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?