Effective Sales Training Techniques for Success

Top Training Techniques

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 1 Executive Fly-By Emerging Practice Cure: Have execs stay for part or all of the training. By all means, schedule executive(s) into speaking time slots. But, make sure they are involved in more than just a 60-minute rah rah. Have them participate in training sessions as a learner. Or, have them actually be guest instructors on a portion of the training. Have them work the exercises alongside the sales personnel. Put them on a panel for a question and answer session. Ensure they have some unstructured timeframes (dinners, fun events, happy hours). This is where they will mingle with the sales force informally. They'll be able to hear perspective not always heard in the halls of the C-suite. We assume that the CSO or CRO will be present most of the time. The sales crew gets to see leadership "walking the walk" from day one. Getting your sales force together for a training event can be expensive. Many companies opt to do so during Sales Kick Off. Having your sales reps in one place is a great opportunity to encourage them. Having company executives speak at these events is a must-do. It is part of managing the change of culture: high-level communication and visible commitment. However, many executive(s) fly in for a 1 hour keynote and then split. This runs the risk of demoralizing the team or setting a bad precedent. The sales force sees lip service only. They then think it's not so important, or "it will pass". They don't commit, but use the event instead as a "vacation" from daily work. Recommendation: For 4 days of training, the executive(s) should plan on 1 day minimum. This can be a half-day afternoon, overnight, and a half-day morning. Plan to debrief with the executive(s) for their improvement suggestions.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 2 Off-the-shelf Courseware Emerging Practice Cure: Customization coupled with real-world pilot testing. The concepts are much more easily grasped when context is built in. For example, if instructing on negotiation skills, customized courseware uses the company's terminology. If they use BAFO, BANT, BATNA, or all three, it is in the training. Internal processes, titles, product/offering names, even names of leaders are in the customization. For sales process training, the steps are named what makes sense to that company. Sales manager training customization can refer directly to the CRM dashboard name. All of this makes it more familiar and friendly to the audience. But customization only goes so far you have to avoid foreign instructors . Recommendation: Customize not only content, but the choice of modules to instruct. Use the "off menu" approach. This is what I do in a restaurant: I look to see what ingredients they have by reading all their entree descriptions. I then cobble together a meal using their available components. Do the same with your sales training provider. Ensure they have multiple components of training materials. Then pick those that your sales force needs most and have them customized. Include sales-useful tools/job aids within the training content. This option is actually OK - if all you want is generic sales concepts for your sales force. With generic content, Reps might be able to apply it to their environments. They might have the time to do so. They might try to apply the concepts a few times. If they fail, it's back to their comfortable methods. They might all be trying to figure it out independently. They might even have time to share their successes with their fellow Reps. What's missing from the generic concepts is the real world context. The concepts are taught, but not totally grasped. Why? They aren't wrapped in company-specific context. Sure, instructors can ask for company stories/scenarios and share these. But, this level of story does not become ingrained in the content.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 3 Foreign Instructors Emerging Practice Cure: Use your sales force as instructors. Leverage Sales Managers and Sales Reps to do the teaching. It may not be as polished as professional trainers, but it is more impactful. For one thing, they will have the context and real-life stories. This makes the content come alive. Hopefully, you've had these instructors piloting the materials before training day - a part of this emerging practice. This gives them the real-life stories about how they applied concepts. The trainees get not only concepts with context, but how to apply them. Recommendation: Choose a team of Reps + Sales Managers, maybe even some sales directors/VPs. They should be assessed for training and storytelling capabilities. They don't have to be perfect trainers. But, they'll need to be able to hold an audience's attention. Train the concepts to them in a train-the-trainer manner. After this, set them off on a pilot to use the concepts. During the pilot, they'll also provide feedback on how to best customize/improve content. Again, part of this customization is the context they experience through the pilot. Ensure professional instructors or the OD team participates in training as backups or some other role. If you get your content customized with your context, don't follow with this mistake. Instructors that are not from your company will also lack context. The instructor has not dealt with your sales force. They have not had to take the brunt of a Sales Manager's criticism. They haven't had to navigate your company's internal sales processes. They have not fretted about a shrinking pipeline. So, they lack the logistical and emotional context that your sales force knows. We even go so far as to say company instructors not from sales are 'foreigners'. Sure, in both cases the instructor may have shadowed a sales rep or manager. But that context is not as deep as a Rep agonizing over a lost deal.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 4 Virtual-only Training Emerging Practice Cure: Have a balance of virtual and in-person training. There is tremendous benefit in bringing sales personnel together, even if it is expensive. We ve seen over and over a benefit accrue of best practices being shared and stronger relationships being formed. The in-person group togetherness also galvanizes teams so that they don t feel isolated or alone with challenges. It also gives Corporate a chance to communicate messages to the sales force, get feedback from them, have brainstorming sessions with them, or even replace or update technology. Recommendation: Plan on having at least one in-person training event each year for the complete sales force. This can be tied to Sales Kickoff or separate. For large geographic regions, consider staging multi-regional events which reduces cost, but still allows for team building and best practice sharing. Plan for more frequent virtual training which can be self-service AND live. When using virtual training, make video usage mandatory (reduces multi-tasking) or use software that monitors screen attention. We see some companies move to virtual-only training. The thought is to save the expense of flying everyone to one (or a few) locations. This can be a mistake. There are issues with virtually-led sessions including lack of attention. This may be because of multi-tasking . Also, virtual training lacks the element of real-time audience feedback. Being in the room with people gives the instructor a feeling for how content is being received. This isn t completely possible via virtual-only training. The biggest downside to virtual-only is the missed opportunity for sales personnel to come together. A lost chance to build stronger relationships and share best practices. To help each other work through challenges.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 5 One-and-done Training Event Emerging Practice Cure: Implement training event pre-work and post-event reinforcement. Send out invitations to the event with notice that pre-work will be required for the training event. Have frequent communications and even a Q&A session about it in the weeks before the event. Leverage the pre-work within the training event. After the event, make sure there will be frequent reinforcement sessions. These can be virtual. They will take the concepts from the in-person training event and break them down into weekly/bi-weekly/monthly digestible chunks. Recommendation: Lay out the training calendar by starting with the in-person event date, then backing up to provide enough time for participant pre-work. Ensure the training materials are related to the pre-work and will leverage use of the pre-work in the event (whether during lecture or hands- on exercises.) After the event, lay out a calendar of frequent reinforcement sessions. Include preparation and post-session action items. Make sure the action items are measureable and drive the desired behaviors as learned in the training event. Consider gamifying the pre-work, event, and post- event reinforcement action items. Holding an in-person or virtual training event is a big undertaking. But from the trainee perspective, they may not perceive value in it. They feel it is an interruption. They don t feel connected to the training. They show up and wonder what relevance the training will have for them. They sit through the 1 to 5 days of training, get a printed manual or electronic document of the materials. Yeah, it was great being with all of their colleagues for a few days. But now their best intentions to use the concepts are lost back in the daily grind. The weeks roll by and they pick up the materials again, but forget how the tools should be used. They can t find the answer in the materials and don t have time to contact someone for help. So, they set it aside hoping to get to it sometime in the future. They wonder if anyone else is using these concepts for gain.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 6 Lecture-heavy content Emerging Practice Cure: Carefully plan a sufficient variety of exercises within training. Exercises should leverage real-world scenarios ones that were encountered during the piloting of the concepts by the instruction team. The types of exercises should not be the same kinds over and over. Instead, prepare a variety of exercises that includes role-plays, scenario + essay, live-fire exercises (where teams brainstorm a real sales challenge), using a learned tool within an exercise. For example, if one tool is for grading a social profile, actually use this tool within an exercise to bring the content home. Content should also include rich media, not just slide-uments. Recommendation: Gamification works well for exercises. Set up your game to reward for exercise participation and results. When designing the courseware, ensure enough exercises are set for each day of training at least 3 per day. The exercises can be as short as 10 minutes or as long as a couple hours. If possible, start the training session with a true exercise on the concepts (not just an icebreaker.) Try to get participants mingling through exercises that call for changing teams or partners. Use on-hand executives in exercises. Lecture-heavy refers to instructional material that has less than 3 exercises in an 8-hour day of training. It also is content that leans more toward concept than including stories and scenarios (context). This sort of content is also not well adopted after the training. Whether in-person or virtual, training that is lecture-heavy will have low success rates. Even with stories and scenarios (which help in the grasping of concepts), the learners won t get as much out of it without exercises. Having to sit through non-professional instructors (you ARE using your sales force as instructors, correct?) ramble on causes participants to check out.

