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Discover 7 common mistakes that derail sales training efforts and what you can do to avoid them.
2. Failure to Build Fluent Sales Knowledge as well as Skills: Most sales training focuses on building sales skills, not building knowledge. Your sellers have to knowand be able to speak fluently aboutyour products and services, the needs you solve, the marketplace, your competition, and more. 3. Failure to Assess and Develop Attributes: Its not enough to give your team the capability to sell; you have to know if the members of your team have the attributes required for top sales performance. With this knowledge, you will learn not only who can sell, but who will sell at a high level, and how to motivate and develop them to reach their potential. 4. Failure to Define, Support, and Drive Action: Even if sellers leave training with increased skills, they often dont know what to do to get the best results. Sales process must dovetail well with training. Organizations should adopt a consistent method of selling in order to raise performance across the board. Coaching that includes goal setting and regular action planning and reviews maximize action. 5. Failure to Deliver Training that Engages: Adults learn by doing. Your training program needs to be engaging, customized, delivered by facilitators participants can respect, and allow opportunities for sellers to practice their newly learned skills. 6. Failure to Make Learning Stick and Transfer: Most sales training is a multi-day event in which sellers learn and practice new skills. Without reinforcement to make the learning stick, most will forget what they learned, how inspired they were, and they will return to old behaviors. 7. Failures of Evaluation, Accountability, and Continuous Improvement: Few companies actually evaluate the effectiveness of their sales training and sales performance in general. Without evaluation, its nearly impossible to hold sellers accountable for changing and improving behavior, or for taking actions and achieving results.
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I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.
- Thomas Jefferson
Healthcare or Entertainment?
While writing our book, Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently (Wiley, 2014), Neil Rackham commented to us how sales training can be compared to two industries: healthcare and entertainment. We hadnt thought of it quite like this, but we certainly see the same thing. When sales training is like healthcare, its purpose is to make something better. For healthcare sales training to succeed, you need the right understanding of the issues, the right treatment plan, and dedication from the healthcare provider and the patient to stick with the plan. When sales training is more like entertainment, its just an enjoyable diversion. It might make an impressionyou might even remember months later how fun it wasbut it doesnt accomplish much beyond that. We recently spoke with a business leader who was planning a half-day sales training program. His desired outcome was transforming a service and delivery team into a proactive sales force tasked with increasing sales to existing accounts by selling new offerings. He communicated to us that success was critical. The future of the company literally hung in the balance.
Under-resourced sales training efforts dont have the horsepower to produce what they need to, and often dont produce much at all.
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Before implementing a sales training program, the companies that succeed are serious about making sure the learning approach is rigorous enough to do its part in producing behavioral change and getting results.
Compared to other firms, 36% more best-in-class5 companies have a strategy for creating targeted individual development plans based on assessment output.6
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Can do
Capability
Skills
and
Knowledge
Without the appropriate sales knowledge, sellers have a difficult time doing the things that top performers do. Some company leaders say to us, Wait. We provide knowledge training. We even hold a retreat each year focused on knowledge topics. Unfortunately, this typically doesnt get the job done. Its often focused only on product or service offerings, which isnt nearly sufficient. With a common death-by-PowerPoint delivery format, sellers dont remember what they heard. Some companies do better than this, requiring sellers to study the content and pass tests for knowledge accuracy. Still, they find their sellers dont weave what they learned into their sales conversations. For sellers to put knowledge to work they dont just need accuracy, they need fluency.
Your sellers need to have expert sales knowledge. They must be able to speak fluently about: + The marketplace + The dynamics of the customers business + Your company and your value proposition + The needs you solve and the difference you make
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SALES PERFORMANCE
BEGINNER
ACCURATE
Training usually stops here
FLUENT
Real revenue opportunity
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Even if your sellers have the skills to ask great questions, its often a lack of knowledge that holds them back from actually putting asking great questions to work for them.
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According to research by Aberdeen Group, 82% of best-in-class companies require Sales Drivers and Detractors sales training, as compared with If the drivers of success arent in place only 68% of laggard companies.9 meaning the person doesnt have, for example,
Figure 3. Right Drivers + Acceptable Level of Detractors = Will Do
You need salespeople who You need the right Key components
passion for work and for selling, performance orientation, sense of urgency, assertiveness, and so onits quite possible the person shouldnt even be in the training at all. Much as you might want your kids to go to medical school, if they failed chemistry and what they want to do is teach art history, medicine rarely works out. If too many detractors are in place, the seller might have capability, but they can still fail.
Can do
Capability
Skills
and
Knowledge
Will do
Attributes
Drivers
and
Detractors
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Call reluctance
Neglect real, incisive inquiry into each persons attributes and sales training initiatives leave the gate with weights tying them down.
