Sales Lectures are Out

The last few minutes of my training, I usually cringe when the training evaluations must go out. Its not my idea- I stopped distributing these years ago. In fact, I’m against training evaluations not only because you never get a true read but also because that one comment someone writes about me being “arrogant” or “condescending” or “bossy” just sticks in my mind and I lose sight of everything else.

My suggestion is to look around the room every second during training. Who is paying attention, who is yawning, who is secretly texting, who is reading ahead. Good sales trainers just know human behavior and how learning happens.

The best part of pulling out of this economy and is not about reviving what has been lost but pulling out what no longer works. Here’s one for you: Sales Training. Like the sound of it? You are one of the few because not many can relate to this outdated term. Sure, you can sugar coat it by calling it Sales Enablement but don’t try to fool anyone with the same deliverables.

I really enjoyed listening to Gerhard moderate a fantastic discussion with Ken Powell from ADP talk about an effective sales enablement program. Ken brings the right background his sales training and learning role- he used to sell in the field, he used to manage a team and understands what salespeople want, need and what the customer wants and needs.  Some key takeaways and future trending clues:

1. There are five types of salespeople: (1) hard worker (2) relationship builder (3) lone wolf (4) the problem solver (5) challenger. The one which has the strongest chance of surviving in our new economy is the: Challenger. Because they think from various points of views, they debate, they stretch core values and continue to grow and embrace change.

2. Sales training must be simplified: sales reps are inundated already so make the concepts as easy to digest as possible. Stop layering more and different concepts, ideas, solutions.

3. Sales leaders risk losing their top performers: if a company doesn’t innovate and require stronger skill awareness and performance from their talent, they will go elsewhere. Leaders must attract and retain top talent and strong coaching and mentoring is the answer.

4. Millenials Rule: these are people born between 1975 and 1995 who are raised on the internet, are big multi-taskers, learn by doing and believe lecturing is dead and hate when someone stands in front of them telling them how they carried a bag. And are the biggest newcomers to the sales profession.

It’s time we redesign the traditional sales training model and start by:

1. Educating salespeople based on their learning behaviors

2. Measuring the ROI on training

3. Burn your big ppt slide decks

4. Engage, interact, make it fun, tangible, provide real experiences

5. Shortening the training experience to bite sized pieces