Sales Training Courses:

Sales Training America is a world class sales training and custom development training company specializing in sales training and sales skill development of our client's sales force. At Sales Training America we help our clients improve their sales profitability through the development of their sales management and sales efforts through SalesForce.com implementation. Sales Training America offers both public (open enrollment) sales training courses well as the development of customized sales systems and sales courses for Fortune 1000 companies across United States and Canada.

Are you one of the many corporations now focusing on core sales activities while implementing SalesForce.com while outsourcing non-core functions in response to intense competition?

If you are, Sales Training America can help there too. If you simply want to outsource some of your sales or sales management training or if you want to redefine yourself completely to survive mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, downsizing, or corporate restructuring we can help you.

For free, no obligation information on how we can help you with your sales training needs please contact us today.

Sales Training Tips:

Effective Sales Training - 7 Action Steps to Increasing Your Competitive Advantage

With summer temperatures rising, these ten facts may provide some "chill: for you as the C-Suite level executive, small business owner or sales manager:

48% of sales people never follow-up with a prospect (a.k.a. potential customer)

20% of sales people make a second contact and stop

12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop

10% of sales people make more than three contacts

20% of your sales people delivery 80% of your sales results

55% of sales people should be doing something else

50% of the sales managers are too busy to train and develop their sales teams

5% Reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits from 25% to 80%

Retaining customers is 7 to 10 times cheaper than acquiring new customers

Average company loses 10% to 30% of its customers each year

With the U.S. economy still in the doldrums, jobs still being cut, global competition knocking on the door and companies looking to run lean and mean, many companies are wanting their sales teams to "win one for the Gipper." Yet, given the just mentioned statistics, it appears that "Houston we have a problem" when it comes to developing high performance sales people and sales teams.

According to Training Industry, 2009 will experience a decrease in the $100 billion training market except in sales where expenditures will increase by 8% overall. Within sales management and sales coaching, these two areas may see a potential increase of almost 28%. Sales Coaching Tip: Stop using an elephant gun to kill a fly. Invest the time to determine the real problem instead of attempting to solve a symptom disguised as a problem.

So what is a poor business executive or owner supposed to do? That is a great question and by the end of this article, you will have seven (7) solid action steps to begin to immediately implement.

Strategic Plan - The First Action Step
Return to your strategic business action plan and your supporting plans of marketing, sales, customers and management and leadership. Before taking any action to implement any sales training, you must determine exactly what you want that training to deliver.

For example, research by Gartner suggests that 92% of all customer interactions happen via the phone. If you are losing customers or your goal is to build customer loyalty, then maybe you need to look at common telephone courtesy as well as basic communication skills instead of focusing of mores specific sales skills such as negotiating or fact finding.

Define Desired Results - The Second Action Step
In the 1960's a graduate student by the name of Donald Kirkpatrick created the 4 Levels of Evaluation. What he discovered is that most training (learning) happens within Level I (Emotional - Did I) and Level II (Cognitive). However for learning to have any impact to the person and the organization, the training needed to reach Level III (Application) and Level IV (Impact).

When you begin with the desired end results, you are looking at the Level IV - Impact of the Training on the organization. For example, if you want to increase sales and realize that 80% of your sales force delivers less than 20% of your sales results, you can quickly weed out of the non-performers without having to invest any new dollars in sales training.

Now if your desire is to improve your sales results by having them work with existing clients, you can predetermine those projected benchmarks and then construct what is a reasonable investment for sales training.

Engagement Schedule - The Third Action Step
Look at your current sales training schedule. You can save a lot of money by not sending your people to a one day or two day seminar to improve communication skills or whatever the sales training objective is.

Do you know what 10x10 equals? Did 100 come immediately to mind? Now if I asked you what 25x24 equals would your mental response be as quick? Probably not. The reason for the speed of your answer to 10x10 is that you practiced over and over your multiplication tables up to 12.

For learning to be sustainable and that means to deliver a positive return on your hard earn profit dollars, there must be time for practice through repetition. Also, as I tell my sales coaching and executive coaching clients, the human brain will only absorb what the butt will endure. After an hour, two at the most, your sales people are no longer actively engaged in the learning process. Their minds have returned back to their desk and everything that they need to do.

By having shorter learning schedules spread over a longer amount of time, you can dramatically improve your return on investment as well as to achieve those goals to increase sales and build customer loyalty. In the past, bringing everyone together was expensive, but now technology allows for webcasts to teleconferencing.

Attitude Development - The Fourth Action Step
In the majority of sales training programs that I have participated in or have reviewed, the focus is at least 90% of the time on learning that being the acquisition of knowledge. Unfortunately, most sales performance failure can be traced back to poor attitudes rather than a lack of knowledge.

At the beginning of this article, the first stated statistic is a result of poor attitudes and habits rather than a lack of knowledge and skills. At least 80% of all sales professionals know that they must follow-up on leads as this the first step in the sales process. Therefore, this suggests one reason sales training does not deliver sustainable results is because the focus is not on developing good attitudes and habits.

Habit creation is a matter of practice and repetition. Sustainable sales training must build both in depth knowledge and skills along with positive attitudes and habits.

Curriculum Content and Delivery - The Fifth Action Step
Developing curriculum takes time and really needs a trained instructional designer. There are a plethora of sales training programs that can easily be adapted to your strategy, your organizational climate and your industry. By working with an experienced instructional designer, you can utilize her or his knowledge as to what makes an effective curriculum.

Also, look to include audio reinforcement as well. Spaced repetition or what used to be called rote memorization is a proven process to ensure long term cognitive memory. Having the curriculum recorded on CDs allows for your sales team to hear a concept a multitude of times.

Curriculum content works with curriculum delivery. There should be many interactive opportunities including: role playing, team group to individual presentations. Leave the didactic model of lecture for academia and allow your sales team to go beyond knowledge acquisition and into knowledge application.
Sales Coaching Tip: Performance is the application of knowledge.

A skilled and experienced facilitator can bring your curriculum to life as well as your sales team. The inclusion of coaching can further increase your return on investment.

Finally, the curriculum needs to include individual proven assessments such as Attribute Index, DISC profile or a Values Index. In some cases conducting an organizational assessment that is aligned to quality criteria such as Baldrige could also be beneficial.

Communication - The Sixth Action Step
Even if your sales training is aligned to your strategic action plan, you must communicate your expectations to your team as well as to the sales trainer. This communication starts with your involvement as the senior executive to sales manager during the first training session. Let your sales team know that this is an investment in them because you value them as members of your organization. This one simple action can yield hundreds to thousands of dollars because you have demonstrated through your communication the importance of this sales training program.

Commitment - The Seventh Action Step
Since most sales training programs evolve from the K-16 experience, their sustainability is weakened because of a lack of commitment to understanding how people react to change and therefore learn. In 1965, Dr. Bruce Tuckman published his 4 Stages of Team Development otherwise known as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.

When a team of sales professionals comes together, initially their collective behavior is united and there may be an upward move towards the desired results. This is the forming stage. Then with a little time, the team members start demonstrating negative behaviors in the second stage of storming. With time, practice and support, things start to click together during the third phase of Norming. Finally, once everything and everyone have clarity about what they are doing and how to do it, the team starts performing (Stage Four).

By understanding that sales training takes time and being committed to staying the course, your organization can secure a positive return on its training dollars. Remember with information doubling every year your sales team needs to be ahead of the competition. The development and delivery of an effective sales training program is your competitive advantage.

Source: Leanne Hoagland-Smith link

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