Yesterday, I suggested that we may have reached what I can only describe as a "watershed" when examining current spend on sales team skills development - if you missed the post, you only need to scroll down.
I also promised to share my own experiences, and to also describe how organizations should be approaching training/coaching/mentoring.
I first began to recognise the need to be able to benchmark sales performance more objectively and more rigorously, more than thirty years ago.
The motivation to do this was strong, because I knew I was wasting thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of pounds on sales skills training programs which were not providing me with a proper return on my considerable investment. But I needed to prove my theory because without an accurate analysis of my requirements, I would continue to abdicate that responsibility to the training providers, most of whom had only their own interests at heart.
I discovered that to begin with, the one off program was supplying a short term motivational buzz and provided my team with a number of thought provoking ideas. However, in reality, once they were back at the "front-line" the day to day pressures of hitting quota etc. took over again and the reactive mindset returned.
Then, and it is probably still true today, most - I would estimate at least 80% - training organizations were making the assumption that all delegates were at the same level in terms of experience/expertise and had the same "commercial bandwidth." This was, and is, of course totally unrealistic.
Whilst it is never possible to equate age and experience with success, the reality is that although some professional salespeople do have ten years experience, most have one year's experience ten times.
The very best salespeople - the ones that consistently exceed expectation - have usually received ongoing skills development from the "emerging" stage, all the way through "advanced", right up to "consultative" level if appropriate, but the keyword is "ongoing"
Finally, and this is the most significant and blatant error of judgment most Sales Directors make (I know I did) is that every member of the team receives the same training - i.e. they are all dispatched off to the same course, regardless of whether or not they already have those skills, or if indeed they need to have them in their current role.
The point here is that there is far too little planning, assessing and objective setting. As I said earlier, it is much easier to delegate that responsibility to the training company. The downside to this approach is, of course, so much money is wasted.
I quickly realized that the first step for any company deciding to make a change in their sales approach was to accept that training must be based on what the salespeople need. It should be tailored to address diagnosed performance gaps. Using a diagnostic approach, a formal sales team skills audit saves an organization money and time, because there is nothing to be gained from teaching people something that they are already doing well or, conversely, that they don't need to do in the first place.
So what did I do? Well, I actually wrote my own programs and they eventually became the basis of my initial work when I formed The jfa Group, way back in 1993. But more significantly, I designed an attitude/skills/process audit tool which has now evolved into the ASP Profile and is being used by organizations all around the world to regularly benchmark both the development needs and ongoing performance levels of their sales teams.
You know the most common feedback I receive? "I cannot believe how much money you are saving us!"
Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to travel the globe and conduct public training workshops. However, I do gain considerable satisfaction from coaching small groups occasionally, usually online, and this is undoubtedly the future of sales team/sales leadership development.
We have some interesting announcements coming up, so do watch this space .....