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Train the Trainer

Guest post by: Tim Hagen

Article Overview: Sales training is important. If trainers want to increase their customer then they need to be involved and increase training reinforcement. The sales training tips can help you build your customer base and increase your sales.

Train the Trainer

When the term “sales” is mentioned, the words “credible,” “trustworthy” and “customer-focused” don’t immediately come to mind. Most people tend to believe that sales people are simply in it for themselves, and once they somehow trick you into buying, they will disappear and move on to the next potential customer. Nobody wants that to be the case when they purchase a product or service. They would rather spend their money with someone who is going to stick around and make sure that their needs are satisfied and there are no problems. That is what builds credibility and a solid customer base.

Sales trainers should take note of this because the companies that hire them typically hold the same mentality. It does not benefit anyone to receive sales training every once in a while with no follow-up. When businesses invest in a consultant, speaker or trainer, they expect to see results, and this is not possible without training reinforcement.

If trainers want to build up their own customer base, then they need to focus on their current clients. They need to be involved from start to finish. After training sessions, speakers should send out reinforcement tools that encourage sales people to implement the new techniques. Employee coaching is hard but getting them to use what they learned is even harder.

Sales trainers can also work with managers to make sure that they are equally involved when the trainer cannot be. Create a follow-up guide that managers can go along with to ensure learning. Provide them with a list of activities and programs that will help employees be successful. One of the biggest steps that consultants can take is to create a sales assessment tool, something that will measure awareness and profitability. For example, at Sales Progress, we send out learning tracks after training sessions. These tracks give employees activities to do, and they allow managers to see the actual effects of each session.

If you want to build any business, you need to make sure that you are there for the long haul. Having a relationship with your clients is one of the most effective ways to make sure that business will grow.

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Article Tags: results, sales training, training reinforcement



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Re: Feedback on a New Company Name - [quote="litekepr":1krjv27f]Not talking about a domain name. The sites I use to promote the tour business are already established. The idea is to have a name which includes what I do with that division of my business - it needs to be more personalized and professional instead just saying I'm Nikki and I coordinate tours. The SEO stuff is being taken care of on sites and blogs and other avenues. Anyway, I'm getting a lot of great feedback about the name and the search engines bringing up new posts and many older posts by me and about me that all point to my sites. Interesting perk I hadn't thought about. Shri[/quote:1krjv27f] Hi Shri, While I kind of see where you're coming from... but if the name is too long or descriptive, chances are it won't be very catchy or easy to remember. For instance, there's a company in Toronto called "BizLaunch" and their tagline used to be "We Train Entrepreneurs" (so that people would immediately understand what their business and website does). I think they've now changed their tagline to "Where entrepreneurs start", but the point is that "BizLaunch" sounds a million times better than if they had named their business "We Train Entrepreneuers". I think with some work, you could easily brand the name of your business (whatever you end up choosing) with the nature of its activities.
A good screening process for new hires - Another good screening method is the one McDonalds uses for its new employees. Applicants are subjected to two interviews (i.e. the first one by an assistant manager and the second by the store manager) and they have a "Crew Trainer" work with them for his/her first 3 shifts, each one being only 3 hours in duration. And at the end of the training period, an evaluation is done on the new hire and if he/she passes, there's a 6 month probation period before he/she is considered an "official" employee with full benefits (e.g. granted an employee card that allows them to get 50% off their meals at any McDonalds store location). And during the probation period, new hires are evaluated multiple times by various senior staff members (to ensure there's no biased performance reviews).


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