Effective Sales Training - 7 Action Steps To Enhance Your Competitive Edge

Job opportunities still being cut, worldwide competition knocking on the door and companies seeking to run lean and mean, a lot of companies are wanting their sales teams to "win one for the Kipper." Yet, considering the just mentioned statistics, it appears that "Houston we have a problem" when it comes to building high performance sales representatives and sales teams.

In accordance with Training Industry, 2009 will experience a decrease in the $100 billion training market except in sales where expenses will rise by 8% overall. Within sales administration and sales coaching, these two areas may observe a potential increase of nearly 28%. Sales Coaching Guideline: Stop using an elephant gun to kill a fly. Put in the time to ascertain the real problem instead of trying to solve a symptom disguised as being a problem.

So what exactly is a poor business executive or owner meant to do? That is a good question and by the end of this post, you will have seven (7) solid action measures to begin to immediately implement.

Strategic Plan - The First Action Step

Get back to your strategic business plan of action as well as your supporting plans of marketing, sales, clients and management and leadership. Prior to taking any action to implement any Sales Training, you ought to figure out exactly what you want that training to provide.

For instance, study by Gardner suggests that 92% of all client interactions take place via the telephone. If you are losing customers or your aim is to build customer loyalty, then perhaps you must look at common telephone courtesy and also basic communication skills rather than focusing on more specific sales skills like negotiating or fact finding.

Define Desired Results - The Next Action Step

In the 1960's a graduate student named Donald Kirkpatrick made the 4 Levels of Evaluation. What he uncovered is that the majority of training (learning) happens within Level I (Emotional - Did I) and Level II (Cognitive). But also for learning to have any impact to the person and the organization, the training had to reach Level III (Application) and Level IV (Impact).

When you start with the desired outcomes, you are looking at the Level IV - Impact of the Training on the firm. For instance, if you want to boost sales and realize that 80% of your sales force delivers less than 20% of your sales results, you may invariably get rid of the non-performers without needing to invest any new dollars in Sales Training.

Now if you want to boost your sales results by having them work with existing clients, you could predetermine those projected benchmarks and then establish what is a reasonable investment for Sales Training.

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