How to Make Your Sales Training Work...and Stick |
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Productivity -
Professional development
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Written by Steve Eungblut
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Organisations of all sizes spend a small (and often not-so-small) fortune on sales training each year to assess, develop and accredit the skills of their people. But if you ask most sales directors whether the sales training they invested in actually worked, you’d probably hear, “It worked for a while but didn’t last for as long as we intended.” But why does sales training fail to stick?
It may be because the sales training they bought wasn’t the correct solution. But more often it is because the sales leaders themselves didn’t put enough time, effort or thought into following up the sales training to ensure that it was adequately applied and reinforced.
Here I will describe a simple three-step formula for making sure that sales training sticks in any size of organisation to ensure a sustained difference in your sales force’s motivation, behaviours and results.
A challenging new world of selling
Many organisations are facing huge difficulties in today’s tough environment. Clients across multiple industries are holding back on all but the most critical of projects and are making buying decisions either:
• On a spot basis to get the lowest price for commodity purchases; or
• At a much more senior level, keeping a keen eye on their ‘return on investment’ for ‘strategic purposes’.
This polarisation of buying decisions means that many firms are seeing their sales opportunities slip and their deals get squeezed in terms of margins, getting cancelled, or being rolled up into bigger deals that are won by larger competitors.
Consequently, selling organisations that want to win deals with respectable margins need their people to develop selling skills to proactively sell value-added solutions at senior decision-making levels. They must open, develop and close sales using a consultative selling methodology at this level – efficiently, repeatedly and reliably.
Most sales leaders get this, but they know they cannot simply replace their existing traditional product salespeople overnight. They therefore have to get involved in almost every significant deal to ensure their success.
Meanwhile, many invest in two- or three-day sales training events to sharpen and update the selling skills of their people in the hope that some step up to the plate. Six months later, however, they wonder why the sales training failed in terms of its objectives. At best, it made an initial difference but it didn’t last or, worse, it took their people off the road and introduced complicated new ideas that prolonged their sales process and reduced their win-rate.
The fact is that if sales training is to be worth investing in, it requires commitment and effort from you, as a sales leader, to make a real and sustainable difference – and, ultimately, to make your life easier.
Making your sales training stick
As with any change initiative, sustained success requires leaders to take the following three steps:
Step 1: Be Strategic and Committed
The sales training should be chosen, planned, tailored, communicated and implemented as part of a clear strategy for shifting the selling skills, behaviours and (often) attitudes of the sales team. This must come from you, the sales leader, to ensure that the skills, methodologies, accreditation and language used throughout the sales training aligns with your organisation’s objectives.
The sales training must also be communicated as a ‘critical success factor’ to make the strategy succeed. Your salespeople need to see, hear and feel the commitment of their sales leaders to the sales training initiative and making a lasting change.
Step 2: Win Hearts and Minds
To win over your salespeople, the sales tools and techniques you purchase must be:
• Motivational, simple, practical and clearly beneficial. After all, sales training must be provided for their development – not inflicted upon them;
• Clearly aligned with the opening, qualifying, development and closure of deals;
• Promoted by communicating early successes (via case studies, sharing forums and recognition schemes), providing an incentive for successful application; and
• Planned with, and championed by, high-performing sales-people and managers within the organisation.
Winning the hearts and minds of those enrolled in sales training is crucial. But it’s not just about making people happy. This brings us on to our third step...
Step 3: Insist on Application and Drive Momentum
Once your people are on board, do not let up. The new selling skills and behaviours must be applied in practice to deliver real outcomes – and this must be done on an ongoing basis. You need to insist that they adopt the newly learned sales techniques and behaviours, while you must drive the momentum which is created by energetic sales training and early successes. For the final push, you need to:
• Embed the tools and techniques in day-to-day sales planning and review processes at all levels;
• Make any assessment and accreditation relate to the application of the tools and sales techniques and to the results - not just to demonstrate the selling skills in a role-play exercise;
• Enable ongoing sales coaching and support from (and for) first-line sales managers. Be smart and get sales managers to support and coach one another while sharing ideas; and
• Hold regular ‘deal surgeries’ and refresher sessions using the tools and techniques learned during the sales training. This can even be delivered through online sales training and can be very cost-effective.
