How to ensure your frontline sales training programme delivers results
Sales training is probably one of the most crucial elements of company training because it keeps customers spending and revenue streams flowing. Without a knowledgeable and successful sales team, you can’t expect to outperform your competition which is why companies spend around $20 billion on sales training every single year.
With so much money allocated to sales training, it’s only natural that we expect to see big results, yet 26% of reps say their sales training is ineffective. So why is this?
Why don’t sales training programmes work and what can you do to deliver results?
#1 Your sales training content doesn’t match the skills needed to succeed
One of the reasons your sales training programme isn’t delivering results could be because you are strengthening skills in the wrong areas.
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the latest sales training trends without thinking closely about the skills your sales team actually needs.
For example, your training is highly focused on customer relationship building but your customer feedback suggests that slow operations are what causes them the most frustration.
How to overcome this issue?
Take a deep dive into your customer feedback data and your mystery shopper reviews.
Try to discover common patterns of behaviour which are leading to loss of sales. It’s important to dig into the positive reviews as well as the negative ones because these can also help you discover useful insights.
For example, you may notice that a lot of your customers say “They were very quick and got the paperwork completed straight away.” This could mean that your sales advisors are so quick they are not offering any additional products or services to increase the value of the sale. In this case, you would need to implement upsell training.
Ask your sales staff what they need
For sales training to be effective, it needs to be favoured by your frontline employees. If they don’t find your learning methods relevant, effective or interesting, you will struggle to see results.
This is why it’s essential that you ask the right questions to make sure you’re getting an insight into what your frontline workers really want. Use the article below to take questions and build a survey to send out to your sales team.
#2 You are not finding and filling skills gaps
Delivering training that isn’t tailored to fill specific skills gaps is pretty useless. It’s not going to be engaging for your learners because the content won’t be helpful or useful and it definitely won’t deliver any noticeable results.
How do I perform a skills gap analysis?
To really know where your employees are failing, we recommend observing your team whilst they are working on the shop floor.
Our employee observation tool makes it quick and easy to gather feedback. You simply swipe through pre-determined questions on your mobile or tablet device meaning you can do a report in minutes.
All the data you collect from each separate observation will be collated into an easy to understand dashboard. This will highlight your team’s weaknesses in red and their strongest skillsets in green.
Once you’ve carried out your employee performance reviews you’ll easily be able to find where the gaps are. You can now address those gaps with the relevant training. You’ll usually find that the same gaps come up frequently so you can group your training programmes in accordance with these.
For more help read our latest article ‘How to incorporate ‘learner needs’ into your training programmes’.
Now you know the gaps, create a training plan template for your sales staff
Sales training plan templates are used to ensure that your training is done consistently and that you achieve tangible results from setting clear goals and tasks throughout.
When done regularly, you will start to see patterns which highlight areas of strength and weakness for your employees. This knowledge can be used to set relevant training tasks and objectives to help you reach those all important performance goals. Download our free training plan template below:
#3 You have no follow up plan
You deliver your sales training workshop or presentation and it all goes brilliantly...Fast forward two weeks later and everyone has forgotten what they learnt.
How to overcome this issue?
In order for training to be successful, you have to consistently embed the new knowledge after the main training event has taken place. Think of it as mini top-up lessons. You can do this in a few different ways:
Microlearning - Use a microlearning platform to create short 1-5 minute learning modules. Send them out every week as a quick and easy way to boost knowledge.
Refresher sessions - Provide condensed versions of the training presentations or workshops and deliver these bi-weekly.
Mnemonic images - Mnemonic images are used to encompass information making it easier to memorise. Hand these out a week or two after the main training event.
Set homework - Rather than have your employees passively watch a training presentation or attend a workshop. Let them know you’ll be setting homework for them in a week or two. This means they are more likely to engage with what they are learning and more likely to retain the information in the future.
#4 You don’t involve your sales managers
You tell your sales team to block time out in their diary for your sales training and you completely miss out your sales managers. This is a big mistake for two main reasons.
Your managers aren’t going to know what their team have learnt thus making it impossible for them to reinforce any behaviours.
Your managers work closely with your employees every day so getting them to act as cheerleaders for your training would encourage staff to put their learning into action.
To overcome this issue, make it mandatory for managers to attend company training. Ask them to observe their team’s behaviours to ensure they are putting their learning into action.
How to do an employee observation to see if learning is being put into action?
Write out a list of questions related to the sales training programme. For example, let’s say your training was around customer relationship building your questions may look like this:
Did the employee greet the customer when they entered the store?
Did the employee ask for the customer’s name?
Did the employee ask the customer something about themselves?
Did the employee remember the customer’s name and use it in conversation?
Did the employee smile and have an overall positive attitude?
Each store manager should observe their team’s behaviour and answer the questions above. This will give you an idea of who is and isn’t paying attention to the sales training and support those who aren’t putting their learning into practice.
With Engage’s employee observation tool you can carry out reports right on the shop floor. Simply swipe and tap your way through the questions on a mobile or tablet device and all answers will be collected into a colour-coded report. Best of all, every report from each store will be collated into a larger overview so you can see which stores are using their training and which ones are not.
So that’s how to ensure your B2C sales training programme delivers results. We hope you’ve noticed that sales training isn’t a one-stop-shop. It requires constant attention and monitoring to ensure the training really gets embedded in your employee’s minds.
If you need a sales training solution for your frontline employees, take a look at Engage. The sales enablement platform encompasses all the features you need to engage, train and connect with your frontline sales workers no matter where they are.
Photo credit: Student photo created by wayhomestudio - www.freepik.com
