Sales Training HQ

Sales Training – A Short Course, Part II

“I learn by going where I have to go.” – Roethke

Sales managers and experienced producers often have training responsibilities that require them to manage this process, helping people do their best by:

• Assessing individual training needs.
• Setting training goals and making plans to meet them.
• Selecting and organizing training methods and resources.
• Prescribing field activities, coaching, critiquing, reinforcing and follow-up.

Training is not one-sided, however. A trainer’s or sales manager’s responsibility may be to make training available, but it is the sales person’s responsibility to make the most of it. The ultimate responsibility for learning is the learners, so the manager/trainer’s role will be more of a "coach" than a "doer”.

A good trainer is a leader and coach. Michael Beck of Leadership Coaching, Inc. (leaders-coach.com) maintains that all leadership is by example. “The people who follow usually duplicate half of the good things their leader/coach does and twice the poor things, say Beck. “To be dynamic, a leader must practice self-discipline, be a perpetual student, become efficient, prioritize tasks well, determine materiality, and practice delayed gratification.”

In other words, coaches usually do not get out on the field and play the game, but they must know how to help their players become winners. Sales trainers must be convincing in demonstrating successful sales techniques. This makes them responsible for being the "player-coach," that is, someone who can play a good game, not just talk about it.

Trainers Can Kill With Kindness

Watching sales being initiated, developed and closed by a player-coach helps pre-contract candidates and new producers learn how to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve learned. But the player-coach role can quickly reach a point of diminishing returns, especially for sales managers or trainers who have a stake in the outcome.

People may learn best by doing. But once producers have the knowledge and skills they need, every time you close business for them, the less they learn and the closer they get to leaning on you. Worse, every time you don’t make a sale, you lose credibility.

Many salespeople have left the business because their sales managers didn’t know when to stop making sales for them. That instinct is even stronger with pre-contract candidates, since sales managers and trainers have a stake in candidates satisfying their pre-contract requirements.

Resist the temptation.

To be an effective career test, pre-contract training must allow candidates to make it or break it on their own. Unless on joint calls with candidates to demonstrate a sales talk or give technical backup, let them take sales presentations as far as they can before stepping in.

Not to put too fine a point on it, good sales managers understand that their relationships with producers should one of coach or counselor, not true friendship. The treatment of pre-contract candidates and new producers should always be cordial and considerate. However, evaluating a person’s ability to perform to a minimum standard is part of the job, and friends should no more judge each other than they should try to change each other.

Good trainers, moreover, should have a "coaching" attitude in all their dealings with trainees; and good coaches should be caring, non-threatening, and build confidence, trust, and respect.

About the Author - Bill Willard has been writing high-impact marketing and sales training for the financial services industry for over 30 years...but as Will Rogers put it: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Through interactive, Web-based "Do-While-Learning" programs, e-Newsletters and straight-talking articles, Bill helps agents and advisors get the job done: profitably improving performance, helping grow your business, skipping expensive mistakes, making the journey to success faster, smoother, easier. And fun!

Sales Training – A Short Course, Part I

In many organizations, sales managers and experienced producers have training responsibilities for which they are ill-prepared and, in some cases, barely qualified. If that’s you, the following may just be a lifesaver.

"Training must not be controlled, but instead be completely free play...in a simulated environment in which [agents] can discover for themselves that [selling] is not a series of canned problems with a limited range of responses, but a human encounter where the unexpected always happens and flexibility is the key." — Col. David H. Hackworth, U. S. Army (Ret.)

“KASH”

The objective of sales training is to help salespeople develop the Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits—KASH-- they need to meet their production goals.

To put it simply — Knowledge is what they need to know; Attitudes are their outlook about the career and themselves; Skills are what they need to do, and Habits are the behavior patterns they must develop to meet their performance standards.

As the philosopher Roethke, observed, "I learn by going where I have to go." So sales training must be a practical, hands-on learning experience, not an academic exercise. Salespeople, especially new producers and those in pre-contract training, must learn by doing; and they should be taught by demonstration, not just out of a book.

That’s why the best sales trainers and sales managers are former producers who can show how it's done; who know what they're looking at when they observe trainees in action; who have solid opinions, and who can give meaningful feedback.

Sales training requires considerable versatility. You have to be an effective teacher, mentor and coach, ace communicator, public speaker, AV specialist, computer guru. But, that's not all. In many organizations, trainers are expected to bring a lot more to the table...