And finally...
As a sales leader you should ensure that your sales training provider:
• Can tailor a solution specifically to the needs of you, your organisation and your target sectors;
• Provides sales tools and techniques that can be modified and applied to your industry and the industries of your target sectors;
• Uses exercises that apply to real life situations in your industry; and
• Will help you plan and implement a strategic way that enables you to win the hearts and minds of your people and will drive real application and momentum in terms of results.
But remember...
Sales training events by themselves are not a panacea or a ‘magic bullet’. But if you use (and apply) these three steps you will, with the help of your sales training partner, be assured of success – a real and lasting shift in performance.
To make this work will require commitment and effort. But you will soon stop having to do all the high-margin selling yourself and will be able to concentrate on leading your organisation forward. Your salespeople will do all the high-margin selling for you and their sales forecasts and targets will become more credible. Now isn’t that worth a bit of effort...?
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Is There a Right Time for Sales Training? |
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Productivity -
Professional development
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Written by Dave Kahle
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Q. I wanted to do some sales training last year, but it just wasn’t the right time for it. We had too many things on our plate. Looking at our calendar this year, I am coming to the same conclusion. Am I ever going to have time to do sales training? Will it ever be the right time?
A. Great question. Probably the number one reason sales managers don’t provide sales training for their teams is “the timing just isn’t right.”
Why is it that some companies, regardless of the press of the urgent and the demands of the customers, find time to provide regular training and development opportunities for their sales force, and others, in the same industry, just can’t make the time?
The answer really does not lie in the ebb and flow of “things to do.” Nor does it lie in the open spaces of the calendar – if only you could find some empty days, you could slot in a sales training event. The answer does not lie in the world of stuff outside of ourselves that so occupies our time and attention. Rather, the answer lies inside ourselves and our organizations – in our attitudes, our values and our corporate culture.
Let me lay some ground work with a bit of thinking about effective sales, in general and then circle around to address the question head on.
1. I think everyone would agree with this statement: Better sales people sell more than average sales people.
Better sales performance is not a matter of inheriting the best customer, or falling into a lucky deal. Those things happen occasionally, but year in and year out, the best performing sales people are those who ‘sell better’ than the rest. They do something, and usually a lot of things, better than their colleagues. As a result, their customers respond more positively to them, and the sales people post better numbers. They sell more because they act differently. Not just differently – but better.
There is a direct relationship between what the sales person does and how much he sells. Here’s a simple example. One study found that 74 percent of purchasing agents said they would be “much more likely to buy from a sales person, if that person would just listen.” Doesn’t it follow, then, that those sales people who listen better sell more than those who don’t? So, if you could help all of your sales people listen better, wouldn’t that result in more sales? Of course it would. And listening is just one of a number of sales practices that are essential to better sales performance.
That’s my point. What a sales person does directly and measurably impacts how much a sales person sells. And better sales people, because they do things better, sell more than average sales people.
2. Most of my readers would also agree with this statement: Almost every sales person can become better.
One of the things that I have most enjoyed about my career as a sales person has been the fact that I have never yet reached my potential. I can always do better. And, frankly, I’m a pretty good sales person.
I’m not perfect yet, even though I have tried to get there my whole life. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t find myself saying, “I should have done this or that better.” Unfortunately, it is in the nature of sales that one is never as good as he can be. Vince Lombardi aptly summed up the challenge of continuous improvement in a different area:
We will relentlessly pursue perfection, knowing full well that we will never attain it, because no one is perfect. But, we will chase perfection, because in the process we will catch excellence.
Put these two paradigms together (#1 & #2 above) and you have a pretty good rationalization for continuous and immediate sales training. If better sales practices bring in more money, and every sales person can become better, then investing in making them better will bring in more money.
How can you afford the luxury of not improving the practices of your sales team?
3. But wait, some of you are saying, sales training doesn’t automatically mean better sales practices.
You’re right. It doesn’t. But it sure outperforms the alternative of not doing anything and expecting everyone will just automatically improve by trial and error. I’m going to make a radical statement here: I believe that there is not an exceptional performer in any endeavor who is entirely self-taught (with the once in a generation exception for the occasional savant). Tiger Woods, for example, has a swing coach.
