Getting the Best from your Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism?

Designing Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism

Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . .  being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.

There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should  Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.

Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.

Quality Sales Managers Matters

The focus of this blog is the first of two on  Improving Sales Effectiveness.  The first is the Quality of Sales Managers Matters. It is based on findings from the Conference Executive Board, PDS Groups and Huthwaite Research Group studies on sales management and coaching. All three agree on 5 Main Factors: (Listen to the Radio Show)

#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.

#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.

#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.

#4 Bottom-Line Impacts—Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)

#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.

What difficulties do firms face in getting Sales Managers coaching to impact results?