There are four things you need to do, as you design your training program. First, decide what's going to be covered, and the best way to start is by taking a look at your sales process. If you look at a chart of your historical sales data, you'll probably find that a lot of people make it to the first step of your sales process. A slightly lower number of people make it to the second step, and so on until the final step, which the least number of people make it to. Any place, you see an especially precipitous drop between two stages. There's a good chance your sales team needs more training on, how to execute the stage before the drop off. That's a great place, to start your training program. Now, keep in mind that there's a difference between training and coaching. You want your training, to focus on things that can be taught. There's a broad base of knowledge that each rep on your team needs to have in order, to do their job effectively. This is a wide variety of things like, what is your sales processes? What sales methodologies you rely on? How do you use your CRM system? And so on, sales training should give your reps that basic knowledge, once you've done that. You can coach your reps, to help them overcome their individual weaknesses. With that in mind, you might be tempted to make a sales training that covers absolutely everything your reps might ever need to know. But, don't do that, it's important to be realistic about, how much information you'll actually be able to cover. >> Sales training is really something that's geared toward taking, what you have. And growing the pie, as far as the skills and capabilities are of your sales force. But, the interesting thing about sales training is that you can't just simply, we are not programming machines, you can't make it change here and something. And the next day expected to actually be changed, people typically take about two months. I think that's the latest stat I saw 66 days, or about two months for a person to really change their behavior or something. if you break that down, you're really looking at about four behaviors a year that you can effectively change in any one person. What do we try to do with sales training? Most sales training actually tries to jam all this information in there, and see what sticks. It's like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks, right? Well, if we were to approach this a little bit better, and take a look and say. What are the core competencies that our folks actually need to be good at for, what it is that we're selling on the market that we're selling to? And say, are they level set up that? That they really understand the very basics, and have a master those kind of like what they do in martial arts. You have to understand a few very basic moves, and you have to be masterful at those. Before you start to add on the other tidbits that actually make you bring you from white belt, and yellow belt all the way to black belt, right? And so what ends up happening is, they assume everybody is at this level where we can throw off a black belt material at them, and then have it all stick. It doesn't work that way, because they don't have the base competencies that they need in order to actually perform their role. So, it's a complicated issue. But, the most important thing to remember is, that we're trying to get people to commit to their own personal change that they can become better sellers. >> As you design your training's, it's best to focus on just a few top priorities. What should they be? Here are some ideas. >> One is, yeah, what's the industry doing? What is the go to market strategies, that we continually are changing and I think, but also just what's our company doing. And what is the company's goal and vision, and making sure that the employees of the company actually know the team members. Actually know, this is the company I work for, this is where it's headed. It's up into the right, I mean I want to be a part of that. It's that, we're going to maintain this margin for, all this kind of stuff. I think keeping employees engaged in keeping, the keeping team members, and enthusiasm and so on, I think that's that's part of it. But if there are specific skills, if something new comes out or a new software platforms available that has potential. I think educating people on that, getting people to try it to, to do things like that I think all of that is part of it. They certainly want to make the investment back into people, I think people appreciate that. I think people appreciate appreciation, being recognized, but they also appreciate working for a company that would invest back in them. And it can be something not even work related. We've got a tuition assistance program that's available to you as an employee, and to your children or your or your spouse. We want to help people move forward, and we've dedicated some resource of our company to do that. So, things like that are, I think are important to people. >> Once you've figured out what your training will cover, you need to decide how to structure the information. >> How do you guide someone who has learned something through these stages of acquiring the knowledge? To remembering, what they learned to actually developing skills to do something and put it into action. Then using it on the job, which is where a lot of training breaks down and then actually not just because they learned it, they remembered it, they could do something with it. They tried, it doesn't mean they did it well or they're going to continue to do it, so how do you get them to mastery over time? >> There are five stages of mastery, you need to help each of your reps get through for every skill they learned. If you follow these steps in order, you'll ensure that every training is as effective as possible. >> We call it the five stages of sales, mastery and behavior change, and stage one is knowledge acquisition. So basically you're learning something, and if the organization is doing this well, they're studying, top producers are using known best practices. So you're guaranteed that what's being taught, will actually produce results in the real world, if you can get someone to use it. If you don't start there, if you don't know your content it's going to produce results. Doesn't matter, how fancy you get with the rest of it, because you're not going to drive anything. But if you start there, and then you use really good learning design, to help people learn. And remember and give a lot of practice opportunity, you're on the right path, right? But first they learn something. >> So, the first step in an effective training is knowledge acquisition. This is the part where your reps are learning something new, this is often taught through a presentation