• Trainers are in a position to support the company’s HR objectives. They do this by assessing and addressing individual career development needs, as well as by administering Company training programs. The point is: make training count; never train just to have something to do.

• Trainers can also produce measurable results. Sales training attempts to bring out the best in people. It should deal in reality and include ways to monitor activity and assess performance based on measurable outcomes, while accounting for individual variables.

But training, cannot make sales happen. While training can contribute to sales results, it cannot determine sales results. The only result for which training can be absolutely accountable is the delivery of training that meets pre-established organizational goals.

One of the exciting things about sales training, however, is that if effective, the rewards are immediate. The company, the producers and the clients are all winners, right away!

The Training Process

The most effective training programs are:

1. Goal-oriented. People are expected to move toward measurable performance standards, along a predetermined path of well-defined goals.
2. Activity-based. The end-result will be the ability to apply knowledge and demonstrate proficiency with career skills.
3. Self-directed. The trainer makes training resources, guidance and coaching available, but it is up to the trainee to make the most of them.
4. Individualized. Training can be geared as much as possible to the interests, needs, experiences, strengths and duties of the trainee, and conducted in a positive learning environment.

Next: Sales Training – A Short Course, Part II

About the Author - Bill Willard has been writing high-impact marketing and sales training for the financial services industry for over 30 years...but as Will Rogers put it: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Through interactive, Web-based "Do-While-Learning" programs, e-Newsletters and straight-talking articles, Bill helps agents and advisors get the job done: profitably improving performance, helping grow your business, skipping expensive mistakes, making the journey to success faster, smoother, easier. And fun!

The Need For Sales Training

Sometimes we forget the basics, what are we really trying to achieve by training the sales force? What are the issues we are trying to address, and how do we see sales training bridging the gap between where we are now and where we want to be?

We believe there are probably four main stakeholders involved in sales training:

For the company executves - listed below are some of the common issues we hear from executives regarding the issues they see with managing the sales team

* Business predictability - how can we improve the accuracy of forecasts for orders, revenue and margin.

* Higher level customer engagement - why can't we get higher to the customer's executives, and focus on value not price.

* Consistent performance - how do we reduce the variance at both team and individual level.

* Product and services mix - how can we get the sales team to sell the optimum product and services mix.

* Raising the amount of customer selling time by reducing the time taken on administration and emails.

* Consistent customer experience - how do we get this across the team.

* Winning of new customers and getting existing customers to take a wider range of products and services.

For the customer - have you ever put yourself in your customers' shoes? What attributes would you like to see in people you do business with? Again, the ideas below is based on our experience, and they happen to form a memorable acronym IKEA

* Integrity - does this sales person display the level of honesty and reliability that gives me confidence to buy from them.

* Knowledge - do they possess the knowledge expected of them in the following areas:

o Their company - history, philosophy, culture, strategy, processes, people.

o The market - general market and business drivers, my company's specific vertical market issues.

o Their products/services - high level benefits linked to my own company's business drivers and issues.

o The competitive landscape.

o My company - see empathy.

o Technology - not at a detailed technical level, but a broad understanding of technologies from a business perspective.

* Empathy - "before I care how much you know, I want to know how much you care." Does this sales person see me as unique, and have they taken the time to do the research

* Authority - when things go wrong with the project, since they normally do, will this person have the authority within their company to get the problems sorted out quickly.

For the sales people - having looked at the company's and customer's perspective on sales training, what about the sales people themselves? Try answering these questions

* Who decides what training the sales person needs?
* Is the training part of a long term, structured individual development plan?
* Has the need for the training been explained together with the expected outcomes?
* Are similar courses repeated year after year that everyone attends?
* What are the expected outcomes and changes in behaviour? * Who measures the success of the program?

Key reasons for training from a sales person's perspective should be:

* Professional improvement, looking as sales as a worthwhile career.
* The training will help meet my objectives/targets and hence earn me money.
* All training looks good on a CV.
* Its interesting to have time to reflect and gain a different perspective.

Too often sales training seems to be undertaken with little communication with the sales force to explain why they are there, what the benefit of being there will be and what is expected to change after the training.

