We often get calls from people who are sourcing sales training. They tend to fall into 2 segments:
- Those who know what sales training they’re looking for.
- Those who readily admit that they have no idea at all about sales training.
Typically the latter segment have been asked to source the sales training by someone else. They have no prior experience of either selecting or running a sales training intervention. This article is designed to help this segment of people who have been thrown in at the deep end of the sales training shark tank.
Typically the call to us starts, “My manager has asked me to source sales training and to get some quotes…” The call to us is part of a flurry of calls to a selection of sales training vendors. Vendors that were found on google pages 1, 2 and 3. We’re not trying to over complicate things, but there is a risk that with such limited direction, the sales training that results will not match the expectations of the manager that asked for the sales training in the first place. The sales training is also much less likely to be effective. So before you pick up the phone to sales training company, go back to the person and clarify these 6 points:
The Six Essential Questions
1) What prompted the request for sourcing sales training in the first place? Are there non performance issues in the sales team? Gaps that can be readily seen? If so what are those gaps? Or is the driver for sales training a new growth opportunity, like entering a new market? Sometimes it’s something less concrete, like the team has evolved and they now need structure. But something has flicked a switch in the mind of the manager, what was it? This will help us to define a goal for the sales training intervention and give your plan a more concrete and agreed direction.
2) What sales training have we tried before? What parts of it worked? What parts of it bombed? This helps us to focus our time and energy in profitable areas, learning from and building on past events.
3) What type of sales training would they like to see? There’s two parts to this;
i) What delivery options do they have in mind? Face to face classroom training? Online learning? Simulations? Coaching? What sort of delivery do they have in mind?
ii) What content options did they have in mind? New business generation or account management? Questioning skills? Presentation skills? Negotiations skills? Financial acumen skills? Motivational content? Influencing skills? If they say that all of these are required, move onto the next question, ‘budget’ as all of these would take a long time and cost a lot of money. They will most likely need to prioritise.
4) The options question above will lead to the ‘budget’ question. Don’t let them wriggle out of this question or you may waste time looking at entirely the wrong options. Solutions can vary from hundreds of pounds to tens of thousands. E-learning is cheap, face to face is more expensive in outlay and time away from the job, and simulations using actors are yet more expensive.
5) What do they expect to be the impact of the sales training? How can this be measured? If you get a blank look here, ask them to imagine a point in time after the sales training has been completed. What’s different? What’s different for them personally? What’s different strategically across the business? What’s different tactically and operationally in the sales department? And what’s different in the relationship between the sales department and the other departments of the company?
6) Lastly when do they envisage rolling out the sales training? This is more important than you think because it takes time to develop content. If they want it for next months sales conference, that could be a problem as most good sales trainers are booked up three months in advance.
Essential Context Questions
Before you call the sales training company you’ll also need to get answers to the following context questions that they are going to ask you. The answers don’t necessarily need to come from the management team. You may want to talk to the sales people or sales managers:
1) how many sales people are being targeted?
2) where are they based geographically?
3) what is their annual/monthly quota?
4) what is the average deal size?
5) what is the average deal length/duration from open to close?
6) what are you actually selling?
7) what support do the sales teams get from managers?
8) what is the sales process from open to close?
9) is the sales process documented?
10) what CRM and tools are being used?
11) how are leads generated and distributed?
12) describe a typical customer
13) describe what issues of theirs that you solve
14) who are some of your competitors and why are you different?
15) once a deal is closed, is it passed to an account manager?
16) are the targeted sales people hunters or farmers? New business developers or account managers up selling with existing customers? Or both?
17) what is the current closure rate? How many deals do they win compared to losing? This is normally something like 1:4
18) what are the main reasons for losing deals?
19) what are the times to avoid e.g. End of month, quarter or year.
20) how long have the sales people been in their current roles?
The sales training company will ask any or all of these questions, so if you’re prepared in advance, it will make best use of your time and theirs.
What happens next?
When you can get all of this information, the sales training vendor will look at your goal in the light if all of the variables, and put together an outline plan of what the potential solution can be. Clearly the more accurate the information you can give them, the closer the proposed solutions will be to what you need. This should save you time and improve the chances of success.
Be prepared for the sales training company to say that training is not actually the right thing for you. It may be that the best way to achieve your goals is to look at improving operational or management issues. Sales training is not a way to solve all sales performance issues.
Beware of sales training vendors who have an off the shelf sales training solution and give you prices without understanding fully the answers to the above questions. Whether or not the company charge you for it, there should be an element of designing the intervention to fit your needs. The chances of an off the shelf sales training course fitting your needs and goal exactly are a little beyond slim. The chances of an off the shelf sales training course being orientated to the nuances of your market and sales people is even slimmer. So ensure that there is a design component and sign off the course carefully before implementation.
Sourcing Sales Training
Selecting any old sales training company is easy, there’s a ton of them. Rolling out a sales training course is also easy, there’s lots of them about too. But improving the effectiveness of your sales team is a far from easy task. You should ask a sales transformation consultant to look at your sales team, identify the key gaps and propose a solution that fits your particular needs. Talk to Salestrong about how we can do this for you.
