Quite often, sales managers and executives don’t have the time and experience to train correctly. Companies with internal training departments often provide guidance, but sales training is quite different from designing and delivering training to other areas within an organization, such as customer care, engineering, or human resources.
By Jonathan Farrington
Not enough companies have learned how to employ sales training as a strategic tool. Those that have are leaders in their industries, offering their shareholders maximum return on investment. They are able to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, are respected by their customers, and provide consistent sales performance.
The salespeople who work for those companies are motivated, stay in their jobs longer and are proud to help in recruiting their friends who have been successful selling for other companies. That improves the “bloodline” and saves on recruiting fees.
Quite often, sales managers and executives don’t have the time and experience to train correctly. Companies with internal training departments often provide guidance, but sales training is quite different from designing and delivering training to other areas within an organization, such as customer care, engineering, or human resources.
Assess Your Situation
The first step for any company deciding to make a change in their sales approach is always an assessment of the situation. What processes and methods are currently being employed by the company? What has its sales performance been? What percentage of salespeople are delivering against plan? What are the biggest obstacles to success? How dynamic or stable is the company’s environment? What are the practices and expectations of the buyers?
These are only a few considerations.
The primary objective of creating an individually tailored Organizational Development Program has to be: To achieve consistently superior results through the performance of every key individual. After all, our people are our most important — and indeed, expensive — resource; it therefore makes sense for us to want to see a full and proper return on that investment.
Specifically, we are seeking to achieve optimum performance levels via a process and an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards. This involves assessing, appraising, developing, implementing, reviewing and providing continual feedback on performance.
Emphasis is placed on creating an environment in which the “can do/will do” mentality thrives and becomes the norm — success and achievement are expected and, as a consequence, are much more likely to happen.
Key Factors for Optimum Performance
I believe it is essential to bring together a number of key factors when aiming for optimum performance levels. A simplified formula would be:
Attitude + Skills + Process (A.S.P.) = Success.
Attitude is fundamental to any achievement because individuals with the right attitude are far more likely to embrace the essential skills, and at the same time recognize the control that the process brings.
