Donna
Siegel

Using The Web To Increase The Impact Of Sales Training

Traditional sales training -- everyone gathered together in a classroom for a day or two -- is effective. It's also expensive and pulls people out of the field. Now that most sales reps have Internet access, you have a new way to boost sales skills between classroom events, Using The Web To Increase The Impact Of Sales Training.

Through these sales training events, reps develop insights into the company's sales process, products and services; they evaluate their own skills and figure out methods for their own improvement; and they motivate themselves to work hard, work smart and achieve high levels of sales success.

While these types of sales training experiences are useful in getting people started on the right track and re-emphasizing important sales skills, they often end up disappointing the executives that initiated them in the first place. As the results are tabulated in terms of increased revenue or numbers of customers, the growth can be well behind the goals.

There are many factors that can impact sales results, but one of the major areas to review is the sales training plan. If the plan consists of a series of separate training events with significant time gaps between events, the current training curriculum may need some revisions. It may not be able to deliver the intended results.

Without Reinforcement, Sales Skills Deteriorate

To understand the problem better, you need to go back to that initial training experience. Reps often emerge from such programs invigorated by the experience and the new ideas; they're ready to put their new skills to work. But after an initial brief increase in productivity, something seems to go wrong. Productivity begins to deteriorate and often returns to the pre-training level.

There are several reasons this deterioration of skills takes place. Reps leave sales training with great enthusiasm for their newfound insights. Maybe they've picked up a new approach to assessing a prospect's needs or a great way to answer an objection. Whatever they left the training session planning to use, the experience often goes like this:

• I'm going to use that new approach on my next prospect call.
  
  
• Hmm, the prospect didn't respond the way he or she was supposed to, according to the training session. (The prospect didn't attend the session, so he didn't know the script.)
  
  
• Let me try that again. I must have done it wrong.
  
  
• Something's not right. I'm just not getting it.
  
  
• I don't think that technique works for me. Let me go back to that other technique I was using. At least I know what to do with it.

When reps discover that it's much harder than they expected to change their sales techniques, they often give up and return to their former methods of selling -- losing much of the benefit and a great deal of their motivation from attending the training session.

Tools For Reinforcing Sales Skills

Several tools can be used to reinforce sales skills learned in sales training courses and to produce consistent increases in productivity:

• Mentoring by senior sales reps
• Coaching by sales management
• Product update sessions with product developers or marketing executives
• Sales meetings
• Follow-up on training sessions
• Videotapes, books and audiotapes

The goal of these tools is to continue the focus on improving individual selling techniques begun in the initial training and re-emphasized in subsequent major training events.

Recently, another option has been introduced -- using the company's own Web site to reinforce sales training. While the Web is often viewed as a great selling or customer service tool, it's also an excellent environment for sales training.

Benefits Of Using The Web To Reinforce Sales Training

While other methods for reinforcing sales training concepts and skills are likely to contribute to an increase in sales productivity, the Web offers some unique advantages that other methods cannot offer. Web-based sales training reinforcement is:

Time efficient
Sales reps can go to the Web and work with the information placed there without being slowed down by other reps. The reinforcement training also does not require time from other people such as senior reps and managers, whose time may be much more limited.

Portable
Because sales reps can access the site from anywhere they happen to be, they can as easily use the training materials from a hotel or airport as they can from their own office.

Interesting
Reps find the Web to be a valuable source of information and are more likely to spend time looking at this information than at the same information in a different format.

Connected to other valuable resources
Reps who come to the Web site for one piece of information tend to follow links to other valuable information they might need.

How To Use The Web To Reinforce Sales Training

Here's how it might work if you were to establish Web-based sales training reinforcement for your company:

1. Examine your current sales training curriculum to identify the major skills, process steps or other important components of your training.
   
   
2. Share this list with senior sales and marketing staff to determine the payoff areas for reinforcement. Determine skills that the reps are having the most difficult time using.
   
   
3. From these, choose the highest-priority payoff skills to reinforce. (From our experience, two areas that are most likely to come up are listening and asking open-ended questions.)
   
   
4. Pick one of the high-priority payoff skills to begin your reinforcement program. Assemble information from your existing sales training curriculum into a format that can be used for the Web. (Or ask for assistance from your Webmaster.)
   
   
5. Have your Webmaster put this information on your Web site, tied with links to additional information you might want the sales reps to be thinking about, such as a new product's description or a new procedure.
   
   
6. E-mail all of your sales reps an announcement that this material is available, and encourage them to go to that area of the Web site.
   
   
7. Change the information every week or two so there is always something new for the reps to use to continue to refine their skills.

Types Of Materials That Work Best

It should be easy to adapt your current sales training materials for use on the Web. Some guidelines to help you edit your existing materials into effective Web learning materials:

Keep the training information relatively short
Salespeople are often reluctant to read longer pieces of information directly from their computers. You may find it useful to take your training material on any single skill and cut it down to the most important points.

Make it fun
Think of ways to make your short piece of training information entertaining. Add humor or use interesting graphics or illustrations, to name just a couple of techniques you can use.

Put it in their world
Use brief stories, based on real situations if at all possible, to help reps see how these concepts or steps fit into their own selling efforts with their prospects.

Focus on application of the skills
Make sure that, one way or another, you create a situation in which salespeople are required to apply the information to their own sales activities.

Think Web, not book
Take advantage of the medium to draw on other resources that are available on your Web site or others you can link to. Give sales reps access to gateways to relevant information.

One Final Suggestion

And just to make sure that sales reps take advantage of these opportunities to refine their sales training programs, it's advisable to set up some type of a reporting system. Information on who is using the Web training can be forwarded to either the training department or the sales manager. 

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Donna Siegel

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