For the sales managers - most sales managers have between 6 and 12 sales people working for them. How do they know what they are saying to customers, and how they are positioning the company? They cannot be at every face to face call or on the phone at each customer contact. We recommend the introduction of a structured sales process that is repeatable, and can be analysed and individual performance measured at each step.

By being able to use the same structure for each sales person, the sales manager will be able to identify areas that individuals need help in, and coach them accordingly. Conversely, if everyone is using there own system, it is very difficult to analyse where a person is in the sale, and what measures they need to take to get back on course.

You can find out more about sales training at sales-training-consultants.co.uk

About the Author - John Fowler is a sales and management trainer designing and delivering workshops across the world specifically for the IT industry. John can be contacted on his website at Sales Training Consultants.

Retail Sales Training Essential To Increase Retail Sales Performance

Retail Sales Coaching should be designed to work on behalf of each individual Salesperson who wants to succeed for them, while being part of an environment that nurtures and speeds their growth.

Retail Sales Training is for each person who cared to show up today to express themselves in a retail sales environment and who demands more of themselves. Retail Sales Training is for people who want to feel they have done their best with what they knew, today.

Retail Sales Coaching’s purpose is to clarify, in a realistic, truthful and meaningful way, precisely how each person can perform better. It must do this by connecting people with the objectives of the company within the framework of their own need to succeed and be recognized.
Retail Sales Training Software must work by identifying the absolute area of selling skill, the one out of five key performance indicators (KPIs), which if the Salesperson were to focus on exclusively, would become their best performance enhancer – their best chance at optimum improvement.

Retail Sales Coaching Software should be about helping your company and its people become richer by revealing the truth about their performance, on an individual basis, so your Salespeople can focus on making their most significant improvements in the shortest period of time.

The result of implementing the right solution is that each Salesperson's performance is increasing at optimum speed, so you can expect your retail store as a whole to increase sales by anywhere from ten to thirty percent.

Any Retail Sales Training system of appraisal and reporting should make sales people accountable for their time by measuring their performance according to key KPI’s, against each other, and against the store average. Unless measurements are taken on a regular basis and compared with the rest of the people on the shift it would be impossible to know the area in which to train.

Today, most POS software programs generate KPIs such as average sale, items per sale, sales per hour. However, they do not allow store managers to set sales goals and divide them up proportionally between salespeople so effectively POS sales reports are useless.

While door counters are useful unless they integrate with an effective Retail Training software program they cannot generate Conversion Rate KPIs – one of the fundamental KPI’s used in Sales Training.

There are software programs available to compliment your POS that will do the job including breaking down slow and fast periods of the day by weightings.

Here are some things to look for in a Retail Sales Training Software Program:

• Store Information Register to record specific information about the store.

• Staff Information Register and Coaching Log to record specific information and availability and coaching history of each sales person.

• Weekly Sales Goals Planner that automatically divides the store sales goal fairly between the salespeople on duty, including taking into account slow and fast periods of the day.

• Weekly Staff Roster to allocate staff to a time and attendance schedule within the framework of the store’s wage budgets, warning when over rostering and helping to improve wage to sales ratio efficiency.

• Actual Performance Score Card that tracks individual actual sales performance against individual sales goals to identify areas of weakness and strength so that managers can coach behaviors.

• Optimally, coaching tips should be integrated so managers can quickly get information about coaching on specific deficient selling skills.

The objectives of Retail Sales Training Software Programs are to:

• Increase profits, decrease costs, motivate staff

• Bring Retailers in line with industry Best Practice

• Filter company sales objectives down to Individual Salespeople on the shop floor

• Focus Store Managers on the two operational expenses within their control: Wages and Individual Sales Performance

• Make Salespeople accountable for their time

• Reduce payroll by Rostering within set wage parameters

• Identify each individual Salesperson's deficient selling skills each week

• Show sales trends for each individual salesperson and store

• Integrate self-based coaching to give front line store managers' tips on demand

• Motivate employees by instilling a performance based team culture

• Identify best performers allowing Store Managers to roster those staff more often - yielding a higher wage to sales ratio or ROI

• Reduce attrition rates, retain good staff

• Introduce a system of setting standards, tracking, measuring and reporting results, identifying under performance and coaching for success

• Integrate with POS to produce instant information at Salespeople’s fingertips.

Retail competition is fierce and times are tough. If you want to increase retail sales performance then coaching sales people is vital to success. Successful retailers put into place best practice retail training software programs to help them immediately identify skill areas requiring coaching attention.

