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Sales Performance Help
- Achieving Tri-Dimensional Customer Interface Excellence
- Five Steps to Get Your Sales Team Un-Stuck Now
- Getting a Return on Your Sales Training Investment
- Partnering – All Talk, Few Walk
- Re-focus, Don’t Re-Forecast
- Sustaining Jump-Start Initiatives – The Four Keys to Success
- The Bottom-Line on Referrals – Turning Your Strategy Into Success
- The Key to Leading Sales Growth
- Training – A Lost Opportunity
- Value Positioning – Needed Now More Than Ever
- You Promised What?
Training – A Lost Opportunity
The other day we were conducting a salesperson development session on saleable product knowledge. It was an eager group of participants. They were working hard at trying to find a way to be better in their jobs - a way to go beyond their professional performance norms. At the end of class, it was suggested to the graduates they return to their sales job and demand a sit down meeting with their manager and ask for help in applying what they learned. It struck us odd that we felt the need to encourage this behavior. Every manager should want to find out what was learned while his/her salesperson attended training. More significantly, one would believe it would be important to make sure that the time invested in training is leveraged into improved performance and that anything the manager could do to help would be offered. But reality is, this seldom happens.
Why don't sales managers follow up and follow through on meetings and training their people have attended? Is it because they are too busy? Is it because they are sending people to mandatory meetings and training not believed to be relevant? Perhaps it is because they feel it is someone else's job. Maybe it is because they feel attendees learned what was supposed to be learned and have put it into action on their own. Whatever the reason, often a return on investment is tragically wasted.
It is not difficult to help salespeople put into action what was learned at meetings and training. Any sales manager interested in finding ways to drive salesperson behavioral and performance growth can make it happen. Here are a few ideas that work:
- Know why you are sending someone to a meeting or training and the session's objectives.
- Discuss the session's objectives and your learning expectations with the attendee before he/she attends the session.
- Have the attendee give you a quick summary of what is being learned while they are in the session. A quick email or voice mail works.
- When the salesperson returns, schedule a brief meeting and find out what was learned and how it will be applied on the job ASAP.
- Ask the salesperson how you can best help reinforce what was learned and get it applied in the sales assignment. Agree on an approach and make sure it happens.
- During each salesperson's encounter ask how the learning is being applied. Recognize the effort if it is being used. If it is not being put into action, challenge that behavior and restate the expectation. Make sure to emphasize the lost return on investment.
- Have the salesperson give a brief report to the rest of the sales team on what was learned at the session, how it is going to be used, and why it may benefit them.
- Suggest the trainer or individual that ran the meeting follows up with your salesperson and inquires about how the learned information is being applied on the job.
- Ask your boss to ask your salesperson how the learning is being used in the sales assignment.
These are just a few ideas that can turn a lost opportunity into a productive outcome. Remember that it is the sales manager's job to ensure salesperson development. A key to developing salespeople is to catch them doing something right. Never waste an opportunity to capitalize on learning that is provided by others. There is a saying that captures the risk of not following up and following through on meetings and training. "Good thoughts in one's head not delivered mean squat." Drive applied learning - turn thoughts into action.