Sales training is big business. Every company participates in it, and many new and intuitive ways of training Reps have popped up over the last decade or two, but something isn’t working. The state of the Sales Rep is in a continued decline, the humble sales presentation is losing effectiveness, and buyers are starting to find Sales Reps less and less meaningful to the sales process.
Today we examine where and why Sales training is and is not effective, and how to rebalance the scales of buyer-seller relationships in the face of declining motivation, and greater investment in training.
Summary
- Sales training is big business, and serves an important role in effective onboarding of new Reps.
- There are generally only a few ‘types’ of training, and as investments in these are increasing, the overall effectiveness is declining.
- The majority of Sales Reps actually rate themselves poor at several key selling skills, and this is impacting overall motivation and self-worth.
- Interestingly, the things that Reps lack are also the exact same things they are trying to improve.
- Thus, there exists a gap in the extent of how useful Sales training can actually be.
- Two core challenges make up the bulk of why and how Reps are struggling in 2015, but it all stems from a growth in information.
- Getting over the hump of sales knowledge and effectiveness doesn’t even stem from training, though it’s easy to understand why many companies would resort to more training when the objective of training is put into perspective.
The Use of Sales Training
Sales training is big business, and how couldn’t it be, 20 billion dollars is spent annually on various types of sales training in the USA alone (Source: KZOinnovations, 2014) due in part to the fact that 1 in 8 full time jobs in the USA are sales positions, and that this is set to increase, as 69% of B2B organizations stating they intend on increasing the size of their sales staff numbers in 2015. (Source: CSO insights, 2015)
This isn’t a new phenomenon either, training for the purpose of sales acceleration is a well-known and well-used strategy among at least 94% of corporations. (Source: IKO Systems, 2015) The issue is that it doesn’t seem to be working well, and rather than some semblance of real sales enablement solutions, the reality is a declining state of Sales Rep effectiveness, and, more investment in sales training.
Somewhere along this path of declining Sales Rep performance, and increasing spending on sales training, there exists a gap in what is currently achievable with sales training, and what everyone hopes to achieve.
Why use sales training
Before I get ahead of myself here, allow me to clarify and state that sales training is NOT a dead stick effort, and I am by no means suggesting anything along those lines. There is certainly an element of strong sales performance management inherent in a great and ongoing training program.
The issue is that many of the problems being faced by Sales Reps stem directly from the go-to solution of using sales training for any and all issues being seen in the sales process.
We’ll talk about those specific issues a little later on in the article, but down to the point in question, why use sales training. Here’s a quick breakdown of the core reasons being taught:
- To improve sales performance
- To improve self-management
- To improve selling skills
- To improve customer relations
- To reduce turnover
- To improve employee morale
What you have here is a solid, easily defensible list of reasons to commit more resources to sales training in the hopes of greater sales performance in a broad set of categories.
Great, except much of this is very vague, and as you have probably imagined, bears little fruit when talking about Sales Reps who have been with the company for a long period of time, already understand the product, and are in dire need of something that helps them sell. What we at Skura like to call ‘real sales enablement’.
Types of Sales Training
Training can happen in a number of ways:
- Formal in class lessons
- These are very costly, generally done in groups, and great for onboarding
- Informal progressive learning
- This is coaching and recommendations from Management over time, these are much less costly, more relevant to the moment in question, and better for Reps who are already on boarded
The issue of formal learning is that much of it gets forgotten quite quickly, especially as days turn to weeks turn to months, it is difficult to expect Sales Reps to commit class time to recall memory.
Progressive learning suffers from inconsistent education, wrong lessons at the wrong time, and a risk of wasted time and motivation.
Some companies have started to use video training as an intuitive, streamlined, and quick way to get the message out. Video training is like a mix of both learning types, as it combines the benefits of both with few of the drawbacks.
Video training is also something that isn’t new, Colleges and Universities across the USA have been experimenting with online video lectures and classes in an effort to cut the costs of tuition, and trim expenses overall. (Source: CNBC, 2014)
The Cost of Sales Training
A publication from Learn Core breaks down some of the skyrocketing costs of sales training in the USA from various sources.
