Sales Rep Training Workshops

How do you measure the success of your company’s sales training?

Do you count the number of people who managed to stay awake during your presentation? Do you attempt to quantify it by seeing how many positive reviews you get on the comment cards your attendees leave behind?

While those measures may give you a feeling for how successful or unsuccessful your sales training session was in the immediate term, the metric that really counts is the number of sales your reps close in the weeks and months after they receive their training. When you’re evaluating your sales training, it’s equally important to consider how it changed your team’s behaviors and whether it contributed to the creation and maintenance of a vibrant sales culture within your organization.

According to ES Research, the majority of sales training has little impact after just four months have passed since the training occurred. With companies throughout America spending billions of dollars on sales training annually, it can be costly if the training you provide doesn’t produce lasting results.

As a general rule, the best indicator of what someone is going to do in the future is the individual’s past behavior. If your sales reps haven’t responded to your training sessions by producing more sales, do you think offering the same or similar training will produce a different short- or long-term result?

Reasons for unsuccessful sales training

To create a sales rep training program that’s effective over the long haul, you need to be familiar with the reasons why sales training often fails, so you can avoid them. Here are some of the most common reasons that sales training isn’t successful:

1. Lack of Reinforcement A lot of sales training occurs as a one-time event that takes place over one, two or three days. Even if your attendees enjoy the event, it’s likely they will forget what they learned if the material isn’t reinforced in the weeks and months after the training takes place.
2. Lack of Accountability A corporate sales training program has to have built-in measures of accountability for the members of your sales force. If your sales reps aren’t held accountable, you won’t be able to take action to change their behaviors and improve their individual results and your company’s overall sales.
3. Lack of Clear Objectives Before you offer workshops for sales reps and sales teams, you have to know the specific results you want your sales training to produce. Your objectives need to be based on research, not just your personal thoughts about where your business should be in a few months or years. During your training, you need to explain your goals and the action steps your team needs to take to achieve them.
4. Lack of Engagement People often learn things faster when you involve more of their physical senses in the learning process. This means that if you engage your sales staff in your training by having them get on their feet, participate in case studies, perform in scripted dramas, get involved in small group and role-plays they may learn and retain more than they would if they only listened to a presentation as passive audience members. Truly engaged training programs such as those delivered by PBR aren’t just fun and challenging, they’re relevant for those who are just starting their sales careers as well as seasoned professionals.