Top Training Techniques Tool Page 7 Ignoring the CRM component Emerging Practice Cure: Training materials may be great at teaching sales personnel about concepts. It helps them to be better sales reps or managers with sales skills. However, the CRM or Sales Force Automation tools are integral to an effective sales force. Not integrating learning with CRM pieces does 2 things: 1) reduces the importance your company has on CRM usage; 2) causes Sales personnel to stumble after training when trying to marry concepts with daily sales life. Instruct on how the CRM will use taught concepts. Either add a separate module of training that brings everyone through CRM integration of the concepts or ensure a piece of each training module talks about CRM usage. This will help Sales personnel better assimilate concepts (because they have to use them in a practical manner). Also, it gives the instruction team a chance to see who needs additional CRM training and of what sort. Recommendation: Consider demanding that all participants have their computer at training events. Design content that walks learners through a scenario that moves from real life to the necessary CRM tasks. Have participants go through exercises that puts them into the CRM. You ll probably want to set up a training area of your CRM, or at least have everyone use a naming convention that makes it easy to erase this false training content at a later time. For example, let s say a training concept teaches Sales Reps about a new concept like the buyer s process. However, the training did NOT include how the buyer s process is embedded in the CRM. When the Rep tries to enter an opportunity at the right buyer stage, they can t figure out how it works in the CRM.