How to Counteract the Fading Enthusiasm that Happens Right After Sales Training

If you've ever launched a sales initiative, you know that you gain a significant return on the investment in the weeks immediately following rollout. The critical events that happen after training can make the difference between a sales initiative that moves the needle and one that falls flat. Here are a few ways to counteract the fading enthusiasm that can happen right after a sales training or a sales kickoff.

Enable Your Managers

We can't underestimate the power of effectively equipping your front-line managers with the tools, content and resources to reinforce sales training concepts. Our Customer Success team often uses the scaffolding theory when they're explaining the importance of enabling your managers. In this approach, you build the structure around the organization to support the people who are responsible for execution. Then, you can start taking that scaffolding down once the concepts are adopted.

Your managers are the people who provide that scaffolding for your reps. We center our programs on helping those managers become confident in providing the scaffolding. Whether it's through coaching tools, or training them to teach the methodology, ensure that they have the resources they need to inspect and reinforce. This step can help ensure that the enthusiasm that happens in the training, is carried into the daily sales routine. Here are some resources you can use to enable your managers to drive ongoing momentum, adoption and sales impact:

Use Live Deals in Your Event and Ongoing Training

Too many sales trainings use hypothetical scenarios, leaving the salesperson to bridge the gap to real-life applications. An easy way to maintain momentum after training is to have reps apply new concepts to true opportunities during the training. Have your sales reps come to the training with one or two opportunities in mind that they can reference during role-plays and group exercises. As a result, when those reps get back to the daily grind, they can build on that training and execute key actions in their live deals. Practical application makes your event and any ongoing training as meaningful as possible and increases the likelihood for adoption. Here are additional resources to share with your reps leading up to your SKO or sales training event:

Implement Tools that are Relevant

Creating tools that are relevant to your industry, company and specific roles in your company may seem obvious. However, you may be surprised at the sizable investment companies make only to end up with a "cookie-cutter" training format that falls flat. Your sales teams need tools that are relevant to what they do every day. How can you adapt the tools for your direct teams to your inside sales teams, customer success, maybe even your channel? If the tools aren't relevant, they won't be used and you can bet money that the enthusiasm for a new sales initiative will dwindle quickly. Here are additional resources you may find helpful as you work to ensure relevancy during and after your training event:

Calls-to-action that Drive Immediacy

If you want people to change their behaviors following the training, you have to be clear on what you want them to do. Your training should end with clear call-to-actions that are specific and relevant to your salespeople. What do you want them to do in the next week? In the next month? For their next sales call? Don't just assume they'll know the steps they need to take. Be specific and create calls to action that drive immediacy and maintain the momentum when everyone returns back to the daily grind. Here are resources you can use to ensure you're communicating critical concepts like these to your salespeople:

Celebrate Small Successes and Share Best Practices

Don't wait for the big numbers to celebrate the success of your initiative. It's your job as a leader to celebrate even the smallest wins. Things like trying out a new question track with a prospect, practicing with role plays prior to a customer call, even using a pre-call planner aligned to the new methodology can all be signs your reinforcement efforts are succeeding. Consider, developing company Slack channels, internal webinars, or newsletters that are strictly focused on sharing success stories and lifting reps and managers up. Incorporate an “all-hands manager call” into your cadence. During the call, you can review how things are going, what’s working for some sales teams, what’s been challenging etc. Then, incorporate time to strategize and discuss coaching action plans to address challenges. Having these calls is a great way to spread success stories and drive improvements to coaching plans.

Calling attention to the success of early adopters encourages others to follow suit and helps maintain the momentum of any initiative. Once you change the behavior you've got to be focused on adequately reinforcing it. There are five actions successful sales leaders take to drive immediate and lasting results after the launch of a sales kickoff or training initiative. Actions that help sales teams start strong, finish ahead and accelerate revenue growth.

Take action now. Get your playbook on the 5 Actions That Fuel Lasting SKO Success.