It is easy & quick to dish-out some training sessions for Sales Teams. Most of such Sales trainings don’t really achieve anything other than a tick mark (✔✔✔✔✔✔✔) on the to-do calendar of an indiscriminate plan to just do something of an action plan!
Here are 3 hard-to-digest realities of Sales Training, for any High-Value-Sales Engine :
1. There is very little absorption/adoption from generally dispensing Sales Training modules with catch-all objectives, at groups – nice sounding on a helicopter level report, but ineffective to anyone in particular!
2. Identification of what each person requires to deliver on High-Value-Sales, is 'individual' - in practice and NOT the same from one to another, in how it is taken ahead. Preparing individuals/teams to reach a threshold of adoption & increased efficiency of deploying such development programs is critical in the roadmap to Sales Success. Oh, how you wish it was as simple as a how-to-assemble leaflet for tables from IKEA!
3. Building tolerance to TRIALS & resultant errors by Salespersons & Sales Managers in selling cycles of the Sales Engine – is the TOP learning mechanism for any Sales Engine. And, consequently – that decides a key result area for Sales Leaders & Sales Management practices of an evolving Sales Engine! Hence, you are able to NOT leave Customer outcomes to the mercy of such training/learning/growth by Salespersons… Yet, all such learning necessities are managed productively - to ensure Sales Engine Training is effective without throttling the inevitable boiling broth in your business cauldron!
(pardon the inadvertent alliteration, once again!)
Developing training agenda/calendars with the standardised packages of Sales Training offerings, is all too often a perfunctory exercise in cosmetic bandages. The road to making meaningful investments in learning & development for Salespersons is NOT a walk in the park of low hanging goodies - strewn around, which sticks onto you, without a deliberate effort. It takes more than just desire and passive presence in a meeting/class room. If there are NO consequences to learning, there is very little ingestion through its course!
SANJAYA HASTHAK
(SBS Dimensions – India)