Why Top Salespeople Hate Sales Training
Stop treating your team like an audience.
They are your army, train them well.
Can I confess something to you? I love leading sales training.
In fact, the person I attribute teaching me how to sell would say, “If you want to learn something, teach it.” Such sage advice. Even today, I am planning my team’s August sales summit and I am super excited to deliver the newest nuggets of my best research efforts.
The only problem? My top performers HATE sitting through most trainings.
Sure, they will tell me that it was helpful, interesting, and all the things you tell your boss, but, secretly, they are cursing the lost time staring at a powerpoint.
This dilemma is shared by many sales managers I know. They are constantly selling their teams on why training is needed or they make it mandatory. Even then, most reps find reasons to duck in and out of the training with client calls.
Are all trainings like this? Of course not. Some raise the game of your team.
So what do you do?
I have divided this topic into 2 halves to help fix your trainings and get your top performers back on board. This week we start with TRAIN LESS.
TRAIN LESS
Become a filter on the quantity and content of every training.
Training is expensive, like you write a check and take the rainmakers off the street, expensive.
The simple truth is that most sales trainings are filled with stuff that is not relevant to your team or worse, it is repackaging stuff that everyone knows.
So what do you do?
You say NO…. a lot.
You say no to the internal division leaders who want to review something that can be put in an email. You say no to vendor trainings that are not at the top of your priority list. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to give a 40 minute talk to kick off my team summit?”
Finally, say no to creating a presentation around your favorite new sales book. Business books are like movies, you may want to tear up, but your team will want to walk out.
Oh yeah, if your sales training has a slide in it that says, “Back to the Basics”, “The Steps of The Sale”, or “Open And Closed-Ended Questions”:
1. Print it out.
2. Ask Bill for his lighter
3. Go to the office kitchen
4. And watch that time-waster burn in the trash can
5. Then go back to your computer and delete your browser history… it never hurts.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Stop treating your team like an audience. They are your army, train them well.
Once you have trimmed the unnecessary trainings out, take the time you saved and do two things.
1. Train your team to a hyper-technical level on what they are selling - Confident experts always sell more.
2. Get involved with your reps on stalled accounts - Bosses get more email responses.