Without the help of retail performance metrics you may be wasting valuable training time and missing the point for each individual salesperson.

About the Author - Steven Lipschitz has a 12 year track record in Internet enabled applications and today specializes in Retail Sales Performance Management Solutions. His company developed the acclaimed Retail Performer Software.

Setting Your Goals In Sales Training

It doesn’t matter if you are in an auto sales training, TV and radio sales, estate sales or time share sales in my conversations with sales management over the years, I’ve found that top producers all have one thing in common: they’ve taken the time to sit down and create goals for themselves and committed to sales training.

Even if during the sales seminar they were skeptical when they started the process of goal setting and planning, every one of them has become a true believer.

What Is A True Believer?

A “True Believer” isn’t someone who just works sales leads. They are someone who has been amazed by the incredible power of goal setting and the power of their own mind to be sold on the sales job. Every one of them has accomplished far more than they ever believed possible even if they are in mobile home sales or business sales they are the ones that move up to the top.

It didn’t stop with sales goals or material successes. This belief runs deep in all areas of their life. They’re convinced of the power of the mind and want share that with the world. They just seem to live in a world that favors them. There life has become an extension of their sales attitude.

Are You Happy With Your Current Training?

I defined happiness in training as, The progressive assimilation of worth while skills that will help me to reach my professional goals. As a sales trainer, I have been working progressively, step-by-step toward making permanent lasting impact on every sales professionals life.

This purpose alone can generate a continuous feeling of success and achievement within me, but if it doesn’t translate in your personal sales training it is all for not. The sales game has always been the more people you sell, the more successful you will be. As a sales professional, you have more control of this than almost every other profession. Geoff Thomas a sales associate is found of telling his sales staff, “Your raise is effective just as soon as you are.”

I know you can create an environment of happiness for your customer through fabricated rapport skills but a genuine joy for sales will close more deals than you can imagine. Without your skills of salesmanship, there would be nothing for company to do. When you walk out of the office in the evening, it is natural for you to feel like a winner. This goal is well entrenched in the sales experts I know. It also gives you the psychological momentum to overcome obstacles and plough through adversity as you reach your sales goals and assist others.

Sales training more than anything else should have you recharged as you go back out into the world. If the sales seminar doesn’t motivate you to work every sales lead more efficiently than why bother.

Does Your Training Connect With Your Values?

Every great trainer has a personal strategic planning process. It usually begins when you determine what you believe in and what you stand for – your values. If your values and the trainers match this is the glue that holds the core concepts of the sales training in place. These values shape our personality and our character as a sales professional.

Your virtues and qualities are the sum total of all your thoughts, actions and beliefs since the moment you were born. Your values, virtues and inner beliefs are the axle around which the wheel of your life turns. All sales improvement begin when you clarify your true values and commit yourself to live consistently with them. It’s been said, “You must stand for something, or you will fall for anything!” Great sales trainers know the value of the sales process and believe every prospect they meet can find value in their product or services.

When Attending A Training How Specific Should Your Goals Be?

To achieve success in training you will find trainees are successful because they’re very clear and committed to their values and specific outcomes from the training. Unsuccessful trainees are fuzzy or unsure they perhaps were forced to the training without a buy in from the sales manager.

When a training is a complete failure, you’ll find that the trainer didn’t clearly outline the real values of the training at all. These trainers stand for nothing and hope their audiences fall for everything.

While training the sales staff at Positive Changes, our sales staff had access to a wealth of resources designed to help them succeed in their goals. For instance, use the Sales Mastery series to stimulate your other-than-conscious and keep you on track with specific, clear and organized sales goals. They trained each franchise location to set goals for the day, week and the month. Using these mind trips within themselves helped them to enroll others into its use.

About the Author - Dr. Patrick Porter is an entrepreneur, award-winning author, and motivational speaker. His electrifying keynote speeches and seminars deliver the real life, nuts ‘n bolts concepts he used to take his business venture to astounding heights at patrickkporter.com

Sales Training Books - Games and Activities for Trainers

Games and Activities for Trainers
by Gary B. Connor and John A. Woods

Description
Games and other classroom activities can make training more fun, memorable, and effective. Sales Games and Activities for Trainers is the most useful—and complete—collection of games, role-plays, activities, and other skill-building exercises ever collected for increasing the effectiveness of sales training. There are games and activities covering all aspects of selling, from making presentations to handling objections.

