2-26-2014
Memo
To: Sales Staff
Fr: Sales Manager
Re: Sales Meetings
?Effective immediately, all sales training meetings are optional. If you are planning on attending our next training meeting, it will take place Wednesday morning beginning promptly at 8.?
If you actually sent a memo like that, how many sellers would show up to the meeting? If all your sellers weren?t there, excited to learn something new and be a part of the training session, you?ve got trouble. In my discussions and experience with salespeople, the number one problem they have with sales meetings is boredom, followed closely by feeling that they get nothing of value out of the meetings.
All too often in conference rooms, sales managers stand in front of the group, put a PowerPoint on the screen and go on for an hour or more talking about how they used to sell. They lecture on 15 different topics in each sales meeting because they feel that if they provide more content, they will keep the salespeople excited.
The real problem with sales meetings is lack of involvement on the part of the sellers. Sellers have to be there, so they show up with their smartphones and tablets, or even laptops. They pay very little attention to what you?re doing or what is on the screen, while they do everything from buy things on eBay to email clients.
Your intentions are good, you?re a good communicator, the topic for the training is relevant, it?s interesting, and something the salespeople should find value in. So what?s the problem?
In 1959, management guru Peter Drucker created the term ?Knowledge Worker.? A Knowledge Worker is a worker whose main capital is knowledge -- they think for a living. In 1996, Knowledge Workers were able to retain in their mind 75 percent of the information they needed to do their jobs. So you could train them on a variety of topics in one session and they would retain the majority of that information and apply it to their jobs effectively.
By 2006, Knowledge Workers were able to retain only 8-10 percent of the information they needed to do their jobs. The American Society of Training Development?s report In Search Of Learning Agility concluded: ?There is no such thing as permanent competence or a fully developed skill set in either individuals or organizations.? The implication of this is that training and development, like an advertising program, must be ongoing, engaging, and, sometimes, repetitive to be effective.
Edgar Dale was an American educationist who developed the Cone of Learning. According to Dale?s research, training that is active has a potential of 90 percent retention. Passive training can hope to achieve only a 10 percent retention rate.
I started this article with a fictitious memo to the sales staff. Would you be willing to send it? Most wouldn?t for fear of an empty conference room at meeting time. The good news is you can change the way you train. If you do, you?ll find your meetings more productive, engaging, and rewarding. As a result you will see more implementation and results in the field. Here are some suggestions for running great sales meetings:
? Share a piece of information or knowledge.
? Turn off the projector and PowerPoint.
? Sit down; stop standing in front of the room lecturing.
? Ask questions that pertain to the topic you are trying to teach.
? Lead the discussion. Sellers all have experience to share.
? Require a next step. This is the implementation of the information.
? Check in during the week to make sure that the next step is being taken.
? Repeat the process every sales meeting.
To know and not to do, is not to know. Engage your sellers with compelling content and then coach them to do. When you take this approach, you will reap the rewards of why you train in the first place: to change behavior.
Interested in more tools like these? Consider signing up for The Radio Sales Success Expander. We have two more live sessions left. The first two sessions are available for on-demand viewing.
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Want a free copy of the Cone of Learning? Send me an email.
Jeff Schmidt is EVP and Partner with Chris Lytle at Sparque, Inc. You can reach Jeff at:
Jeff.Schmidt@Sparque.biz
Twitter: @JeffreyASchmidt
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schmidtjeffrey
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