“We Need Training…..”

The email came in, “We need training. We’ve seen your programs before, can you talk to us about a training program?”

I quickly arranged a discussion, “What kind of training do you need?”

“We need sales training,” came the response.

“What kind of sales training do you need?” I ask.

“Sales training, our people aren’t performing the way we expect,” came the response.

“Where are they struggling? What is the performance shortfall?” I ask.

“They are meeting their quotas and our growth goals,” came the response.

“Why aren’t they meeting those goals? Are they struggling in specific areas?” I ask.

“We just need sales training, our people need to sell better, how much does your training cost?” came the reply.

I wish this was an atypical call. Unfortunately, it’s too common. And I see similar examples in discussions on social media.

Unfortunately, the Sales Training industry, too often reinforces this thinking. “We provide sales training! Choose from our course catalog! F2F, virtual, elearning, we have it all. What subjects, prospecting, qualifying, deal strategies, account management, call planning/execution, objection handling, closing? Choose all those you want! Discounts start at 10 or more, call us for enterprise pricing…… We’ve trained 1000s of people, SaaS, industrial bathroom supplies, food processing, industrial products, retail banking, insurance, real estate, professional services. All get great value from our standard programs.”

And this training is supposed to fix performance problems….

Don’t get me wrong, these training programs can have a very powerful impact, we too have trained 1000s, but to have an impact it has to focus on the problems that need to be solved. If it doesn’t, however powerful the training, you are wasting your money.

Repeating myself, for training to have an impact has to be focused on the specific performance issues the customer seeks to address. And training, at least successfully implemented, never stands alone. Is it integrated into your GTM/customer engagement strategies? Does it support your systems, processes, tools, and will these support and reinforce your training? Do your managers understand why the training is needed and are they committed to coaching and reinforcing the training? Do your people understand why you are inflicting this on them and what it means to them. Or is it just taking them away from their jobs for a couple of days, and they have to sneak in calls/emails during breaks.

Fortunately, in the call starting this post, the organization had been transforming tremendously. They had made a number of acquisitions in a couple of years, they had shifted roles, responsibilities, territories tremendously. They had changed their GTM strategies and were targeting different sets of customers. People weren’t using the tools or were using the tools differently, as a result it was difficult for managers to track and understand performance.

We talked to some of the sellers trying to assess their skills and needs. In general, their skills were pretty good–of course I could see areas of improvement, but we reconfirmed, they didn’t understand the strategies, responsibilities, and their jobs. Stated differently they weren’t bad sellers, they knew the products. They just didn’t know what, why and who they should be focusing their efforts—or how their jobs had changed.

At the end, the customer came to realize, people didn’t understand the company strategies, their role in executing their company strategies, their jobs and their support infrastructure.

The customer came to realize, training in a new methodology (choose any), training in specific sales skills, none of this would address the key issues impacting performance.

The sales training we agreed on was helping the people understand the strategies, their roles, their jobs and how to best execute those in working with customers. Later, we might find training in a methodology, training in deal management, or account management, or skills might be needed. But those weren’t standing in the way of sales performance.

Do you need training?

Afterword:  Here is the AI generated discussion of this post.  Enjoy!