Tweet

How By Answering These Three Questions Can Dramatically Improve Sales Training

Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: If you only had 3 questions to answer to improve sales training. what would they be?

How By Answering These Three Questions Can Dramatically Improve Sales Training

According to American Society of Training & Development (ASTD), in 2007 U.S. business invested over $134.39 billion dollars in training. This equates to almost $1,500 per employee.

Yet this same organization and many others who research the benefits of training and development continue to suggest that training delivers less than 5% positive results to the bottom line. In other words, most training becomes a liability, a cost instead of being an actual investment.

Sales training programs are no exception. Research within those who are involved in selling suggests that up to 50% of all leads are not followed up. Additionally, 90% of all sales professionals make no more than four contacts with a potential customer even though 80% of all sales are earned between the fifth and twelfth contacts. Most sales managers to CEO to even those who deliver training when questioned about this research would eventually have to admit the rationale for existing learning needs to be re-examined.

So this leads to answering these three critical questions:

1. What is the real problem poor sales skills or something else?
2. What results do you want this learning experience to deliver?
3. How much emphasis do you place on sales skills when the obstacle to success is existing behaviors (attitudes and habits)?

Many times in organizations confuse symptoms with problems. For example, training is recommended because of poor customer retention or similar poor sales skills. The real problem may be other departments within the organization and not necessarily the sales team.

Identifying the desired results up front seems like everyday common sense. However, from my experiences in working with my continuous business process improvement and sales coaching clients this is not necessarily true. Also, the results should be measurable so that they can be easily tracked. If the result is to increase the number of sales with an existing client, then both the number and the value along with the profitability of those results need to be tracked along with the sales professional’s time to achieve this goal.

Finally, existing curriculum within the Human Resource or any proposed sales training problem needs to include attitude and habit development. To improve attitudes and establish sustainable habits begins with infusing a proven goal achievement process into the existing sales and marketing plans. Performance assessments probably also need to be part of the answer to this question as well as reviewing exit interviews of past employees.

By answering these three questions, you can improve sales training programs and deliver a positive return on investment. Remember training, learning or professional development (whatever you call it) needs to be always considered an investment and not a cost if your organization or even yourself truly wishes to achieve the goal to increase sales.

Related Articles
  Being Politically Correct Can Cost You Sales
  Answering Service Employment Opportunities
  Who Is Answering Your Phones? A Look At Answering Service Staff
  Closing Sales Is Not A Problem, It\'s A Process
  A Call Answering Service Helps Your Business

Article Tags: amp, astd, attitudes, billion dollars, bottom line, business process improvement, ceo, common sense, continuous business, critical questions, customer retention, desired results, learning experience, li li, nbsp, obstacle, poor customer, rationale, sales managers, sales professionals



Related Forum Posts
7 words or less for Structogram - Some "7 words or less" (more or less) for Structogram for your comments: Training to get your message across(6) Secrets to get your message across (6) Training so people will listen to you (7) Helping you get your message across (6) Training to learn to get your message across (8) Communications training for yourself and your team (7)
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Budget. - I believe the biggest barrier is related to budget. Training tends to be a normal practice for a big company. But I have to consider it seriously as an entrepreneur.
Re: What I Enjoyed Reading This Week - Oct 14 - I really enjoyed the Improve your vision with an app article in the New Scientist. I don't wear glasses and think a lot of people cripple their vision by wearing specs from an early age instead of exercising their eyes... Nice to see someone has developed an ap that will help.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Making the Most of Your Trade Show Experience

What Makes an Extraordinary Business Consultant?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.