Money Cost: Sales Training programs can cost upwards of $5000 per participant, and this is a reflection of added costs, not including the labour costs of having them on the team, or the administrative costs, and anything else that may be included with another staff member on the roster.
Time Cost: The amount of time needed to train and onboard a Sales Rep can be as much as 55 weekdays, that’s 11 weeks of selling time that a Rep is being paid for, but doesn’t have any return on investment.
Money ROI: The investment in Sales Training is much like any other investment, you expect some kind of measurable return on your input. This is usually seen along the lines of increased sales for the company. The issue is that only 46% of Reps made their personal quota last year, meaning that the expected ROI produced about half the expected results.
Time ROI: Remember that Sales Reps don’t just make calls, they incur an expense on the company every hour that they sit in the office. It can take up to 381 days for a new hire to be as effective as a full time tenured Sales Rep. That’s over a year since hire!
(Source: LearnCore, 2015)
[RELATED CONTENT] The topics covered in this blog can be seen in more detail, including ways to improve sales rep motivation and some insights into the science of persuasion. If you're interested in this topic I suggest downloading the FREE whitepaper below for more on the topic.
The Outcomes of Sales Training
Money and time ROI aside, there is an expected outcome of investing in Sales performance management programs like formal and informal training. This is typically some kind of improvement in the sales process, or, an enhancement in sales presentation skills leading to more closing, and etc.
After all, the single stated reason for conducting sales training is “to teach sales what it needs to know in order to effectively sell the product”, and it hasn’t changed much. (Source: Trainingindustry, 2009)
Keep this quote in mind as we progress through this subject.
Several sources are in a common agreement that Sales Reps are just plain missing the mark in a variety of areas that all relate to effective Sales Rep performance.
- 87% of Corporate Executive Board members reported that their sales training programs were either “somewhat effective” or “not effective” at changing Reps behaviour (Source: Corporate Executive Board, 2015)
- 40% of Reps lack the necessary skills to have customer empathy and understand customer pain (Source: SalesForce, 2013)
- 58% of prospects believe that Sales Reps do not have the ability to answer their questions in an effective manner (Source: meetmaestro, 2014)
If it isn’t immediately apparent, the majority of these issues stem from various kinds of awareness, such as behavioural awareness, empathetic or pain awareness, and even inquiry awareness. The issue is that these things cannot be taught easily, moreover, as time passes, these kinds of repeated failures on the part of Sales Reps significantly damage overall confidence and belief in one’s self.
It really boils down to a dangerous concoction. What you have is Sales Reps who are struggling to maintain the effectiveness of their sales process, and, more training investment that seemingly fails to improve the skills and behaviour of Sales Reps.
As a result of this, many Reps are actually rating themselves quite poorly at various key Sales Rep skills. (Source: BrainShark, 2013)
- 85% give themselves a B grade of less for their prep work
- 78% give themselves a B grade or less for their presentation skills
- 79% give themselves a B grade of less for their follow-up skills
The fact that Sales Reps would rank themselves poorly for these skill sets only enhances the challenges of trying to maintain and improve the sales performance management practices of the company.
The Challenges with Sales Training
As I’ve previously said, I’m not vilifying sales training, there simply appears to be a gap in the extent of what can actually be achieved with more sales training being lobbed at Sales Reps in the longer term.
So, let’s break down the core challenges then. As of 2011, a study revealed that the average person receives 5 times more information than in 1986. This roughly equates to 174 newspapers worth of information, every single day. (Source: DailyMail, 2011)
When we look at what’s happening with the sales process today, we can see that there are a common set of challenges impacting the established selling paradigm, and they all have to do with more information. (As the above paragraph outlines)
But where is this information coming from, and what is it doing?
1) A major growth in digital content marketing
Marketing teams at the vast majority of companies are creating more content than ever before. Anywhere between 86% and 96% of firms are participating in the creation of digital content and use of content marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2014)
Digital content marketing is an excellent strategy, and if paired well with digital content management software, can enable not only Marketing teams, but also Sales Reps, in delivering topically relevant and highly enticing discussions.
