The most common approach to developing the
sales skills of a sales force is to gather the sales team together once or twice
a year and spend a day or two in a conference room drinking from an information
fire hose. Ask around a week later and you're lucky if each of your reps
remembers (much less uses) one or two key points from the training. Ask around a
month later and...well, that's another story.

Let's face it, the common
approach to sales training doesn't work. It doesn't help sales people
consistently improve their performance. The current approach is designed to
benefit the sales trainer...not the salespeople. Sales trainers typically pack
10, 20 or 200 people in a room, charge them a bunch of money to have them listen
to the generic schtick they've done a hundred times then cash their check and go
home. While they might share some good information, that's not the best way to
develop a sales force.

Read anything you can find on personal
development and you'll spot a consistent theme: it takes time to learn and apply
new information. That's the bottom line. Everyone has heard the old adage that
it takes 21 days to develop a new habit. Well, that concept applies to sales
habits as well.

All of this underscores the fact that sporadic, one-shot
training sessions don't provide the performance improvements that sales
organizations are seeking when they invest in them.

What's required to
REALLY improve a sales organization's performance is a long-term sales skills
development program that is designed specifically for the organization. Think
about it...leading athletes such as Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods and Michael
Phelps all had workout programs designed specifically to help them develop the
skills required to become peak performers in their given sport. Lance's workout
program wouldn't make Tiger a great golfer and Tiger's workout wouldn't make
Lance a great cyclist. The training program has to be customized for the
specific situation.

Here are some keys to creating a sales force
development program that consistently improves performance over time:


Tailored Methodology: First, the sales methodology that
you're training your team on can't be a generic, one-size fits all,
off-the-shelf methodology. There are some great concepts in almost all
well-known methodologies. However, to produce peak sales performers, those
concepts must be tailored to your specific selling environment.


Strategic and Tactical Skills: The training program
must incorporate both strategic and tactical concepts. Oftentimes, companies
only train on one aspect which can limit performance improvement. For example, a
company that trains only on strategic skills can find that their salespeople
have a good grasp on WHAT needs to be done (in theory) to win an opportunity but
they don't know HOW to get it done. On the other hand, companies that only train
on tactical concepts such as questioning techniques or objection handling often
find that their sales team can't see the forest for the trees. They're so
concerned over trying to remember exactly how to say something that they fumble
with their words and loose sight of their main objective.


Interactive Training: We've all experienced "death by
PowerPoint". And, unfortunately, we all probably have to admit to being guilty
in inflicting "death by PowerPoint" on a customer. Anyway, all of this
emphasizes one point...sitting in a conference room for 16 hours looking at a
bunch of slides while listening to a dazzling speaker isn't the best way to
learn. Studies have shown that the average person retains, at best, only 15% of
what they read or hear and up to 90% of what they experience. If you want your
people to remember the principles being taught, you have to utilize multiple
senses and engage them in the learning process.


Dynamic: The training program needs to be dynamic. In
other words, they should be altered to address the specific needs of a
particular sales team. Mechanisms should be established to spot specific areas
of weakness that exist across the sales force. Then specialized training
sessions should be developed to address those subjects when an issue becomes
apparent. You can't afford to wait for 6 months or a year to shore up areas of
weakness.

Long-term: The last, and most important,
principle to an effective sales training program is the need for the program to
take place over a long period of time. Lance didn't do one workout then go out
and win seven Tour de France titles. Tiger didn't go to the driving range one
time and win a gazillion tournaments. Both of them (along with every other peak
performing athlete) endured many hours of training over a long period of time.
To become peak performers, salespeople have to be exposed to strategic and
tactical skills training over an extended period of time. Sales coaching and
eLearning programs can assist in this endeavor.

In summary, it would be
nice to have an entire sales team comprised of the salesman equivalent of
Armstrong and Woods. However, we all know that only a small percentage of the
world's salespeople meet that bar. Therefore, we have to find effective ways of
developing the team we are able to hire. Implementing a long-term skills
development program is the only way to consistently improve sales
performance.