Imagine entering the lottery once and expecting to win. There’s a chance but it is a pretty small chance so our expectations are unreasonable. However, if we enter every week, then our chances of success improve. Of course, the odds on winning the lottery are millions to one so even entering every week doesn’t change these very much. However, when it comes to developing skills, repeating the skill as often as possible will lead to improvement.
It is generally accepted that you need to practise a skill for approximately 10,000 hours to become truly proficient at it. Golfers will practise putting for several hours at a time each week. Footballers will practise specific skills every day so that when it comes to match situations, they can perform at a high level. However, business professionals seldom do this.
Consider these statistics:
Companies that invest in training are 57% more effective at sales than their competitors.
Continuously-reinforced training results in 50% higher net sales per sales person.
High-performing sales organisations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training as low-performing ones.
So, sales training should be an ongoing process that helps sales teams to improve their skills and knowledge and so win more deals. It should not be a once a year session that uses standard content with no measure of success. It certainly should not be a once in a while formal training course to be generally forgotten as soon as it is taken.
Many of the companies that I speak to respond with statements such as “we did some training a few years ago” or “I just need to complete this activity then we will do some training.” Sales training needs to be an activity that is invested in regularly, not just occasionally. Companies that adopt regular sales training have experienced notable profit growth and employee satisfaction.
Product knowledge develops trust
Sales people need to understand the products that they are promoting to a reasonable level. They do not need to know everything but the more knowledgeable they are, the more proficient they will be. When they are knowledgeable about their product, customers will recognise their expertise and are more likely to trust them. People buy from people and it is crucial that your customer trusts the sales person.
Products are always being developed and improved so it is important that sales people are aware of these improvements and can articulate their value to their customers. Without this knowledge, they will struggle to translate the features and functions of the product into value for the customer. So, product knowledge training is essential for all sales people on a regular basis.
Knowledge Retention
In a formal classroom environment, we forget 70% of what we have learnt in a week and 87% within a month. This might make you wonder why bother at all but if we are forgetting 87%, then we are remembering 13% and that marks a level of improvement. However, if we want to continuously improve, then we either need to regularly repeat our training so that we retain more and/or have a variety of training so that we can practise what we have learnt and therefore improve.
Classroom training is essential to deliver basic knowledge but it needs to be reinforced with ongoing coaching and training. Basic skills need to be practised in real life situations so that they become part of our ongoing process. Ongoing coaching also helps to identify areas where individual sales team members may be struggling and provides an opportunity for them to receive targeted individual training.
Developing a team
Sales people often work individually or with one or two others. However, developing these individuals into a team delivers additional benefits and results. Providing training as a group enables everyone to benefit and learn from each other’s experience rather than just our own experience. This can enable them to grow opportunities that they might not be able to otherwise.
By working as a team, the sales people can accomplish so much more in each of their individual roles. The players in a professional sports team will practise their own skills but will also practise together as a team so that they can apply these skills together. Regular sales training for the team is a very useful way of building the team and elevating everyone’s performance. There is no sense in having one sales person massively over achieving if the rest of the team are under performing.
Improving employee satisfaction
Regular training delivers more than just improved performance. Training impacts how an employee feels about a company. When the company invests in them as an individual, then they are more likely to invest in the company. Keeping your sales team happy and motivated will improve retention and attract more people towards the team.
So much of our relationship with our customer is built on individual relationships. When our employees stay, they build deeper relationships with their customers and the customer will buy more products. The sales people become trusted advisors. If the customer meets a different sales person every year, that level of trust will not be there.
By investing in training and thereby your staff, they are more likely to stay with your company for a long time and so will be able to deliver more and more each year as they increase their knowledge and build relationships with their customers.
Conclusion
Investing in your staff is crucial to the success of the company. This cannot be a one-off investment, it has to be continuous. We constantly need to be learning to enable us to do our jobs more effectively and more successfully. Invest in sales training on a regular basis rather than just occasionally.