Sales Training is one of the most effective ways of maintaining a motivated and results oriented team of sales professionals. However, sales professional training is also known to have an impact for only up to 90 days, or for one quarter of the year.
For sales training to be effective, measurable against results, in today’s economy, it has to be ongoing and consistently re-enforced. The more ongoing and consistent it is, the better the results and the better the return on training investment (R.O.T.I.).
Sales professional training is not CNFN product, service or company information training. That is product knowledge training, which is necessary but needs to be properly positioned in the entire training process.
Sales training on a sales process will prevent sales people from talking too much about what they know, when they should be demonstrating empathetic listening.
Sales training on a sales process will allow sales people to do their job more effectively by first building trust, setting parameters, qualifying opportunities and summarizing.
Only after qualifying and summarizing would they know if there is an opportunity for their products and services and if so, they can then reveal what they know in the form of a prescription.
Sales professional training is available in many different formats depending on size of sales force, sales targets, management objectives, participant needs, time allocations, budget, R.O.T.I., etc.
For a small sales force with a limited budget, sales training can be from simply providing each sales professional with a book, audio, video or online program on sales.
The main messages should be presented, discussed and re-enforced at each weekly sales meeting. This is basic, but still important training to keep the team motivated and learning new techniques in today’s uncertain economy.
Sales training can also be in the form a keynote address or workshop at a sales conference or public sales event. These are also great training opportunities to network and to learn different or new sales techniques.
However, these sorts of training need to be followed up on with a debrief and sharing of lessons learned. Those lessons learned then need to be implemented, monitored and discussed on an ongoing basis to be effective.
However, attendance at these sort of training events needs to be ongoing, at least quarterly, to be effective, and sales management also needs to get involved in them.
Then there is the ultimate of sales training based on partnering program with a reputable salespeople training organization. This is where an in house, customized on going sales and sales management training program is developed and adopted by the organization as their complete salespeople training program.
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