Information
Contains interactive exercises covering all aspects of selling - from time management and organizational skills, to relationship building, questioning techniques and sales presentations. Paper.

Sales Training: Beginning Now

Sales training is something that you need. Opening the classified ads for jobs will tell you just how many positions there are in the sales world. Experienced sales individuals can make quite a bit of money. But, how can you get the training that you need to be in those ranks? Nothing is more frustrating than having an opportunity to get experience but being told that you need experience to get it. To help this, you can invest in getting sales training.

The Benefits

Sales training is beneficial. Depending on your sales field, you can find that having the knowledge you need behind the sale is what is going to drive you to the sales goals you have. Sales training truly does prepare you for every possible reaction a customer may have. It allows you to be prepared so that the first time you step out onto the sales floor, you are doing well.

Sales training can also help you to get that job. Positions that are open look favorably on individuals who have been trained. Many sales positions are available to individuals with less experience with sales training. This is a definite plus on the resume.

Getting The Sales Training

Getting the sales training that you need is not hard. There are excellent opportunities for you in just about every media. Even online sales training courses are available to help you reach the next level in your career. If you are not sure that there is something right out there for you, just take a look at community colleges. In fact, some of the businesses that need you will even provide sales training to you.

All in all, it takes a few weeks of solid learning to be ready to get out there and achieve your goals. Whether your goal is to get experience in sales to get an even bigger career in place or to simply to do well in the job that you have now, sales training can help you go from good to excellent.

Sales Training: The Ultimate Sales Test

Several years ago I was sitting in the office of a very successful businessman. He was the CEO of the company. He had finished interviewing me for a sales managers position.

As we approached the end of the interview he turned to me and told me that he was very impressed with me ...so far. He then paused dramatically and said,

"Show me that you know how to sell....SELL ME THIS PENCIL."

The next ten seconds seemed like an eternity to me. I had been selling for many years. However, this really put me on the spot.

"SELL YOU A PENCIL?" I thought. "I don't know a thing about PENCILS!"

It became evident that the entire interview was a mere formality to this exercise.

If I passed this test I would get the job. If I flubbed this, I wouldn't.

However in my panic there was a still small voice which relaxed me entirely and told me that I could easily do this.

Do you want to take a guess as to what I did?

Before I tell you what I did, let me tell you what I did not do.
The majority of salespeople are talkers. The public wrongfully believes that to be a great salesperson you need to talk, talk, talk. We have all been in situations where a sales person would go on and on ad naseum about something.

I can very quickly tell how experienced a sales person is by how much they talk.

Many sales trainers even emphasize this method of selling The number one complaint among customers is that salespeople "talk way too much!" The flip side of talking too much is that the salesperson is not listening to the customer.

On the other hand, great salespeople are great listeners.
What makes a great salesperson great is that they have learned to ask the questions that allow you to find out more about the customers wants and needs and then get the sale.

This is the CENTER of salesmanship.

If you look at the greatest salespeople of all time they are the ones who ASK the best questions.

I have learned in my many years of selling that I can sell anything, with very limited product knowledge, if I learn to ask the right questions.

A great example of this is Socrates, the Greek Philosopher.
If you study Philosophy you will notice that all of Socrates work is called "the Dialogues."

Socrates asked his pupils questions about life. He was not only seeking truth he was engaging the listener.

Isn't it true that your favorite teachers in school were the ones that engaged you in the educational process.

Chances are the reason they were so good and stand out in your mind is that they understood the power of questions.

The only way you can really engage the customer is if you ask questions.

Good selling is all about exercising good control on the customer and prove to them that you are genuinely interested in them. The only way you can accomplish these objectives is to ask the customer question that demonstrate that you really care about them.

You might imagine that with this type of insight, you too could sell anything to anybody.

I smiled brightly.

Looked the CEO square in the eye.

Paused.
Held the pencil up in the air and asked,
"So tell me about the type of pencils that you normally use here in your company?"

The CEO smiled back.

He knew that that by asking the question that I demonstrated that I was a professional salesperson.

Lesson Learned. God built you with two ears and only one mouth.

Ask.

Then listen.

Demonstrate to the customer that you genuinely care.

