PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Companies that do a good job with feedback and learning place their emphasis on developing a learning culture along with the sales culture. Such companies take steps to see that both cultures flourish. They are committed to their salespeoples personal development. For example, some include people development in their managers annual performance appraisals. A few of the companies that stand out from the rest in this area are Motorola, Northwestern Mutual, and Hewlett-Packard.

Top companies encourage a learning culture by offering financial support for executive education classes, undergraduate degrees, and MBA degrees, and then recognizing educational achievement. Today, most of the Fortune 1000 companies, and many other smaller companies as well, offer some form of tuition reimbursement. The best companies tend to offer more attractive and extensive incentives and reimbursements, ranging from monetary reimbursement to career opportunities. This type of commitment sends a message to the sales force: We really do care about you and your personal development!

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sales trap 19:

Sales Skill Training Is Enough to Solve Selling Problems

Its a partial truth to say that sales-skill training works (or doesnt work) and that it solves (or doesnt solve) selling problems. It can, but it doesnt necessarily, unless the sales skills are reinforced. Research has shown that if you just send reps to training and dont reinforce their skill training, they forget 87 percent of what they learned in the course within thirty days.3 Sales-skill training, by itself, is not the answer to helping salespeople to learn to sell better. Without continued practice, feedback, and reinforcement by first-line management (or some other experienced coach), the salesperson is unlikely to make much of a behavioral change or improvement.

TRAINING VERSUS REINFORCEMENT

Here, Im defining sales-skill training as a course, conducted in a classroom, that discusses sales models or the concepts of the selling process. This course is often a discrete training session held in a training or conference room. What I mean by practice, feedback, and reinforcement is face-to-face, real-time practice involving two or more people in which verbal selling behaviors are applied, scenarios are rehearsed, and actual behaviors are modeled and corrected appropriately. Another word for this is coaching. Without feedback and reinforcement, sales reps are unable to translate their knowledge of the sales models or process into more skilled behavior in the sales call.

A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT

Sales-skill training may improve morale and reduce turnover, but by itself it doesnt produce posttraining improvements in sales results. Many of the organizations that put their salespeople through sales-skill training programs dont achieve the return on their investment

that they had hoped for or wanted because they dont reinforce the program afterward. In most companies, sales training is an event, says Gilmour Lake, president of Computer Credit, Inc., located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. [Instead,] it should be an ongoing process that is reinforced through coaching.

In fact, coaching makes everyone money, from the company, to the coach, to the salesperson. Knowing and understanding a sales tool is one thing; using it effectively is quite a different story. Sales reps need coaching in order to make this transformation.

POSTCOURSE COACHING

One approach suggested by Learning International (now Achieve-Global) is to redefine sales training to include postcourse coaching. As Achieve-Global points out, coaching is an individualized development process designed to change a salespersons behavior to better meet the organizations goals for financial performance and customer satisfaction. And, Achieve-Global argues, sales coaching is not done in a classroom, nor by accompanying the salesperson on the sales call. 4

Its hard to walk the talk. Many sales models are easy to grasp, but hard to execute. Applying those models on the job is time-consuming, difficult, and usually frustrating. Most salespeople are more willing to learn the sales models than to demonstrate them. Human nature dictates that acquiring a new skill that involves changing behavior requires considerable feedback and reinforcement.

ACTION POINTS

4 Ask for feedback. Research shows that if sales skill training isnt coached and reinforced, salespeople forget what theyve learned. The feedback and reinforcement part of coaching is what drives the return on a companys sales training investment because its what leads to real behavioral change and improvement by the sales staff. Ask for feedback from your manager, your peers, and your