Individual Competencies and Capabilities

Now, take your focus down from the organizational to the individual level.  What do your sales leaders, sales managers, and sales people need to do differently to achieve your objectives and goals?  How significant of a change is that?  The degree of change will dictate the intensity and direction of your developmental efforts.

Before you know what training to tackle, you need to know their capabilities.  Assess your sales people’s strengths and weaknesses against your selling needs, and then, look for training opportunities to build skills and bridge knowledge gaps.

Don't over rely on surveys and questionnaires to plan for your upcoming sales training.  Many years ago I was tasked to conduct a Sales Negotiations training for a pumps and valves provider in the oil and gas industry.  It turned out that since most of their sales were achieved as a result of bidding and tendering, they don't really conduct sales negotiations in the "traditional" sense.

So why did they hire a trainer to conduct a sales negotiations training for them?  That was due to their HR conducting a survey on what kinds of training do the sales people wanted, and everybody ticked on the box for sales negotiations.  What they actually wanted was how to improve their understanding of the hot buttons that need to be addressed within the RFP (Request For Proposals) by their customers, rather than the act of face-to-face negotiations.  However, since such a training was not presented on a list, they ticked the closest thing that was listed, which was actually worlds apart.
 

Determine Needs and Sales Training Budget
 

There are a number of factors and details to include when preparing your formal budgetary request:

• Scope — Consider all of areas that you will address through training.  It could be some aspect of customer dialogue skills, opportunity or account management, presentation skills, and negotiation skills to name but a few.  Typically, the broader the scope, the more you will need to budget.

• Scale — Consider the number of people you’ll train, noting the level and breadth across the sales organization.  In addition to sales people, consider training for sales managers and leaders to help drive the change.  Clearly, the more people that will require training, the more you will need to budget.

• Pre-, mid-, and post-training assessments — To get where you’re going, you need to know where you are.  Assess your team’s current capabilities before, during, and after the training to ensure that it has had the desired effect.

• Measurement — Just as you need to assess individuals, look for organizational benchmarks to monitor before and after the training.  It could include the number of sales calls, meetings held, sales funnel status, length of sale, size of sale, win/loss, and others.  It could done with a simple but specific action plan that the trainee is accountable for.

• Communication program — Let your sales people know why you’re doing things differently this year and what you expect them to get out of it.  Reinforce the mindset, behaviors, and approach that they should be taking when prospecting and selling as a result of the skills you want them to learn.  Carry on communicating long after the training, and connect it to the big picture.

• Costs — These include the quantifiable costs of training, including travel and meals, conference rooms or centers, outside facilitators, training materials, equipment rental, and related expenses.  These could also mean the less quantifiable opportunity costs of having your sales people not calling on customers and getting them to participate in training instead.

Justify the Value of the Training

After going through such a rigorous planning exercise, it would not be surprising that your budget request to fulfill next year’s sales skills development training needs could be markedly different than in previous years.  This will likely raise a flag with not only your higher-ups or management but also leaders in HR and Finance.

Be prepared to outline why the approach and investment make sense given the potential benefit.  “If we continue to do ABC, the results will be predictably like last year’s.  But, if we do XYZ, the outcome will more closely align our selling activities to support the goals of the business.”

Be transparent and realistic so that your credibility isn’t questioned, and don’t overlook the need to “sell” the new training approaches (such as the usage of Sales Simulations) to the sales people who will go through it, as well as your superiors who need to approve it.

Directions Management Consulting will increase its efforts to conduct leadership studies in China and other parts of Asia, so that more companies apply resources where the best possible results be achieved in this part of the world.