4 Questions to Check if Training is Making Your Sales Bulbs Glow
Below are 4 questions framed using key ideas from the section on Training and Development in the book. The questions can be used to check if training is making your sales bulbs glow
1) Does the training program recognise that sales skills are learnable? – Cespedes says, the idea of a born salesperson naturally endowed with a pleasing personality, great at storytelling and gifted at networking, is a misplaced stereotype. Selling involves the ability to adapt to varied Customers and selling situations. Cespedes points out that learning theorists call this “active retrieval”. While responding to constantly changing circumstances, learning involves the ability to retrieve a relevant model or rubric, and this ability is reinforced with each iteration. This can be codified into a structure of steps in a tool or framework which is both learnable and repeatable.
2) Does it offer actionable tools and frameworks? – Many sales training programs focus on a specific methodology that is expected to guarantee sales success. Unfortunately, salespeople have to handle a bewildering range of Customers and buying criteria. For the same product, there are different Customers and therefore, different sales tasks. Cespedes illustrates this with an everyday example. Selling to an existing Customer, buying again from you needs an approach different from the one needed for a new purchaser being prospected for the first time. Even within the same Customer category, while one buyer is particular about innovative product features, another is concerned about just-in-time delivery. Says Prof Cespedes “If all Customers sound the same to you, then you should probably not try to make a living in sales” So, Sales Training should go beyond just the methodology and offer a bouquet of tools and frameworks that can be used by the salesperson across selling situations and Customer types
3) Does it focus on the Why– Training must help salespeople appreciate the context in which the ‘how’ of sales training can be applied. This is the Why part, what to apply to which specific sales task, says Cespedes. For example, training to ‘sell to health care’ is too generic, because selling medical equipment will require closing complex deals, where price negotiation skills may be critical. On the other hand, salespeople in biotech, would be expected to be knowledgeable and stay up to date on new research and results of clinical trials. Also, a strictly product focused training is risky. When buyers change, so will the sales tasks and a new set of skills may be needed to make sales happen
4) Does it make room for practice, leverage feedback and reinforce learning through reflection? – Ideally, sales training should make room for “spaced repetition” and “deliberate practice”. Sales can only be learnt by doing. So, trainings must include action learning devices such as role plays and scripts. According to neuroscience, learning left unused, is forgotten after 90 days. Cespedes suggests the military concept of after-action-review (AAR) to reinforce learnings from sales trainings. Case studies, on-call feedback, periodic win/loss reviews must be built into sales training path for ‘go-forward’ learning and conversion of learnings into success practices at work
Answering these questions can help in making the most of the resources and time invested in building sales capabilities.
To know the world, we must construct it.
– Paves –
