Why Reinforcement is the Key to Successful Sales Transformation
Categories: Adoption and Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a key component to driving successful sales transformation. If you make the investment on a sales initiative, you need a plan to ensure the methodologies are adopted. Otherwise, why waste the money?
At Force Management, reinforcement and adoption is a critical component to our clients’ success. What is the key to their successful adoption? Here are five ways they ensure measurable results and true sales transformation:
1. Consumable Content
You become emotionally connected to a change initiative, when you’re emotionally connected to the content. Reinforcement will be easier if the content is relatable and consumable for your sales team. Think one-sheets, not binders. Because your sales team will be able to use the content and tools immediately after training with their current and prospective accounts, they’ll see the benefits quicker. Buy-in will be easier because they’ll have success earlier with the new initiative.
2. Executive Champions
Top management is the driving force when it comes to adopting strategy, new initiatives and overall effective sales transformation. Research published in Harvard Business Review, showed that reinforcement from top management was the key to adoption of a new strategy. Researchers said that executives have “profound impact on how well employees grasp and support strategy.”
When top-level executives are role models for desired change and mobilize their teams to reinforce key concepts throughout the company, they achieve lasting success.
3. Front-Line Managers
To maximize your sales transformation, ensure adoption by setting your front-line managers up for success. Drive reinforcement by giving them the tools to inspect and reinforce their teams. A management inspection process that’s baked into the sales methodology is a critical component to the success of any sales initiative. Consider these essential questions:
- How are the project outcomes integrated into the management cadence of your front-line managers?
- How are managers enabled to reinforce, inspect, coach new processes?
- How are your managers gathering and documenting success stories?
- How are they celebrating those who succeed among your team
4. Spaced Learning Techniques
For sellers who are learning a new way of talking about their products, the idea of spaced learning is an interesting concept to consider. In our adoption practice, we reinforce what is learned in our trainings through repeated content reminder initiatives and refresher sessions. These concepts have been fundamental components to our clients’ success.
Your sales training initiatives will be most effective if your organization has a game plan to repeatedly reinforce the methodology. You can’t cram in a sales training and expect it to be successful.
Dr. Will Thallheimer provides a good summary of spaced learning research and key case studies in this paper. He makes a great analogy – remember cramming for tests in college? You were able to recite the important information come test time, but the minute that exam was over you forgot all of that information. Cramming doesn’t help with retaining information and it’s not going to help with sales transformation.
5. Social Media
Remember, people learn best in small chunks. Social media allows you to package content in short snippets. It can be an effective tool to help you leverage the power of communication, motivate your team and reinforce new initiatives. If your sales team is constantly “on the go,” social media can be a great way to meet them where they are and keep the methodology in front of them when they’re away from their desks.
