Categories: Sales Transformation
The decision to partner with a sales training company or a sales effectiveness consulting firm can have major implications for a company, including the impact of the leadership. Get it right, and the rewards can be enormous, resulting in the kind of sales success that not only changes companies, but changes careers.
We're often asked how to ensure success with a sales initiative. While there is no one magic bullet, a variety of factors can help set you up for lasting results. Below are six of the most important tips to make a lasting impact with your initiative:
1. Relevant training
Implementing a training that's relevant to your industry, company, buyers and sales organization may seem obvious. However, you may be surprised at the sizable investment companies make to only to end up with a "cookie cutter" training format that falls flat. The success of a training program is determined before a single session has been delivered. It's in the pre-work (e.g., workshops, content development sessions) where consultants and sales leaders work extensively to ensure that the content, processes and tools delivered are relevant and customized to your organization.
2. Leadership engagement
How many times have you been to a sales training and leadership unfortunately was distracted or not even there. The lack of involvement creates a disconnect between leadership and account teams, and even worse, it demonstrates that the initiative is not a priority with leadership. The involvement of critical members of your leadership and company roles also ensures relevancy (see point 1). We often say our clients have to participate in their own rescue. You don't want control of the initiative relinquished to the trainers, who are not the true leaders of the group. The benefit of this time commitment is consistency, alignment, reinforcement and overall results.
3. Expert facilitators
There's nothing worse than putting someone in front of your salespeople who can't command the room. When you have facilitators who (1) understand your business and (2) have the necessary "boots on the ground" experience your likelihood of sales initiative success is that much greater. Great facilitators don’t just show up and deliver a class. The power of their expertise is revealed when they're part of a longer process designed to ensure success.
4. Meaningful exercises
The people in the room need to understand why you're launching this initiative. Once they understand the why, seemingly routine exercises are tools to a better outcome. Be sure the benefits are clear. How will this initiative help them deal with their existing clients? How will it help them form relationships with potential new clients, or win back clients who have moved on? Real-world exercises can help put "the why" into action. Have your reps work with live opportunities in role plays, with tools and/or coaching sessions. Practical application makes the exercises as meaningful as possible.
5. Measurable Outcomes
All sales initiatives should have clear and measurable outcomes. Part of building alignment and focus around a sales initiative is to be clear on the end-game. What are the results that leadership, account teams and reps can expect from going through this process? Success metrics should be defined and clearly communicated.
6. Immediate Calls-to-Action
For training to be successful, people need to put their new knowledge into action immediately. At the end of sales training, each person should have clear and defined commitments to action. An example of this would be making a sales call using a new structure that had been developed in training. Once complete, management then observes the outcome of this interaction to see if it has delivered the desired improvement.
Some professional training can be a little nebulous, and team members sometimes don’t quite see how they can use their newly-obtained knowledge in a professional setting. By assigning clear CTAs, you immediately pave a pathway to easily reinforce the methodology.
A disorganized sales initiative can do more harm than good. Don’t take that risk. Take the time necessary to build and launch an initiative that is meaningful and more importantly, actionable.
