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The Key to Building a World-Class Sales Organization

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Sales Manager Development

The Key to Building a World-Class Sales Organization

I recently had a meeting with a dynamic VP of Sales. Lisa just took on a new role with a high growth technology company. She Sales Executivecame from a mature industry and is now competing at a much quicker pace. Lisa shared her vision of building a world-class sales organisation and asked me where she should start.

Just like a well-built house, a sales organisation requires a solid foundation. The foundation of a world-class sales organisation is the front line sales management team. Whether your goal is to be excellent at execution, to rapidly adopt new technology, hire and develop top performers or have a highly engaged sales team, the strength of your front line sales management team will make the difference between exceeding your goals and mediocre performance.

Lisa has been progressive in her investment in sales training and development. In her last role, she outperformed her competitors over the last three years. She believes that training and development have been one of the key factors for success.

Lisa was intent on developing her sales management team. She asked me where to begin. I shared the research with her that found that highly effective sales coaches produce 19% sales in comparison to their less proficient counterparts and the number one sales management activity that impacts performance is coaching.

We talked about how she might go about building the foundation for a world-class sales organisation. She was eager to see what training programs were available for her sales managers. I told her to “slow down” as it isn’t that easy. Most sales management training is ineffective.

I share the following link to an interesting article titled “The #1 Reason Leadership Development Fails”. In this insightful article, Mike Myatt clearly lays out a case why training is the #1 reason that leadership development fails.

Many of the solutions available for developing strong sales coaches are ineffective.

Apttus

I will be speaking about the Pitfalls of Traditional Sales Management Training:

  1. It ‘s hard to assess sales managers coaching skills.
  2. The success of any skills training is limited by the “if you don’t use it, you lose it” effect. Without ongoing reinforcement, 90% of the learning’s are lost within 30 days.
  3. The next level of sales management lacks the skills and the time to support ongoing reinforcement.
  4. There is no management accountability post training.
  5. There is a lack of pull through tools to help the sales manager apply their new skills in the field.

Overcoming the Pitfalls of Sales Management Training

As a progressive sales executive, you are determined to develop your sales managers. Here’s how we can help you overcome the pitfalls I just described: organizationsAssessing Sales Manager’s Coaching Skills

Assessing Sales Manager’s Coaching Skills

These days with access to so much organisations are in measure mode. However when it comes to assessing sales manager’s skills it is very difficult for sales executives to gauge. If you want to set up a world-class training and development program it is important if there is a benchmark prior to initiating a program and a follow-up assessment at the end of the program.

To overcome the measurement pitfall, we have developed the Sales Coaching Effectiveness Snapshot™ to assess your sales managers on 6 dimensions of effective coaching.

Reinforcement/Coaching Support

The best way to develop sales leaders is by coaching and mentoring them.

When your sales reps take a training course the responsibility for reinforcement lies with their district sales managers.

What happens when a district sales manager is trained? Who is responsible for reinforcing the training? Will the VP of Sales do it? Will the trainer be responsible?

If no one assumes this responsibility, you can kiss your training dollars goodbye.STAR Laser Coaching

The key to success is the post-training reinforcement of skills and behaviours. One of the most effective ways to do this is with short and focused coaching sessions. These sessions allow your sales manager who might have a particular issue to contact a coach for reinforcement and problem solving. We offer 30-minute Laser Coaching sessions to reinforce training and ensure that our participants can successfully apply the concepts in the field.

Accountability

For the sales managers, we have created a couple areas of accountability.

Firstly the sales managers are responsible for developing coaching plans with each of their reps post training.

We will also reassess, using the Coaching Effectiveness Snapshot™ 6 months post training to see how they have progressed as coaches.

We engage the VP of Sales in the process by having them commit to allocating at least 1 hour with every sales manager where they will meet to share best practices. Sales managers love this form of learning. They share their successes and present case studies to get feedback and insights from their colleagues.

Lastly, coaching the VP of Sales to effectively role model and support the training completes the reinforcement process. The bottom line is that coaching reinforces training that leads to the establishment of permanent skills and behavioural changes.

Pull Through Tools

We have developed a number of simple yet effective coaching tools to help the sales managers become more effective coaches.

Coaching without a plan or goal is flavour of the day coaching. We provide sales managers with a planning document for the rep to develop their own coaching goals and plan of action.

We help sales manager build an annual coaching plan by focusing on how much time they spend in the field and with whom.

Conclusion:

After reviewing how to develop successful sales managers, Lisa can see how she can achieve her vision of building a world-class sales organization. She understands that the best place to start is to develop/hire great sales managers who are effective coaches.

In reflecting back, Lisa realized that when she utilized traditional sales management training it had little impact on creating strong sales leaders.

Lisa agreed that a more comprehensive approach including assessing, training, coaching and coaching tools would have the greatest impact on creating successful sales managers.

 

Sales Management Training Revolution

 

 

The post The Key to Building a World-Class Sales Organization appeared first on Star Results.


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