Making Sense from Your Sales Training Dollars

Gary Schwartz

Sales organizations, almost universally, believe that sales training is a critical lever in driving sales performance and yet so few organizations have devised an effective training continuum.  Logic would indicate that if you 1) believe that something is critical to your success and 2) understand that your current system is flawed, you would dedicate the appropriate amount of time and resources to remedy the situation.  All too often, this logic goes unheeded.

It is a given that companies need to train their sales professionals – doing so costs money.  The question really is: what are you getting for your sales training dollars?  Too many are simply throwing money down a very deep, very dark hole.

Where are they missing the boat?  85 percent of material discussed in a ‘learning event’ is lost within 6 months.  So the information from your last “Sales Kick-off” is pretty much gone – along with the investment you made to bring that powerful speaker.

There’s no doubt that today’s sales reps need to spend a great deal more time honing their craft. That said, how does skill training fit into the sales process – is there a sales process?  How are the lessons reinforced? Most organizations rely on the sales managers to deliver this training; after all the job of the sales manager is rep development.  The difficulty lies in the fact that skill training is opportunity specific.  In other words, the sales manager has to physically be on the sales call to provide evaluation and feedback to fully develop the skill.  Sure, role-play is an option but there is no disputing the value of real world experience.

Lets face facts: no sales manager can be on every sales call.  To effectively drive skill development, you must have a repeatable sales process with programmed coaching opportunities.  Without the post training coaching, reinforcement on a consistent basis is impossible.  The coaching session allows a sales manager to influence multiple accounts within the span of an hour while focusing on skill development and knowledge transfer.  Further, metrics should be applied to identify areas for future skill improvement.

The next challenge we must tackle is knowledge retention.  Again, without retention mechanisms, 85 percent of training material is forgotten within 6 months. Think about the last rep you sent to a workshop.  When he returned, how was the learned material put in practice?  How did the manager reinforce what she was not there to learn?  The expression “use it or lose it” could not be more true in this circumstance.  Did the course material get filed away in the cube or was it put to use on a consistent basis?

What does “good” look like for a retention mechanism?  Back to the “use it or lose it” scenario, learned material must stay at the forefront of thought rather than the back corner of the desk in the cube.  Consistent communication of concepts is key to knowledge retention.  E-mail is an effective tool to keep concepts ‘top of mind’.  Webinars and similar technology also make it easy and cost effective to provide refreshers or group discussions to keep material fresh and relevant.  The bottom line is communication needs to be constant and in varied formats to drive retention.

The final piece to the puzzle is the trickiest of all—corporate culture.  If you have a larger sales organization with multiple sales teams the challenge can be daunting.  Getting all the teams moving on a consistent path is tough.  One bad banana can certainly spoil the bunch. If you fail to gain adoption on one team all the other teams will eventually check out. Executive sponsorship is critical.  Consistency is key.  Sales organizations are conditioned to the ‘flavor of the month’ – programs that come and go like the wind.  On average, full adoption takes 4-6 months of consistency for a procedure to become engrained in the corporate culture.

Turning your training dollars into revenue and commission dollars takes focus to the process, knowledge retention, and most importantly adoption into your culture.  Look at your current training investment, whether it is time spent by your employees or money spent in workshops and off-sites.  Are you getting a return on your training dollar?  Does your training dollar make sense or cents?

About the Author: Gary Schwartz is a sales consultant with Strategy Development and has over 14 years of broad-based experience in the business technology and outsourcing space. Gary was a senior manager with IKON Office Solutions, and later RICOH in sales, finance, and operational roles. In his first year as area director of sales, Gary led a sales force of 7 managers and 60 reps to 18 percent revenue growth with a focus to sales process and employee development. As a Strategic Account Sales Manager, Gary was charged with driving IKON’s MDS and Managed Services business. Gary began his tenure with IKON as an Area Director of Financial Operations. In addition to his expertise in sales process and leadership, Gary is well versed in the financial, leasing and marketing aspects of the business. Schwartz graduated with a BSBA from the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.