How Companies Use Training To Contribute To Sales Success
Each day brings more news of political, social and international industry changes that affect all of our lives
. Coping with change is perhaps the main challenge facing those in a sales management situation. Sales training is known to be the best weapon in your personal management arsenal helping you take advantage of the opportunities that such changes brings.
There is an old Chinese curse that says "May you live in exciting times". Exciting, changing time are also times of opportunity.
Training is all about improving the performance of personnel. Making the most of the human resources that you control. Failure to realise the full potential of your people is not only demoralising for them but in competitive markets can be commercial suicide.
We have all heard about problems that most companies have recruiting competent staff. Training helps you to grow your own competent staff. In fact recruiting competent people and not training them in times of change means that their skills quickly go out of date.
Any company in business in 2010 that does not have management and staff training as part of its strategy for success is in real danger of being outflanked by more astute competition as the economic climate stabilises and returns to growth.
So what is training? One definition of training is changing people's behavioural patterns. In other words, adopting new and better habits. Sometimes that sounds a bit like "trying to teach old dogs new tricks" and we know all about that. However, the skill in training is to get new people to adopt the best working method right from the outset and to encourage experienced people to modify their, often ingrained, working practices so as to obtain better results.
Due to so many other factors affecting the performance of human beings, quantifying the results of training is particularly difficult. One of the best pieces of quantified research was carried out a few years ago by PA Consulting Group.
Their survey result indicate the minimum difference in revenue between salespeople who have been well-trained, and those in the same industry who were not trained at all. The results showed an average difference in turnover of in excess of 30%. There is no reason to suggest that confirmation would not be found in today's markets.
The primary justification for training turns on five basic parameters:
1. To maximise the company's strengths in the market place.
2. To provide a basis on which a planned development programme can be built, to gain maximum utilisation of personnel.
3. To create an empowered, motivated workforce, enabling the company to choose its market direction thus capitalising on market opportunities.
4. To assist in identifying individual strengths and weaknesses.
5. To provide an opportunity for interchange of views and ideas.
A well-trained team is much more likely to have, as a group, the right positive mental attitude to the customer, their company, their job and most important of all, themselves.
Training, by its very nature helps to define the track on which people should travel if they are to be effective. A well-trained group usually forms a kindred spirit or group identity and this team work approach increases resilience and assists in times of rapid change..
This is a particularly important factor in producing a company image and improving communication. All teams are a collection of individualistic people, often working in spread out locations. To generate a unified company attitude there is no more effective way than by delivering regular sales training.
But what about the cost? Training may seem expensive. Employing people is very expensive and training is simply part of that cost. Acting as a deterrent for some managers is the expense of taking people off the job. This should be judged against the cost of not training their people - which is likely to be far greater. Once company reputation has diminished or market share lost the cost of winning either back may be too great and the business could become vulnerable to takeover or even failure.
Having said that, some so-called training is little more than a fast-paced lecture - often because management do not wish to spend "too long" on training. Such training will at best be of limited effectiveness, and in many cases has the reverse effect of what was intended.
There is no doubt that quality training, and by that I mean training which delivers skill development through well thought out interactivity as well as back ground knowledge is a very cost effective investment. True, the courses are longer but the costs of effective training need only be a small percentage on-cost quickly amortised by results. Even the best training cannot be thought of as a cure-all. Training is not like an injection - "one jab and you're fixed". To be effective, training must be seen as a continuous process, not a one off event. This is why long term personal development plans and company wide training plans are important.
There is an old Chinese curse that says "May you live in exciting times". But changing time are also exciting times of opportunity. Sales training has shown to be a key component in sales success in challenging times.
by: Richard Stone
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