Should You Train Unmotivated Sales Reps?
Copyright (c) 2010 Mr. Inside Sales
I have been consulting with a lot of sales managers and business owners who need and want sales training, but they are concerned that the training might be wasted on some of their sales reps (sometimes as much as one-third of their team) because this portion of the reps are either resistant, or simply unmotivated.
“Why should I spend the money if one-third of my sales reps are going to tune out?” They ask me.
While I understand this is a reality for some sales teams (sad but true) what I remind these managers and business owners is that the training isn’t for “this group”, but rather for the other part of their team that is actually going to use and benefit from the training.
The improvement this part of the team makes will not only pay for the training in a week, but it will continue to pay dividends weeks and months after the training.
Let me put it another way:
Here is a test — let’s say you are a sales manager and you have 10 sales reps. Three of those reps are at 80% of quota, four are at 65%, and three are at 30%. Who should you spend the most time with?
Most managers say they should spend 70% of their time with the four reps at 65%, and 30% of their time with the other 30%. That’s wrong.
The correct answer is you should spend 60% of your time with the three reps at 80% of quota, and another 30% with the four reps at 65%, and just 10% babysitting the other three reps at 30%. Why?
Because you’re going to get the greatest return if you can get the three reps up to 100% of their quotas (and they will be more capable and motivated to do so anyway), and if you can move 65% up to 75 or 80% – great, but the three reps at 100% quota will be your biggest return (and easiest to do).
The other 30% — let’s face it, most of these reps aren’t even going to be there in six months, are they?
So the bottom line is that training always pays off and is worth it, if you’re focusing on who is going to benefit, and how that’s going to pay off for you.
So rearrange your time and resources and concentrate on the winners on your team who are going to give you the biggest return.
Provide them with the training and resources they need. Remember, they are the ones that make it all worthwhile.
Tags: Reps, Sales, Should, Train, Unmotivated
What Your Employees Should Learn in Sales Training Seminars
When managers send employees to training seminars, how do they know what their employees are really getting out of it? And how do they know if they are learning the right material? I believe that most workshops should be designed to help your employees develop in four different areas: skill sets, behavior, knowledge and creativity.
The Four Tiers of Learning:
- to be able to perform or do something specifically.
Sales training sessions should be able to help employees improve in certain activities, such as cold calling or prospecting. If you notice that your sales representatives are struggling in specific work aspects then send them to a tailored sales training event.
- to execute without fear or anxiety and consistently without thinking.
While employees may have the skill set to cold call, they may lack the confidence, and that can seriously deteriorate sales. So, it is important that sales training seminars help workers overcome some fear of sales that they may have.
- to know or understand.
Sales reps should know their product inside and out. They should know the features, advantages and benefits of their product as well as their competitors. Seminars need to give employees training techniques to going about learning all that they can. If you can increase product training, then employees can convey the product value more clearly to customers.
- to solve or address situations in nontraditional means.
Sales training should provide employees with ideas for communicating with their clients and prospect in new ways. Your reps should be learning new methods for staying in front of their customers. With so many similar businesses, it is important to stand out and be unique.
It is vital that your employees are able to improve in these four areas when they are sent to sales training seminars. However, the learning cannot stop here. Managers and supervisors need to continue to engage their employees after these sessions. Training reinforcement is important if your employees are going to keep implementing ideas that they learned.
Reducing Sales Rep Turnover-How Fast is The First Sale Made?
Employee turnover is rampant in certain forms of selling.
Specifically, telephone salespeople come and go at an astonishing rate. Helping my consulting clients, I’ve tried to staunch turnover that has ranged from 300% to 1200% per year.
I even offered a class across the country aimed at eliminating telephone turnover. It wasn’t successful for a host of reasons, none of which pertained to the quality of information or my techniques for keeping hires aboard.
Telephone sales managers simply couldn’t believe the turnover beast could be tamed. Some trainers also lamented that if I had a serious impact on reducing the number of new trainees required, their careers might be in jeopardy.
In this article I’m going to focus on one variable that is correlated with keeping the people you hire on the job, and not losing them in short order. It is the speed-to-sale, which is a statistic dealing with how quickly new sales reps close their first deal.
Here is the pivotal correlation: The longer it takes to earn the first order, the faster you’ll lose your people. The quicker they close a deal, the more likely it is that they’ll stay on the job, after that glorious milestone has been reached.
In an ideal world, you’d hire someone and on day one he’d close a deal.
We did this at Time-Life Books, more often than not. Our shifts were four hours in length, and our super-streamlined sales training took an hour and a half. This left two and a half hours for our reps to earn their first stripe.
Challenging, yes, but it certainly was attainable. And as a manager I’d do everything in my power to facilitate getting the first customer. Like a helicopter parent, I’d hover after the first few presentations were made, to answer questions and to offer tips. I’d promise they were getting closer and closer with every call.
And then, they were to ring a bell to be shown how to document their first deal.
By the end of that first shift, we knew who had the stuff of survival. We also recognized those that had the stuff of greatness. And those that had neither, typically, were the first to volunteer that perception, if they had no deal to write up on day one.
Sometimes, non-closers were invited to try again the next day. But only one in three would show-up, partly because they had internalized our high performance expectations.
The key is to show reps they have a future with you, and this cannot happen too quickly. Otherwise, they’ll infer if it doesn’t click quickly, it won’t click for them at all.
Make sure your training program is lean. Cut out any frills, just as we, at Time-Life didn’t teach how to document a sale until AFTER they had earned one. Why get into clerical issues if there is no demonstrable production to “write up?”
In one mutual fund situation, I audited part of a six-week training program. We cut it back to a single week, and even at that, it was filled with fluff.
Sales training suffers a lot from Parkinson’s Law. It requires about as much time as you’re willing to allow for it.
Be stingy and be smart. Include only the information that is essential to earning that first sale.
This means “product knowledge,” a black hole filled with swirling details, is de-emphasized, by design. Hold back most of your advice and war stories until after your new hires have shown the spark resulting in the first deal.
Help them to make a fast, first sale, and you will probably have made a lasting hire!