The more sophisticated and challenging is the endeavor, the more likely that the exceptional performer has had multitude of coaches, mentors and trainers along the way. Sales is an incredibly sophisticated endeavor, where learning on your own can only take you so far.
Everyone who wants to improve, in every endeavor known to mankind, sooner or later puts himself in a situation where he/she learns from a coach, trainer or mentor – someone who has gone before and has a gift of being able to discern and communicate the intricacies and insights of the field. It takes someone outside of ourselves to help us see and realize our real potential.
The dedicated sales person, for example, buys all the books, gets the Ezines, listens to the podcasts, etc. The sales manager who wants his team to perform well, constantly injects them into learning experiences. He brings in the videos, distributes good articles, sends them to the seminars, etc.
And, like everything else, there are qualities of sales training. You can bring in old Tom, for example, who is getting ready to retire and is looking for something less demanding than sales to do. Or, you can employ the local unemployed sales person who always wanted to be a trainer. The world is full of both types.
But, if you are going to invest your sales force’s valuable time and your hard-earned money, I’d recommend you invest it into a safe choice – professionals who have an understanding of how people learn and change, real life successful experience in sales, and years of proven experience in the profession of training.
4. One more point. Have you ever stopped to calculate the cost of maintaining the status quo?
Today -- just this one day -- how many opportunities did your sales people not uncover because they haven’t been trained in how to better uncover opportunities? How many opportunities did they miss because they have not been trained to listen well? How many new customers should have been developed this month, but weren’t because your sales people have never been instructed in how to develop a new customer? How many high-potential customers languish in business-as-usual because your sales people have never been taught how to penetrate large accounts?
Just play around with those numbers and the conclusion will stagger you. The greatest cost in most companies is one which never makes it on the P&L statement – the cost of opportunities lost, customers not created, and sales not made due to a sales force performing at far less than its potential.
Now that I’ve laid some ground work, let me go back and answer the question. Is there ever a good time to do sales training? It depends on your values, your attitude and your culture.
If you believe that your sales people can not become any better, then NO, do not make the time for sales training.
If you are perfectly content with the numbers your sales force is producing, then, NO, do not make the time for sales training.
If you think everyone will improve forever on their own, then NO, there will never be a good time for sales training.
If, on the other hand, you believe that just a small change in the behavior of a sales person can leverage into huge increases in sales and profits, then by all means make the time, as soon as possible.
Is there a good time to do sales training? That really is the wrong question. The question you should be asking instead is: How can you justify continuing to bear the costs of a sales team performing at less than optimum? How can you justify the maintenance of the status quo?
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Building Your Sales Skills From The Ground Up |
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Productivity -
Professional development
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Written by Ken Sundheim
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As a business development professional / sales representative before you can go out into the world and consistently hit million dollar quotas as well as bring home enough commission to be within the $200,000 compensation range, you must build a foundation comprised of the most basic sales skills. Becoming effective at sales, just like anything else, is like building a castle from a Lego set.
 For instance, when starting to play with and analyze the toy pieces, you realize that you have no more than the base components. Then, upon configuring the foundation, you can create something truly great; artistic some may say. Many go the opposite route, don't hone the necessary skills prior and almost never achieve true sales success.
Below, you find the main foundations that will lead any business development professional, if done correctly, to a long-lasting, solid amount of success in both the sales and sales management arena. These are the building blocks that make the castle.
1. Friendliness and Approachability
Before you begin to even attempt to sell a particular product or service, you must allow yourself to open up to people and open yourself to the point where you can almost embrace rejection. To morph yourself into a revenue generating salesman or saleswoman, prior to getting in the game, it is quite necessary to learn how to enjoy people and to learn how to maintain an upbeat outlook on life. Once you do this, you will become more approachable and come across as more friendly and upbeat to your target audience.
Friendliness and affability are what draws people to others (both professionally and personally) and these traits are the foundation for leadership skills. Leadership ability, confidence in yourself and openness are the variables that will entice others buy from you. If the skills are not inherent, learn them before diving into the sales cycle and you are quickly building your "sales castle."
