Management
Guaranteeing some form of Return on Investment
It’s too easy for sales training companies to put up figures all over their website claiming they increased the productivity of a sales team by 300% or the company turnover by 200% once they’d stepped across the threshold - but that’s not quite true, is it?
.
I mean, how bad were the team originally? Why were they kept on?
The truth is a little closer to this analogy;
If the sales team are the builders, then the sales training company are the tool suppliers – and I’ve never known a tool supplier take the credit for building a row of houses or an office block.
ROI is always going to be tough with skills like sales training, however it is possible to understand what’s changed and recognise the difference that has been achieved.
• Work in a test during the last hour of the course to ensure the team have picked up all the key learning outcomes you wanted to achieve
• Carry out a team survey before and after the training to gauge confidence levels on the areas where you wanted to see some improvement
• Distribute delegate feedback forms with regards to the performance of the trainers
• Include two extra pages at the end of the delegate’s workbook - which can be shared with direct line managers and included as part of their end of year appraisals – entitled “How I’ll Apply These Skills to My Day Job” and “3 Focus Points Within My Account Portfolio”
Make sure you get a Sales trained trainer and not a Sales Theorist
There are some great sales trainers out there, but a bit like plumbers and plasterers, it’s impossible to tell them apart from the rest of the market.
Essentially you’re trying to avoid the company who sends you a twenty year old with a teaching badge from scouts, or a fifty year old who owes his entire career success to having a big brand on his card (which meant he’s never had to really sell anything in his life) and now wants to share a bit of useless, generic, ‘sounds good on paper but wouldn’t work in real life’ theory with your sceptical sales team.
So:
• What’s their definition of selling?
• What did they do before he or she decided to enlighten the world with their wisdom?
• Were they any good?
• Do you want someone training your sales managers on how to manage, or your sales team on how to sell when they’ve never had to do it themselves?
But most of all, ask them this;
Do they genuinely care about the results, do they want to help you improve your team, to help you achieve your goals and targets, or are you just another number?
Look them in the eye and see how honest the response is.
Chris Murray is founder and Managing Director of Varda Kreuz Training, a company created to deliver sales, customer service and management training that really works - not in theory and not just sometimes, but training that really works.
Author of Selling with EASE and The Sales Managers Guide to Achieving FAME, his latest book, The Extremely Successful Salesman’s Club is an Amazon Number 1 Best Seller and has been heralded as the Da Vinci Code for salespeople.