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Dissatisfaction/Investigation
Analysis
Intervention
Selection
Contracting
Prospecting
Initial prospect research
Needs Discovery
Opportunity presentation, convincing story delivered
Solution Crafting
Analysis of issue and affliction causes clear Solution crafted Solution is best to solve client need Solution is easy to buy Impact case tightened and clarified Strategy for presenting solution Proposal checklist
Solution Presentation
Resonate: Present compelling solution Resonate: Present Impact and New Reality cases Differentiate: Negate competitor advantages Substantiate and mitigate risk Solicit all feedback
Commitment
Deliver executable agreement Negotiate and refine proposal Gain commitment verbal, written, and public Handoff to implementation team
Plan to penetrate prospect Initial value proposition compelling Outreach to generate appointment Opportunity plan started Continued prospect research Plan for first appointment
Rapport established Aspirations and Afflictions uncovered Overall Impact (ROI case) clear Possible New Reality established Discussion/presentation of possible approaches
Overcome objections
Appointment set
Buying process clear and understood Buyers and buying roles clear All buyers appropriately involved in conversations
Buyer involvement in solution crafting Buyer solution pre-agreement Buyer agrees to specific next step
Dr. Harter further told us, Workplace performance suffers dramatically with those that answer below strongly agree. When sales training helps sellers build and track goals for themselves, it not only erases the problem of sellers knowing whats expected of them, but also maximizes motivation and commitment.14 With action plans, take care not to build them without first focusing on goal setting. Without clear, written goals, action plans arent meaningful to the individual. Without meaning, execution over the long-term suffers. When goals are in place, not only do they have the effect of maximizing action, they can also increase the sellers attributes of passion for
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Key components
Can do
Capability
Skills
and
Knowledge
Will do
Attributes
Drivers
and
Detractors
Process
and
Method
What to do
Action Goals
and
Action Plans
Figure 7. Effective Pre-Training and Training Activities Lead to a Big Bump in Results
During Training Event
100% 90% Program: Engaging On target Well delivered
LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS
70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Program: Not engaging Not on target Confusing
LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS
80%
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LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS
10
12
14
MONTHS
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90% 80%
LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS
With R
ei n
Motivation enhancement Concept reinforcement Complementary learning Action plans and reviews Practice & feedback Technology embedding Expectation reinforcement
NO
i ni n
10
12
14
MONTHS
In fact, Best-in-class companies outpace laggards by nearly a two-times factor in providing post-training reinforcement of the best practices commonly learned in classroomstyle instructor-led sales education sessions. These firms have learned that long-term success depends on underscoring the best practices in sales training deployments17 And the reinforcement makes a difference in results (Fig. 10).
The concept that learning needs to be reinforced wont be much of a news flash for most readers. Still, strong post-training reinforcement is the exception in sales training. For those companies that insert reinforcement that works, it makes a tremendous difference in sales training effectiveness and sales results.
Figure 10. Impact of Reinforcement in 835 Organizations that Recently Employed Sales Training
2.00% 1.00% 0.00% -1.00% -2.00% -3.00% -4.00% -5.00% Team Attainment of Quota Time to Productivity Reps Achieving Quota Sales Turnover Reduction Sales Cycle Reduction Reinforcement Users Non-users of Reinforcement
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Only 9% of organizations evaluate behavioral change and 7% evaluate organizational results stemming from training initiatives.18
Evaluating Sales Has Its Advantages
Those companies that do evaluate sales performance systematically have a number of advantages: + They can measure the effect of sales training and performance improvement initiatives + They can improve sales strategies and rollout successes across the team + They can remove ineffective sales strategies and training components in favor of those working better + They can shorten learning curves, and get new sellers producing faster than before + They can improve continuously The evaluation process itself also has a positive effect on sales results. Customer renewal rates, deal size, team achievement of quota, and seller achievement of quota are all positively impacted by performance management processes.19
RAIN Group | RAINGroup.com
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Without evaluation, accountability, and continuous improvement, sales training and sales performance improvement can never be completely effective.
Can do
Capability
Skills
and
Knowledge
Will do
Attributes
Drivers
and
Detractors
Process
and
Method
What to do
Action Goals
and
Action Plans
Evaluation
Accountability
and
Continuous Improvement
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Innovative Technology
Enabled by our online platform, sellers can access learning, tools, and job-aids 24/7. We can integrate with your LMS (or use ours) and CRM systems.
If you want to implement a sales training program that leads to real behavior change and results, RAIN Group can help. Contact us to learn more about RAIN Sales University and to walk through a demo of a custom RSU environment.
CONTACT US
Phone: 508-405-0438 Email: info@raingroup.com Web: www.raingroup.com
RAIN Group | RAINGroup.com | 17
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Find out more about how RAIN Group can help you unleash the sales potential of your team by visiting RAINGroup.com or calling (508) 405-0438.
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AMERICAS EMEA ASIA-PACIFIC
Connect with Us
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