How to Get Your Sales People To Love Training

For business owners, it really doesn’t get sadder — or more ironic — than this. Here you are investing in someone, spending time to develop their sales skills and increase their capacity, and there they are, playing hangman on the handouts, falling asleep and, of course, checking their BlackBerrys.

Everyone knows that if your staff is not effectively trained, they might leave your company. But what happens if your staff isn’t effectively trained and they don’t leave your company? They’ll become an albatross to themselves and to your sales success.

To come out a winner and prevent losing on both ends, you must first understand the problem.

The Problem, the Hatred and the Blame

So what’s the problem? Why do your employees hate training? These are important questions, and they can all be answered in a row: The problem is that your employees aren’t approaching the training with the right perspective. The question is, can it be fixed? The answer: yes.

But how do you create the most effective training experience? Here is what you need to do.

Why You Need to Train, and How to Do It Correctly

The benefits of training are spectacularly straightforward. For starters, effective training results in improved skills and techniques, enabling employees to execute their jobs more proficiently and professionally. But that isn’t all. The benefits of a well-structured training program go beyond mere skills improvements. An important by-product of effective training is improved morale and motivation, as employees view the company’s investment in training as an investment in their career development and future with the firm.

Simply recognizing that training is a win-win for both the employee and the firm is not enough. There are four major factors in providing employees with a successful training experience.

1. You must enable trainee buy-in. Psychiatrists have been telling us for years that a patient has to want help before help can be provided. Fair enough. The same axiom holds true in the training world. You must provide your trainees with the right training framework. And what is the right training framework? They must want to be trained. If it’s going to help them increase sales, convince them of how wonderful this will be.

If it’s going to increase their capacity to earn more commission, tell them so. Work with your outsourced trainer before the actual training event and promote these benefits.

Remember, please: Negative expectations from trainees will pollute even the most well designed training, so it is crucial that you have your staff walk into the first day of training in the right frame of mind. If, despite your best efforts here, you still notice someone having a negative impact on the training, call a short break and talk to the person. You can either try tough love (“Joe, I get the feeling you don’t want to be a part of this training right now. Perhaps it would be better, then, if you leave, so that others can get the full value of the experience“) or tender love (“Joe, I need someone to help with the next exercise. Would you mind assisting me?”) I have used both tactics and both work, depending upon the personality you are dealing with. With the former, you usually get someone scared straight. With the latter, someone who might have thought they were “above it all” or, conversely, not good enough, will immediately feel more connected, more wanted and therefore more positive about the training.

2. You must know what the problem is, and what the solution will be. This one sounds too simple to be true. But you’d be amazed at how often this factor is overlooked. Do you know what needs to be fixed? Is it deal-closing or relationship-build-ing? Do you want to improve ROI? Motivate? Cut down on process redundancy? Align communication from different units, functions — heck, even cubicles and floors? If you don’t know what’s wrong, you won’t know how to solve it. Or worse, you might actually create problems by trying to solve the wrong thing. If you’re trying to solve a team-building problem by promoting individual accomplishment in your training, then you’re actually making things worse.

Investigation of what is “broken” — and hence, what needs to be fixed — is usually accomplished through a needs assessment (if you are not familiar with this term, you should consider hiring a training professional; more on this below) in which quantitative and qualitative data is collected (i.e., sales statistics are reviewed, interviews with sales reps are conducted, key sales management staff are queried on specific goals and challenges, etc.). Only then can a coherent, results-driven training solution be designed.

3. Measure and monitor your sales metrics. All of the training in our solar system is regrettably not going to improve your sales metrics if you don’t know what those metrics are, what they should be, and whether or not you’re moving in the right direction. You want to measure before and after the training to gauge effectiveness.