One of the many questions we get asked a lot, and often from sales leaders and learning and development experts, is:
How do we make sure the skills gained in the sales training are applied to drive long term results?
According to Gartner research, B2B salespeople forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training.
And moreover, 87% will forget it within a month.
SO, HOW CAN SKILLS BE RETAINED?
The answer is not to avoid sales training altogether.
No, that would be most ridiculous and detrimental to the performance of your team.
Because in doing so you risk underskilled salespeople staying on in your organisation.
But even more damaging, is you also risk losing valuable people because they are not being developed to their full potential.
So what is the answer? How do we make sure skills gained in the sales training are applied?
Well, it’s DB-DD-MA. Define Before, Development During, Measurement After.
1. DEFINE BEFORE
Before you embark on sales training for your team, begin by actively involving each person in their learning development.
That means defining exactly where their challenges are and how the training will benefit the growth of both them professionally and the organisation.
This is an important step because if you have not defined the expectations of your training program then how do you expect to hold your people accountable? Tell everyone who is going on the training. Clearly define outcomes.
Complete an Analysis of the Skills of Your Existing Sales Team
Next, complete an analysis of the skills of your existing sales team. Good training organisations will offer this as part of their discovery sessions.
Involve your Sales Leaders! These valuable team players are so important in making this work.
It is your sales leaders and managers who will play the biggest part in embedding the learnings from the training and making it last the long term.
2. DEVELOPMENT DURING
There are plenty of sales training techniques and sales methodologies to learn to sharpen the skills of your sales team, all the way to managers and executives.
But here are a few additional thoughts to consider during training sessions.
- Teach your people how to give and receive feedback on the training and their learning ability
- Get everyone to commit to the next steps, that is what they will do next with the information they have learned
- Instill a value of note taking and instant knowledge application
- And the biggest win! As a Sales Leader – be at the training as well. From our feedback of salespeople, nothing says ‘this isn’t that important’ to your team more than if their Leader is ‘too busy to attend. It’s also a massively missed opportunity on your behalf to see first-hand the team in a different setting to the day-to-day grind.
3. MEASUREMENT AFTER
Once training is over, have your sales managers track the follow-up commitments made by their team. Here is how.
Coaching, Coaching, and More Coaching
At the start, you defined the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact.
Stay true to this effort and see the process through. Now is the time to double down on coaching activities around those competencies.
This is where you get the value from the training. Set out coaching objectives based on the training for the sales leaders and their teams and make sure they adhere to it. This must be treated as a priority discussion point in your weekly meetings.
Follow-Up
Plan a follow-up internal communication campaign.
That includes highlighting areas of best practice and who’s doing well implementing their new skills.
Also, note the stories of achievement using the new learnings.
Visualise the Learnings
Part of keeping your training alive, we encourage sales managers and their teams to do a video replay of what they’ve learned.
This has proven so successful and is much more beneficial that than a ‘test’ to ensure the knowledge is embedded.
Record their learning takeaways and have their managers take note on areas they need to focus on in follow up coaching.
Additionally, make sure you maintain their active involvement in the learning process.
That means have each salesperson also include their plan in how they are implementing the new knowledge.
This embeds the learnings and is crucial for accountability.
Peer Support
Continuing from the point on active involvement, give your sales teams an opportunity to be heard.
Peer support learning is a strong way to embed and reinforce new ideas.
If a new win was influenced by what was taught in training, have the salesperson write up an internal brief using the terminology.
Share the knowledge and the rewards.
Book your Sales Team on their Value Sales Training Workshop. Gather the team and we will take care of the rest.
Call us at KONA on 1300 611 288 for a conversation, or email info@kona.com.au anytime.
When you make a sale to your customer for the first time, get it right!
First impressions are crucial if you want them to buy from you again. And by getting it right, we don’t just mean the product or service.
With every first-time customer, make sure every detail, even the minute ones, are handled as professionally as possible.
This may seem straightforward and obvious, but surprisingly, for many organsisations it is not.
Many businesses put all their focus and investments into pre-sale. And consequently, they do not spend any time or money on ensuring the customer is happy after they purchase from them.
It is crucial to treat each communication – be it pre or post-sale – as urgent. Aim to respond on the same day the inquiry came in.
If you have staff handling after-sales for you, give them clear deadlines for responses. Brief them on all your products and services, so they can give the customer accurate information about your value offerings.
Once again, this might be a given, but we have had so many organisations explain to us how it’s too hard to keep track of all their customers. And that their salespeople don’t know how to use their CRM system or navigate the software they have invested in.
As a first step, teach your team to create a contact book for all their customers. It should include:
Every existing customer has untold potential
In a time of globalised business and instant digital connection, every existing customer has untold potential on offer.
Deliver a standard customer experience
This means delivering a standout customer experience is essential. One of the most powerful ways of doing this is by creating a personalised sales process and approach.
Show the customer you care, this is the key factor. Personalisation is all about demonstrating you’ve taken the time to understand who the customer is as an individual and the challenges they face. And the benefits are bountiful, including:
The more visible you are in your industry, the more people will trust you. And consequently, the more likely you are to increase repeat business.
We know that to convert potential buyers to loyal customers with increased repeat business, we must build relationships and stay in touch. And although we know we should follow-up many salespeople simply do not.
