16 Nov 10

Get the Most From Your Training Budget

6 Steps to Maximizing Your Sales Training Results Next Year

by Mike Anthony, engage

Every year at budget time, human resources and sales managers ponder how much to invest in sales training. Yet statistics show that the majority of training money is wasted—because most people forget a vast amount of what they learn, and even fewer actually apply their newfound knowledge back in the workplace.

But really effective training can transform your business. Effective training has been demonstrated to deliver ROIs up to 7000 percent, and to improve employee productivity by up to 230 percent. The right training can deliver motivation, and reduce staff turnover by up to 70 percent.

So why is so much sales training falling short of success? What must you do differently to move from a training program to an effective capability development program? From our experience, there are six key factors; and by systematically addressing each one, the effectiveness of training interventions can be transformed.

1. Build a plan. Identify those skills you want to develop or the behaviors you need to change, such as teaching your sales force to build a selling story that leads to more effective negotiations with customers. Put a value on each of them, and prioritize. Distill your challenges into needs and build your training around a plan that focuses on closing the knowledge and those skills gaps that will have the biggest impact on your business performance.
2. Identify the barriers. Almost certainly, there are other factors—beyond building the skills and capabilities of your people—that will affect whether or not they can change their behavior. Look upstream. Who is arming your sales people once you deliver your training program? For example, are your trade marketers building great selling stories to support your team’s ability to secure great deals with your customers? Is your marketing team prepared to share the information that your sales force will need? Will they have time to practice these new skills prior to making the pitch the customer?
3. Include follow-up. Research shows that a simple knowledge review after training has been delivered will increase retention by up to 40 percent. Reinforce the training that is delivered by incorporating a plan to follow-up on the material presented. In this way, you ensure that your team has absorbed the knowledge that your training imparted on them. Post-training coaching has demonstrated to increase behavioral change by up to 400 percent!
4. Present real-life relevance. Speaking only in generic terms is not enough to communicate knowledge. Make sure that your program brings the content into focus by applying real-life examples that can connect the concept to your business and bring it to life. Relevance leads to retention.
5. Incorporate a takeaway tool. People who attend a training program will remember about 20 percent of what you tell them. What happens to the remaining 80 percent of brilliance that was included? Nothing, because it hasn’t been retained. Give your participants a tool that they can take with them. This tool could be a software program, spreadsheet, template, manual, or other reminder that will keep them on the course that your training has set them upon—anything that they can take away and apply tomorrow.
6. Measure, evaluate, and follow up. Make changing behavior non-negotiable. Change is hard. Doing things differently takes longer, and is more risky. People (particularly when it is their job/career/salary on the line) don’t want to take risks. Coaching helps to remove this obstacle. Measuring is essential, and follow-up is required. If change hasn’t happened, follow up with your salespeople. If it has, celebrate and reward!

A results-driven training program identifies the behavior to be changed and the barriers to making that happen. It implements a package of interventions, including training, to effect the change, and reviews the outcome. And then it begins again, reinforcing the knowledge to ingrain it. This process leads to a legacy that carries on past the classroom time in the training course. Successful training doesn’t come in a box. It is a system, not a product.

To get better results from your training, build a better program. If you’re going to spend money on sales training, invest it wisely. Build a training program that follows five simple steps.

engage has developed a wide range of systems that incorporate the key elements to successful training. When you are prepared to invest in training your sales team, talk to us about the most effective path to long-term behavioral change and successful outcomes.