2. Inquisitive Mind with An Ability to Leverage Potential Customer Answers
The basics of consultative selling will tell you that you must ask questions to determine the real needs of the customer. However, questions are only questions if they are not leveraged properly and asked in a manner that shows the buyer that you want to learn about your potential client's business and, when appropriate, daily operations. Don't just ask the "fluffy" questions.
To truly lay the sales foundation, become accustomed to asking thought provoking inquires. The tone and level of intelligence that are expressed within your questions will prove to be a big differentiating factor between yourself and your competition. Once this information is obtained, learn how to gain the ability to quickly problem solve and decipher as to how to leverage the information you're receiving to draw / properly persuade the potential client to grasp your outlook on business.
3. Professional and Not Pushy Nor Desperate
As a business development / sales professional, upon preparing to begin a cold-calling campaign, you have to acquire a very professional demeanor when hitting the phones. Additionally, if you can train yourself for the psychological taxing that will come with cold-calling and new business prospecting, you can learn how to remain calm and composed; this is instead of desperate and / or pushy.
When studying remember that many cold-callers come across as desperate and, thus give the sales approach a bad name. Since companies receive inbound sales inquiries quite frequently, before even making that first call, learn how to be professional, confident and effective. This could mean practicing a script over and over again. Despite the fact that you won't hit every account that you reach out to, your odds of success will increase in quite a dramatic fashion.
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What’s a Professional Sales Person? |
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Productivity -
Professional development
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Written by Dave Kahle
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 I often hear my clients lament that they wish they had a more professional sales force. That idea of a “professional sales force” gets a lot of conversation in sales management and sales executive circles. But what exactly does it mean? And why is it a good thing?
Here’s one person’s opinion.
First, let’s eliminate those things that don’t matter. There are a number of misconceptions about the attributes of a professional sales person that center around the externals of a sales person’s situation. For example, being a professional sales person has absolutely nothing to do with the product or service the sales person sells.
I have met very professional sales people who have sold some of the strangest things imaginable. In almost every open-enrollment seminar that I present, I come across someone who sells something that I have never even heard of before. In my own experience, for example, I have sold cake mixes, men’s shoes, men’s suits and underwear, surgical staplers, sophisticated amplification equipment for hearing impaired children, business opportunities, life insurance, catheters, hand soap and yes, even sales people (as a sales recruiter), to name just a few.
Here’s another irrelevant external issue: Being a professional sales person has nothing to do with the folks to whom you sell. There are people in this country who sell something to every single job description and organization imaginable. Some of the customer types to whom my clients have sold include farmers, both crop growers and live stock growers; tool and die shops, tier one, two and three automotive suppliers; schools at every level, and government agencies of all kinds; the military, grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores and retailers of every kind; contractors of every ilk, including electrical, mechanical, HVAC, plumbing; builders both residential and commercial, etc. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. In each and every one of these industries, there are professional sales people.
Being a professional sales person has nothing to do with the company for whom the sales person works. There are thousands of independent representatives in this country, for example, who work for themselves. Other sales people work for small family-held businesses, others work for large multi-nationals. Thousands sell for distributors; tens of thousands sell for retailers of every possible thing; more thousands sell for manufacturers and service providers of every type. Professional sales people are sprinkled throughout every one of these business types.
Finally, being a professional sales person has nothing to do with how long he’s been at it, his educational background or experience level. I have encountered many sales people who have been selling for over twenty years, for example, who don’t come close to fitting into the mold of a professional sales person. On the other hand, last week, I met a 21 year old, in his first sales job, who was very professional.
I have met professional sales people who had only a high school degree, and many with college and post-graduate degrees. None of these things, which are external to the sales person’s character, matter.
Now that we’ve eliminated the things that a professional sales person is not, let’s look at the other side and examine the marks of a profession sales person. “Professional” is the name we choose to put on a certain set of character traits and attitudes that reside inside a sales person.
1. A professional sales person is proud to be a sales person.
Can you imagine a doctor who is embarrassed to admit that he is a doctor? Or a nurse who covers up that fact? A teacher who doesn’t want anyone to know what he does for a living? A firefighter ashamed to admit it? A lawyer who pretends to be somebody else? (Well, ok, maybe on this one.)
You see, in every profession, the members of that profession are proud to be a part of it. Amazingly, that is not the case with the majority of sales people. They don’t like to think of themselves as sales people. Instead, they make up other terms. They are account executives, product specialists, customer liaison agents, mobile customer service representatives, to name a few.
