| section vi | Sharing Knowledge on Sales Training Efforts The ASTD/Intrepid/i4cp State of Sales Training study gave participants an opportunity to share their “best practices” and “lessons learned,” and dozens of respondents took advantage. The sharing of best practices and lessons learned can be a great benefit to organizations when it’s done internally, and a 2007 survey from CSO Insights suggested that such sharing doesn’t occur often enough. That survey found that half of responding organizations reported their ability to share best practices across the sales force needs improvement, and only 10 percent said their ability exceeds expectations in such knowledge-sharing. That study further noted, “When asked specifically about the ability to share best practices, only 14 percent of the needs improvement group reported such practices were easily accessed; the same response from the exceeds expectations group was 51 percent” (Dickie & Trailer, 2007, pp. 132-133). In the spirit of such knowledge-sharing, following is a brief description of some of the ideas shared by the respondents to the study.
Best Practices Of the 531 survey participants, nearly 120 of them responded to an open-ended question on sales training best practices. Four noteworthy themes emerged.
Be dedicated to customers’ challenges, needs, and preferences. Time and again, participants reiterated the view that the most successful sales outcomes are rooted in an intimate understanding of customers’ challenges, needs, and preferences. For training purposes, that emphasis translates to relationship building: “understanding client’s challenges [and] priorities and providing solutions that fit the culture of the organization, not just training on sales skills and product skills.” Another respondent added, “People buy from people they like. Therefore, I spend an inordinate [amount of] time on professional attitudes. The relationship is everything. Most ‘selling’ is accomplished without ever discussing product. People want to buy. They don’t need to be sold.”
Encourage team members to teach each other. Sales teams sometimes take a teach-their-own tack, sharing their daily experiences about what worked and what didn’t. Some also mentioned strategies such as the shadowing of more experienced peers or managers, reviews of case studies, role-playing scenarios, and sharing new knowledge gained from outside sources. As one respondent described it, sales team members who attend seminars “are required to return to the office with a presentation of the most salient points from the event and teach it to the rest of the group.” Another respondent described a more radical approach incorporating simulations: We “want to take sales people out of [their] comfort zone and set challenges like selling as a street vendor, for example.” Helping each other learn also underlies the coaching and mentoring efforts that multiple respondents said their firms utilize. Some companies tap their managers for coaching duties, while others rely on sales team veterans to deliver on-the-job training and coach their less experienced peers. One survey participant explained that each salesperson in their organization alternates responsibility for giving a monthly presentation on selling skills to other team members.
Set the right goals. “Setting the right goals is a major key for success,” declared one respondent. That sentiment was echoed by others, some of whom noted specific sales process components, such as new contact quotas, follow-up procedures, and proposal ratios. Others commented more generally on such factors as the need to fully understand organizational sales challenges as a precursor to setting learning goals.
Emphasize the importance of continuous learning. Many of the respondents noted the importance of continuous learning. In some cases, sales professionals are encouraged to incorporate learning approaches such as training CDs, online learning tools, reviews of RSS feeds, and organizational knowledge management systems.
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