Marketers use marketing automation programs as a way to facilitate content management and the distribution of content to the right visitors.
What happens with Sales Reps tends to be less than positive, as the majority manage their content in increasingly creative ways that lack any real capability of targeted relevancy. This is because most Reps are managing their content in email attachments and personal hard drives, both of which are unreliable and poor for on-the-fly interactions.
Producing more relevancy is something we’ve covered in detail a couple week ago, and can be found at this link.
Now back to the issue. We have an increase in content that Reps struggle to make sense of, and,
2) Growth of an Empowered Buyer
As Marketers create more content, they better inform the buyer and allow for more automated decision journeys where buyers self-educate on issues.
You would think that Sales Reps welcome this kind of change, as it would mean that Reps can spend less time trying to educate the buyer, and more time trying to make total sales solutions.
The reality is far from this truth, as what really occurs is more complex selling scenarios, buyers with information that could be inaccurate, out of context, or out of date; and an overall reduction in the value many buyers place in Sales Reps.
Much of this stems from content marketing growth on a wide scale, and conflicting information being published from companies in the same industry.
Summary
But essentially, we have two factors weighing in on Reps. More content is being created and it’s increasingly difficult for Reps to manage this information growth, and buyer are getting smarter, progressing their own decision journeys, and complicating the trust based selling process. Both are heavily ingrained in the growth of information.
How Sales Reps Learn
It has been studied that only about 10% of what a Sales Rep learns comes from their training, so the method detailed above encompass a minority of Rep skill and knowledge. The rest comes from: (Source: Aslantraining, 2014)
- Sales Tools
- Marketing Collateral
- Internal Experts
And the core things that a Sales Rep want to accomplish with this effort generally stems around these areas:
- Where should I spend my time
- What do I need to do to prep for my call
- From whom/where can I get the answers to the prospects questions
It’s interesting once laid out, but the exact areas where we established that Reps are struggling (areas of common awareness to be effective), is exactly the same as the known information desires of Sales Reps.
What is Needed from Sales Training
Once taken on a whole, what is really needed is greater awareness into the buyer for effective selling, and some motivation.
Confidence and drive are essential skills of Sales Reps, and thus, motivation is a key enabler. As we’ve seen, Reps rate themselves quite poorly in overall sales performance management skills, meaning that many Reps are probably poorly motivated.
I don’t want to spend any time on motivation today, I’ll leave that for a later blog because it’s a whole can of worms in itself.
But let’s take a crack at awareness, since it’s not only needed in today’s complex sales environment, but also desired by Reps.
Recall this quote from before, about the goal of sales training:
“To teach sales what it needs to know in order to effectively sell the product”,
As Sales Reps move beyond their probation period, what they really need to know in order to sell the product effectively is greater buyer insights and awareness.
Unlocking Buyer Insights and Awareness
When Reps have mountains of content they can’t make sense of, and a more complex buyer with unknown variables, what they need is a way to know exactly what the buyer wants to hear.
Sure, when I say it like that I know exactly what you’re thinking; how?
This is where sales analytics software and end-of-funnel consumption insights come into play.
End-of-funnel insights are exactly what they sound like, insights from the end of the sales funnel. This means being able to take the consumption data that happens after a MQL leaves the marketing automation system and gets passed to Sales Reps for further development.
Sales analytics software allow Reps to apply the consumption of content by buyers to the CRM system. The result is buyer awareness that not only further optimizes the Marketing team, but also informs the Sales Rep about buyer interest.
This kind of data is facilitated through digital sales content management software, much the same way that Marketing automation programs do for Marketing teams.
If this concept is brand new to you, I can completely understand if you’re having difficulty wrapping your head around it, and I invite you to check out the white paper below for more information on the subject.
If you want to learn more about the way in which sales rep motivation impacts the sales process, and how to optimize the capacity of motivaiton among your sellers, check out this blog about applying the science of motivation for real sales enablement.