On the other hand, the professionals understand the challenging nature of what they do for a living, the importance it has for their families, their companies and the economy as a whole. The work of the average sales person in this nation supports four other families within the organization. They are proud of that and proud to be sales people.
They don’t hide it or apologize for it, they revel in it.
2. A professional sales person likes his job.
Not only are they proud to be sales people, but they like being sales people. They like the freedom and autonomy they have on the job, and they relish the responsibility that comes with that. They thrive on the customer contact, and are energized by the constant challenge. They get a high from closing a big or difficult sale, and aren’t afraid to celebrate those successes.
That doesn’t mean that they relish every aspect of every job. I’ve had a sales manager, for example, that I was embarrassed to introduce to a customer. I’ve sold products that didn’t excite me, and worked for companies whose management styles and cultures left me looking for something else. In all of these negative situations, though, I never disliked what I did.
3. A professional sales person believes he is a professional
He doesn’t see what he does for a living as just a job. He understands that it is one of the most fundamental and important functions, not only in his company, but in the economy in general. He realizes that he touches and influences hundreds, if not thousands, of people, that his work supports and enables a number of other families, and that he represents much of the visible face of the company that employs them. These are serious responsibilities, and the professional sales person understands that to do this well, he must see himself as a professional.
4. A professional sales person continually invests in his own development.
Over the twenty plus years that I have been training sales people, educating sales managers and working to transform sales organizations, I have stumbled upon an observation which bothers me every time I communicate it. It’s this: Out of a group of any 20 sales people, only one has invested $25.00 of his own money on his own development and improvement in the past 12 months.
The non-professional sales people don’t think it’s their responsibility to improve themselves. They won’t buy a book, or attend a seminar without their bosses paying for it and requiring it of them. To them, it’s just a job.
The professionals invest in themselves. Since they see themselves as professionals, they understand that they must constantly and continually “sharpen the saw.” They buy the books, get the newsletters, attend the conferences, listen to the podcasts, etc.
Can you imagine your CPA, as he delivers your tax return, mentioning that he hasn’t spent any time updating himself in years? Or the doctor, as he goes into surgery to work on your spouse or child, off-handedly tossing off the fact that “it’s been years since he bothered to take a class or upgrade his skills.”
These seem like silly examples. But most sales people (95 percent) don’t bother to take the initiative to upgrade their skills and develop their competencies. Only the professionals do.
5. A professional sales person always acts with the best interests of his company and his customer above his own.
There is, resident in the psyche of every professional sales person, an obligation to “serve.” Ultimately, the professional sales person does serve two masters: his customers and his company. A professional understands that the sales he makes are the tangible expressions of win/win solutions for the customer as well as profitable transactions for his company.
The professional will not “push” an inappropriate solution onto a customer, just to make a sale. He’s in it for the long term, understanding that his reputation as a professional is worth far more than any individual deal. “Integrity” is the overriding personality trait, and adherence to a strict code of ethics is the specific expression.
The unprofessional sales person sees his company’s management as, under the worst scenario, the enemy with whom to contend, and under the best, as a somewhat less than competent irritant to be tolerated. The professional understands that he is an employee of the company, and has a responsibility to nurture the company’s interests. He is mindful of his need to provide a return on the company’s investment in him, and seeks continually to increase his profitability to his employer.
6. A professional sales person recognizes a responsibility that is larger than just the job.
A professional sales person, by virtue of the demands of his job, naturally develops exceptional “people” skills. He knows how to get things done, and how to work effectively with a variety of people. These are skills that are helpful in his communities as well as his position. Since he’s a professional, he invests some of his time in the larger community, serving on boards and task forces, coaching the elementary kids, adding his input to PTO meetings, etc. He gives a portion of his income to those less fortunate than himself.
He understands that he is one of the world’s more fortunate individuals and accepts the responsibility to pay it forward. I once heard this expression: “Service is the rent you pay for the position you occupy in society.” Professional sales people occupy a favored position, and accept their responsibility to pay the rent.
A professional sales force is an incredibly valuable asset to any organization, and the acquisition and development of a professional sales force is one of a businesses greatest accomplishments.
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