87% of the content that is covered in a face-to-face training session is forgotten within 30 days if it is not effectively followed up, reinforced and embedded into the day to day workings of the salesperson.
Combined with the fact that the top 20% of performers in any B2B sales team sell 3-4 times more than the rest of the team (Corporate Executive Board), despite having access to the same level of opportunity, same training, same pricing and same support, many organisations are exploring how they can make their sales training more effective.
In this article, we look at the significant breakthroughs in training, now considered and recognised as sales capability development best practice.
What Are The Benefits?
The potential benefits and value to your business of enhancing the ROI in sales training and development can be determined by asking:
“What would it be worth to your business if you were able to increase the retention of learning by your sales team by up to 400% and significantly improve application?”
What Are The Best Practices In Sales Capability Development?
In many sales organisations, as much as 50% of the sales team have never received any form of sales training. In others, whilst sales training is offered on a regular annual basis, it is often delivered without formal follow-up and coaching, without the use of role plays to practice the practical application of the new skills and knowledge and there is an assumption that “one size fits all”.
In best practice organisations, sales capability development is designed and delivered very differently.
1. Recognise that different people learn in different ways:
There are three different learning types: Auditory, Visual and Kinaesthetic learners. Each of these styles prefers the learning content to be delivered to them in a different format in order to process the information. To reflect these differences in how your people learn, your training content needs to consist of video, text, quizzes, practical exercises, role plays, large and small group discussions and one-on-one coaching.
2. Focus On Micro-Skills:
Generic, high-level sales training is significantly less effective than breaking it down into microskills. For example, rather than offer sales training, offer training in prospecting skills, qualification skills, questioning skills and negotiation skills It has been proven that when you design and deliver programs that develop these micro-skills individually and focus on how to apply them in combinations in real world scenarios the overall uplift in performance is greater.
3. Leverage Bite-Sized Training Units:
Sales people tend to be action oriented, busy professionals with limited time and short attention spans. This can present challenges when it comes to the delivery of training and development that are best overcome by structuring and delivering the training in bite-sized pieces such as a 3-minute video, 10-minute read and 1-minute quiz.
4. Accessibility:
As an alternative to classroom-based training, there is real value in providing access to a learning management system (LMS) so that your people have access to the training content whether they are in the office or in the field. In this way it can be used to both learn and refresh wherever they are, whenever they like.
5. Follow-Up:
Sales leaders and managers need to be held accountable for following up with each of their team members following training in order to consolidate the learning and help the individual team members to develop their own plan for how they will apply the learning in their role. The manager should then arrange to observe them one-on-one on live calls and meetings to provide feedback and coaching to activate their learning.
6. Differentiate:
Not all skills and competences are equally important. An emerging best practice is for sales organisations to assess and determine the skills and competences of their top performers so that they concentrate on developing these skills within the rest of the team. In order to do this effectively they utilise a sales capability assessment tool, like ours.
7. Measure The Impact Of Training At 4 Levels:
Most organisations are used to asking participants to complete a happy sheet at the end of a training session in which they collect feedback from the team, but this is often where the measurement of the training stops. Best practice involves measuring the training effectiveness at 4 levels:
- Reaction – by collecting feedback immediately following the training event.
- Learning – by completing a knowledge quiz as part of the training
- Behaviour – by observation by their manager have they changed their normal behaviour and are apply to apply the new learning or skill
- Result – they have achieved an improvement in performance.
8. Role Play:
When learning a new skill, we really have two choices. We can either practice and develop it in a safe internal setting or we can practice it in a live setting in front of real prospects and clients. Many sales people have had bad experiences in the past with role plays and prefer to avoid them, so that they end up practising with live clients which is clearly high risk. A well designed and well-run role play will build confidence and skills and give team members an opportunity to learn from each other.
How we can help
For sales capability training based on your unique diagnostic profile, get in touch with us. From capability assessment, through to implementation, EnableIQ can help empower your team with the fundamentals of sales.
