Here are the minimum sales management elements that must be integrated together for a company to come anywhere close to condition 100% of their sales people to apply 100% of the training:
1. Customized Training. Any training offered must be specific to your company’s products or services, your industry, your prospective customers’ needs, and your selling methodology. Additionally, it should address weaknesses that have been identified in your specific sales force. Is your training an isolated event or is it integrated into your sales management system? Generic training can’t raise all your sales people’s performance consistently and build a foundation to sustain those increases.
Further, does your training teach your salespeople how prospects and customers actually think out a decision to buy? Do they know what really affects them? Do they know what turns them off? Do they know how prospects figure out their perceptions of value which affect their level of price resistance? There is new information about how people think out their decisions and what affects them during the sales process your salespeople need to know if they are going to consistently win against the competition.
2. Follow Up Training. Multiple training sessions on the same subject matter provides sales people with clarification of those parts of the training that are fuzzy or not working for them in the field. Usually, there needs to be at least two follow up training programs to provide sufficient clarification and review. These programs also tell the sales people that what was covered in the original training is important. It helps reinforce the message that they do need to learn this and apply it.
3. Communications and Coaching. Daily communications and regular field coaching by management needs to emphasize what was covered in the training. Every phone conversation, email and in-person contact with sales people must reinforce the training. This often involves asking sales people questions about what is going on with their most recent sales calls where the answers require knowledge and application of the training. When sales people know this is what their sales manager is going to ask them about, they will make sure they are up to speed the next time they talk.
Coaching also delivers in-the-field training to further clarify what they learned and see how to apply it with real prospects. Finally, coaching provides immediate feedback on how well they are applying the training and goals for what they need to improve at. There is no way to condition sales people to apply training without this level of management involvement.
4. Measurement. There must be a way of measuring sales activity and results that can be tied to what was trained. Measurement tells sales people the training is important and connects their clarity at applying the training to feedback about how well they are doing.
5. Sales Meetings. Every sales meeting must have time allocated to discuss how the training is being applied. It is important for sales people to have an opportunity to talk about their experiences, hear success stories from other sales people, and identify areas that have proved challenging. Sales management needs to listen carefully so they can provide the necessary additional training and clarification that will move sales people toward conditioned application.
6. CRM and Reports. Elements of the training should be built into the CRM and other technology solutions as well as sales reports.
7. Evaluation. Sales people should be surveyed about their experiences applying the training so common issues can be identified and presented in follow-up training. This will also help improve future training.
8. Compensation. Sales people must see a strong connection between their compensation and their own efforts. If their sales go up as a result of applying the training, their compensation should rise as well. This direct connection between their actions and their pay is a critical element in the feedback loop that reinforces the training.
9. Sales Contest. A sales contest that is connected to new measurements tied to the training further reinforces the importance of applying what was learned by introducing competition and excitement. Sales contests that are not connected to any management initiatives have little long-term impact. Contests should always be seen as one part of an integrated effort to raise sales performance.
10. Cascading Reinforcement. It’s not just the sales people that need reinforcement. For sales management to consistently and frequently reinforce the sales force, management needs their actions reinforced as well. Someone needs to be reminding them to do all these reinforcement tasks, clarify how to do these tasks, address issues that come up, handle frustrations, and provide feedback. Otherwise, management will get side tracked by the next quarterly quota push and stop their reinforcement activities.
Sales management, by its very nature, tends to focus on tactical short-term activities instead of strategic long term initiatives. Sales management teams need frequent reinforcement to counter this tendency. This is called “cascading reinforcement” meaning that each level in an organization needs to reinforce the next level. That’s the difference between an organization functioning as a system versus a group of unconnected parts and pieces. Yes, even the Vice President of Sales needs reinforcement.
11. Time. This entire process using all these elements needs to continue for many months, usually six months at a minimum, to lay a strong foundation. Then it needs to continue with more reinforcement along with additional training. Any company that can stick with a systems approach to training for at least a year will probably beat their annual sales budget by a wide margin. Turning training into conditioned behaviors in the field takes time. It takes time to clarify everything so sales people have no gaps in understanding every part of the training and how to apply it with prospects. It takes time to repeat behaviors after the task are ultra clear before they become habits. And once they are habits, they still need constant reinforcement to remain habits.
These eleven sales management elements are only a minimum. In some cases, more will need to be built into the system. In other cases, issues that frustrate sales people or things that create a lack of clarity about their job need to be addressed so these don’t work against the training. For example, if sales people are complaining about the poor quality of leads or their territory has not been focused in a useful way, they are not going to be motivated to learn new selling approaches.
When the sales force’s job is clear and they see a connection between their effort and results, they will be highly motivated to learn and apply something new because they can see how the training will help them to sell even more. When sales people lack task clarity, any effort to boost sales will be short lived.
Notice that each of the eleven elements is not treated as a separate, unrelated task or support piece. Each one is linked to the training and they are all tied together so you have multiple ways that you are reinforcing the training. Feedback, measurement, and compensation are included in the elements as well as several different ways to clarify the training. This sends a clear and constant message to the sales force that they are expected to apply this training and the company will help them any way needed to make this happen.
This is just one example of a systems thinking approach to managing your sales force. In truth, everything sales management does needs to be integrated into a system so that each element and task enhance and support all the others. When you manage your sales force as a system, the sum of all the parts will be greater than the whole and that’s when your sales go through the roof.