either in person or through a video. The goal here is to get your reps, to understand the idea of the skill, you're trying to teach them. After the presentation, you move on to stage two. Knowledge sustainment or reinforcing, what your reps just learned. Helping your reps remember, what they've learned is a crucial piece that many sales trainings overlook. Some of this can happen during the training session through Q and As, and simple assessments. But after everyone goes back to work, you need to find ways to keep the content top of mind. You can do that by bringing up the training content in your regular meetings. Or you can use a surveying, or quizzing tool every so often to see, how well your team is retaining what they've learned. >> Those are the first two stages you get to that point, you've learned something, you've got it in your head. You're remembering this, but you have to develop skills around it for sales. There's a lot of talk about messaging and sales, and it is critically important. But, it's more important that you can actually have a conversation with someone, because that's how sales really happens. So, how do you develop the skills, and get them the practice that they need in a safe environment. >> This brings us to the skill development stage. This is a tricky one, but it may be the most important one of all, most sales trainings involve some kind of assessment. But they aren't always very good, as you think about the best ways to evaluate your reps on a particular topic. Make sure, you're including activities that are actually effective and helpful. It's easy to pair reps up, and have them do role plays with each other, but that's not always a good idea. There are ways to do role plays that are much more effective. >> Role plays is done so infrequently, and very often so poorly, and so it doesn't happen over time with feedback loops. So, imagine a typical sales class at the end, what do they always do? Someone plays a salesperson, someone plays a customer, someone plays an observer, right? And all of those people have just gone through the training at the very same time, so there's no experts in there. But, they have all just been learning something. So now your buddies playing a customer, and your other buddies actually playing a coach. What's the quality of that coach ain't going to be like at that point, right? So you can change that environment by inserting experts into the process. You can, if you're doing certifications, take it up a notch and hire real executives, or bringing your company executives to play customers. You can have expert coaches or sales managers involved, you can do a ton of things, or you can just even do it more frequently. >> So think about getting some professional experts involved, to help your team improve. But if you can't do that, Cory Bray has a powerful assessment, you can do with just a white board, he calls it the Whiteboard demo. >> The Whiteboard demo, is the only way to tell if somebody actually understands, how to give a demonstration. If I give you a software product and I say, hey Hillman, show me a demo of this product. Yeah, you've got a guide, you know what buttons to click, and then you're going to focus on the software product. And that's not what you should be focusing on. You should be talking about stories that are relevant to your buyer in the context of, what your product can do for them. So the concept of the Whiteboard demo, is taking a Whiteboard and having people actually draw out the product. As they talk about it, in a way that would really resonate with their buyers. So, it forces them to only focus on the things that are important. >> By now, your sales training has helped your reps acquire some knowledge, and you've put a system in place to help them retain that knowledge. And you've even found a way, to help them practice the skill you've taught them. Now comes the fourth stage, which is where your reps apply that skill in their actual job. >> Then just because they can do, it doesn't mean they will, right? That the skill will matrix, so how do you develop a plan or put systems in place to help them take what they've learned? Actually use it on the job, and it could be as simple as job aids, something that's built into their workflow. Something that's in their CRM, perhaps the right thing pops up at the right time, to remind them they have forms to fill out. That reinforce, what was taught in the training, you're helping them actually transfer the stuff to the job and use it. >> It doesn't really matter, how you go about encouraging your team to implement, what they learned in sales training. The most important thing is that you do something, whether you print physical reminders for them to hang on their cubicle. Or use some kind of technology to automatically remind them, all that matters is that you're putting reminders somewhere that they'll actually see it. The final stage is skill mastery, and that's where the rep continues to improve on the skill over time until they fully mastered it. This is where you as a sales leader really get to shine, sharpen your coaching skills and lean into helping every rep succeed. >> When it's skill related, human communication, that's where you want someone, then the next step to help them get the mastery. >> And that's the five stages of sales mastery, and behavior change. If you structure your trainings to follow these stages, you'll see much better results than you otherwise, would have. >> You put all those things together, and I have seen that simple process radically transform how an organization sells. >> Now, that you know what's being taught? And how it's being taught? You need to decide who will run the training, so don't just grab a high-performing rep and make them train the group. Make sure you're choosing someone who will do a good job, and give them plenty of time to prepare. The final step in designing a training program, is to decide how to measure the results. This is another reason that starting with your sales process, is so helpful. You'll know your training succeeded, if you improved the metrics you were targeting. If not, you need to refigure the way you're training your team. Do they initially improve, and then return to their old ways? If so, you need to find ways to reinforce the training over time. Which is just another way of saying, you need to put a coaching program in place. To sum up, make a short focused list of things you want to cover in each training, and figure out the best way to cover that information. Then decide who will lead the training, and how you will measure the results afterwards. If you follow these steps, you'll be well on your way to creating a training program that will help your sales team grow better. [MUSIC]
