wait to hear about any issues that prevent your car from performing at 100%. You receive your recommendations and are advised on what action to improve the performance, sometimes you might not have an option but to invest!
It’s the same with your sales teams training. If the diagnosis hasn’t taken place you would likely question the solutions in front of you – perhaps they’ve got solutions for areas already performing? Or they might be looking at the right areas but have the wrong solution? Both of these will see little improvement. If we want to see improvement, we must recognise the needs of our salespeople and their barriers to performing at 100%.
Once key issues have been identified, you’re on your way to a successful training plan. One that not only focuses on the skills and techniques required, but also the mindset, resilience & confidence to move away from our comfort zone and implement new ideas. This process allows you to tailor your training solutions in 1 or more of these 3 specific areas;
Business strategy – focusing on what a good salesperson looks like to achieve your long-term strategy
People development – which supports retention and improves skills
Create an agile, quick-win sales strategy – focusing on quick wins and short term gains
To support you to recognise your people’s needs and implement a training strategy, we’ve asked our trainers for a few short and easy to implement tips;
- Business needs should be supported by learning needs, what do our salespeople need to deliver the business need? Where are they now? Where do we need them to be?
- Experience does not make a salesperson skilled, as they can become unconsciously incompetent, prone to making assumptions that are not correct
- Be clear on the purpose of the training intervention. What do you want to achieve?
- Focus on the before, during and after of any training intervention
*MPA Group
