Sales Training Blog

For sales professionals it is easy to get discouraged in today’s business environment. When you need to work harder to make a sale, it is difficult to sustain the extra level of effort without seeing some positive results.  In our sales training business, one of the positive indicators that sales will improve is the number of new leads who proactively contact us. For example, STAR has seen an increase in Q2 in the number of new customers who are searching for sales training, which is an early indicator that customers are feeling better about the economy. When the number of unsolicited leads starts to increase for your business, it is a good sign.  See STAR’s June 2009 newsletter for other positive indicators.

We’d like to hear from you. How can you tell when your sales are poised to rebound?    What business metrics would be a leading indicator that your future sales will increase?

Does cost-cutting mean that sales training needs to be eliminated?

A down economy is precisely the time to invest in skill development of your people. If there ever was a time when your entire organization needs to work together to retain and win business, this is it.  Sales managers looking for ways to implement cost-effective sales training should consider the following:

1. Agree in advance with the training provider on the desired results of the sales training. This will allow you to measure the ROI, and can help you to justify to upper management why the sales training is a good investment of time and money at this point in time.  For example: Would you like referrals to increase by 50%? Would you like to increase your new customers by 20%? What if the “close rate” of your sales force could be improved by 15% or more? How would that impact your bottom line?

2. Make sure that your training provider customizes the content so that the duration is as short as possible AND that the skills/topics are the most crucial. Be skeptical if a training company insists that the content and duration can’t be changed. A shorter, yet more focused sales training event, will be less costly, take less time, and is a way to teach skills and motivate without too much time away from the territory.

3. Use internal personnel to teach the workshop. You can use internal trainers or managers, or a combination of both. A manager may not have teaching experience, but a manager-as-instructor has a lot of credibility because of his or her business experience. A good train-the-trainer workshop can teach managers and other non-trainers how to teach. 

4. Print the training materials yourself. Many training providers will license their materials. This allows you to produce the materials at a fraction of the cost, and also makes it easy and cost-effective for you to do post-training reinforcement sessions.
 
5. Consider a combination of online and live training. Some skills and concepts can be taught effectively online. Preview STAR’s previously recorded online training sessions. 

We’d like to hear from you. What other cost-effective ways have you used to implement sales training?