Yep or Nope?

 

How are you training your sales force? Who is training your sales force? Presented here is outline overview AND the detail blueprint of what’s needed for your sales force to achieve your sales objectives (and their career satisfaction objectives). Give yourself a Yep or Nope for each of the outline subjects — then move on to the more challenging details on the next pages.

Training Outline…

Yep Nope

🮮 🮮 Selling skills — Asking questions and establishing relationships — the basic science of selling.

 

🮮 🮮 Personal development skills — Positive attitude, goal achievement, listening — education to make the person better.

 

🮮 🮮  Presentation and communication skills — How to speak, how to present, and how to write.

 

🮮 🮮  Personal promotional skills — How to market yourself so that others will call you first.

 

🮮 🮮  Customer service skills — How to be memorable enough to create word-of-mouth advertising and unsolicited referrals.

 

🮮 🮮 Customer uses of product and services skills — How the customer uses what we sell.

 

🮮 🮮  Customer perspective skills — How the customer views things and how the customer wants to be treated.

 

Here’s the challenge — Rate your own training reality. Check the YEP-NOPE boxes if you do or don’t provide these items to your sales team. Now check your turnover rate. Now check your cost-of-replacement rate.

 

Training Detail Self-evaluation…

Yep Nope

🮮 🮮 Do I put my new salespeople in the field to work with a variety of people including management? If you want them to work in the field, let them work with lots of different people — including managers.

 

🮮 🮮 Do my salespeople spend 15-minutes reading sales information? Reading about one new sales skill a day is 250 new sales skills a year.

 

🮮 🮮 Do my salespeople spend 15-minutes listening to sales information? A new set of sales lessons monthly — listen to them in the car.

 

🮮 🮮 Do I provide time-management training? Time capturing — a new form of time management that changes patterns of here-to-fore wasted time from watching inane television programs and converts the time to productive “career-enhancing and money earning” time.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have a president’s message video? A video of the president’s message of welcome, statement of philosophy, and challenge to succeed.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have a video of customers’ feelings? What they like about doing business with your company — why they buy, why they have remained loyal, and most important — what they expect from a sales rep.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have a video with the top ten uses of our product or service? The sales rep needs to know how it’s used, not what it does.

 

🮮 🮮 Do my new salespeople spend a day with at least three customers? Select three customers that are good long-term examples of the successful relationships we build. Learn how to sell by understanding product use.

 

🮮 🮮 Do my new salespeople spend the day in other people’s jobs at our business? Learning about your business first-hand — offices like accounting, shipping, design, and order processing provide insight as to how the rest of the team responds to customers.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have subscriptions to the trade magazines of our company’s industry and the trade magazines of our top 5 customers? (also get on the mailing list for their company newsletter as well). Trade publications make you industry smart.

 

🮮 🮮 Do my salespeople attend our annual sales trade show? There should be mandatory attendance of your annual industry trade show.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have a pre-planned personal development learning schedule for three years? The first course should be business writing skills.

 

🮮 🮮 Do our salespeople ALL belong to Toastmasters? Become an active member of Toastmasters. You must learn to present as you learn to sell.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we make weekly recordings of sales presentations and phone calls for self-evaluation? The only way to know if your learning is having any effect is to record the results.

 

🮮 🮮 Do we have weekly sales meetings (that include a sales skill lesson)? The weekly meeting is a place to learn new answers as well as discuss past successes and challenges.

Rate your answers — Each NOPE is 5 points — If you have more than 25 points, your sales force will not meet (let alone exceed) your goals. You can change your level of success by making a commitment to change the way you educate and train your sales team.

 

Whew! That’s a commitment — on both parts. The company to offer the skills and the salesperson

to learn them.

How did you score?