What does this have to do with marketing on the web?
Everything!

People want solutions, genuine relationships and feelings of goodwill.

Genuinely create that and you will have a business.
Ignore it and you will be chasing income.

About the Author - Harald Anderson is the cofounder of www.artinspires.com a leading online sports motivational posters gallery. His goal in life is to become the kind of person his dod already thinks he is artinspires.com

Sales Training - Common Mistakes

How many times has your company run sales training with no visible effect on the business after the training. There are many reasons that sales training fails, here are some of the most common:

No Clear Objectives
Many times we have been told by sales managers that there sales team can't close, so they obviously need training based on closing skills. When we actually analysis the issues, we normally find that the problem lies much earlier in the sales cycle. Often the issue concerns poor questioning and qualification skills which leads to the sales person trying to close the customer inappropriately, with a product/service that doesn't meet their real needs.

Another classic misunderstanding often occurs when a new product/service has been launched, but the sales team aren't selling it. Obviously, they need some product training - get product marketing to do a day's powerpoint detailing all the features and benefits of the new product. Unfortunately, the newly launched product may need to be sold at a higher level in the customer's organization, and the sales force have no experience of how to engage with customers at this level.

There are many examples of misaligned training. It is important to put thought into what you want to achieve and what analyse what the gap between where you are now and where you need to be is. This is often termed a Training Needs Analysis (TNA), often accompanied by a sales force assessment.

The other situation that occurs is when the training is seen as a catch-all day, where all the things you need the sales team to know are crammed into the day. No focus, no clear objectives and lots of brief sessions with no theme or linkage.

It's Not Sales Training
Sales training tends to be a catch-all phrase for any communication to the sales team. We have witnessed many times a technical trainer running through a very detailed PowerPoint presentation, originally developed to train the technical department. This is not sales training, it's not an effective way to train the sales force,but it is cheap based on existing training materials.

But if we stop and think for a minute, do we actually want our sales force to be as technical as our systems consultant, do we want them to engage our customers at a detailed technical level. Hopefully the answer is no, we actually want the sale team to be able to engage our customers at the level of their business needs and drivers. For them to be able to get their customers to commit themselves to action because of the size of the business problem and bridge between that problem and your solution. So the sales training required is around business drivers, case studies and role plays to re-enforce the skills.

Other examples include getting 200 sales people in the room and getting people to talk at them for a day without any interaction. Again this is cheap, but of almost no value. Good sales people are used to being active and challenged and doing things. Good sales training is built to engage the sales team, create lots of interaction and move at a pace that keeps them moving.

What Changes?
Your sales people have just attended a 3-day sales training course. It's theme was account strategy and opportunity management, how to develop a more long-term relationship with your customers. The sales people enjoyed the course, it was thought provoking, and gave them some tools to help change their behaviour.

They get back to their desks and their sales manager says, because of the training you are $60K down this week, get on the phone and get some business, even if you have to drag it from next week. So they phone their customers and try and force them to pull orders they had promised for next Tuesday into this Friday. We know today's business is crucial, but think of the affect this management style has on the sales people and the customers. What has changed, when will the new skills and behaviours discussed on the course ever be implemented.

This example is not uncommon, and raises issues around management buy-in (see No Executive Sponsorship) and whether thought has been given to how the required changes will actually happen.

Many people confuse objectives of a training program with the outcomes of the program. We use a simple definition: objectives are what the training course was developed to achieve; outcomes are what happen if the sales people actually take actions from the course and use the new skills or change their behaviour. If there is no mechanism to get from objectives to outcomes nothing will change.

No Executive Sponsorship
This section fits together with What Changes?. Real change in the sales force can only happen if there is a top-down desire throughout the management team to make change happen. In our view, this is the most common reason for sales training failing, no management buy-in to change their behaviour and how they work with their sales people.

There are really two situations where the whole organization gets fully behind the change program. Firstly, and most commonly, when the company is in real, and obvious, trouble. There is no doubt that change must take place. This can be competitive threat, a fundamental change in the market, an economic downturn, etc. Secondly, when the company is doing so well that it's velocity of growth is causing the business to stall. Not so common in the IT business today (maybe more common prior to the dot.com crash), but still a possibility in new, niche technologies.

Other examples include, when the sales team changing their behaviour also affects other departments who haven't been engaged and are not prepared to change their way of working. For example, sales are trained to drive more customers to order over the web, but the operations and order entry departments have not visibility of these changes, and no processes or systems to cope.

An Isolated Course
Sales training initiatives often start with grand ideals but crash and burn after the first course. We need to move the sales force from selling products in a transactional environment to selling managed services into the heart of our customers' businesses. The training program will consist of three phases:

* Phase I - will be a basic sales skills refresher to get everyone to a common level of understanding.
* Phase II - will look at the market and business drivers in our customers' businesses creating the need for managed services.
* Phase III - will focus on our managed service deployment, how we meet a customer's needs, the competitive landscape, and role plays to re-enforce the learning.

How many phases of the program do you think get rolled out? Well normally it ends up being just phase I, and the sales team are yet again put through Sales 101, with the promise of more advanced courses to come. This is one of the main gripes of sales with regard to training, we just keep doing the basics time after time.

To change this situation, there is a need for long-term executive sponsorship (see No Executive Sponsorship) and a business that is prepared to continue a training program even if the figures are bad. Now in reality, with quarterly reporting and OPEX freezes, maybe a business can never make such a commitment. We consider the implications of this in The Way Forward (see the link below).

No Sales Engagement
A technique that we have used on some training courses, is to ask each participant to write anonymously on a post-it the following information

* How well do you understand the need for this course.
* How positive are you about attending the course
* For each point, score 1-10, 1 being no understanding - not positive and 10 being full understanding - totally positive.
* For example - understanding 4, positive 3

We then create a scatter diagram on a flip chart, divide the diagram into 4 quadrants, and look at the result. What percentage of results do you think appear in the top right quadrant (good understanding and positive)? If you said less than 20% for most course, sadly you would be right.

This comes down to communication. Have your sales people been sent a crisp, precise email summarizing the need for change, why they are on the course, how it will benefit them and the business, any pre-work they need to do, and what the expected outcomes (changes) will be. If this comes from the executive sponsor, so much the better.

Too many training courses are run with sales people attending who have little idea why they are there, and even less interest in being there.

About the Author - John Fowler is a sales and management trainer designing and delivering workshops across the world specifically for the IT industry. John can be contacted on his website at Sales Training Consultants.

Nlp Training Vital For Sales Management

The secret to managing top sales professionals is basically made up of three main components. The first component is the sales managers themselves who need to have the know-how to sell, the second is a sales structure/model of a sales process that can be easily replicated or modified to suit the situation and the third is the ability to motivate great sales professionals and to keep them going.

In order for these three components to materialize, one needs exceptional skill in observing and analyzing human behaviour and providing feedback such which leads to agreement. In this article, we will understand how NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming can help develop such skills.

In the case of the first component, that is “knowing how to sell”, it’s a known fact that every competent sales manage must have started out as a decent sales professional and there’s no doubting the fact that they can effect sales. However, just because a person knows how to sell, it doesn’t mean that they are consciously aware of exactly how they sell. In other words, a great sales professional may not be able to achieve the desired results as a sales manager.

The key word in identifying just how your own process of doing something works and what and where the leverage points are, is ATTENTION. Basically, anything that comes naturally to us, it is managed on auto-pilot without conscious awareness and tends to become a behavioural pattern rather than a planned technique. But in order to teach your team how you achieve sales and to develop a good sales model you need to be able to consciously mark what you do to achieve results.

A good NLP practitioner training provides the necessary processes for creating a conscious model of how the mind of an individual works and how they act in order to consistently reach a specific target. This can be used to for developing one’s own skills or for teaching the same to other people. What it does is basically pay deliberate attention to multiple channels of behavioural traits and communication and then replicating selective patterns that are required to achieve a particular result.

Thus NLP trained sales managers are equipped to model not only their own sales processes with precision and in enough detail to be replicated by the staff, but also the sales techniques of their top sales professionals. NLP training gives them the ability to identify and use those components of a sale process which are invisible to the sales professionals themselves.

To conclude, a NLP Practitioner Course enables managers to replicate successful sales models and also gives them the edge in communicating and motivating their staff by noting and understanding the emotional developments taking place in the minds of their employees.

So, managers with NLP training are skilled at helping their staffs perform to their optimum abilities at all times. Thus in a nutshell, NLP helps to build agreements that build effective sales forces!