Episode 139: Why Training is Non-Negotiable to Grow Your Sales Results

So why is a training program just so important? It'd be easy to argue that experienced sales leaders don't actually need training because they know what they're doing. For me, and I love the quote and I wish I could remember where I heard it from, but it goes along the lines of, you can never have too much basic sales training. And it elaborated a bit further to say, unless your teams are hitting their numbers every single day, week, month or reporting period, then they should be raised repeating the basic training. Because unless your targets are so unrealistic that they're just not achievable, then it means we're not necessarily getting everything right.

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader, and expert expert sales coach to some of the most talented people.

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Who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Looking back over what's been a really terrific two and a half year journey of our podcast, and as we close in towards 150 episodes, one thing that stood out to me is how much great content has been delivered through the podcast. And in fact, some of the very early podcasts that we recorded were some of the best tried and tested content that I've been delivering with sales teams for almost 25 years. The type of content that is really worth revisiting after such a long period of time, and particularly because I know that the listener base has also changed, grown and evolved over that time. So for the next four weeks, we're gonna do a blast from the past and revisit some of our finest, stronger sales teams podcast episodes. So this week we're gonna have a deep dive into how to run an effective training program. Training's something where, as you'll hear in this episode, I feel that I learn as much from when I conduct it as I do at those or for those that are in the room. Because for me, it allows me to really get great feedback from the market, but also understand exactly where the gaps in our team exist. So I hope you Enjoy this rerun of the training program. It is exactly the same format that I still use today and every team in our program also adopts. So enjoy it. There's going to be some nice punchy outcomes from it and we'll see you next week. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop your super powered B2B sales teams. Today I'm recording from one of the most beautiful places in Earth. It's called Noosa. Those who are local, they don't leave. Those who've never been here, look it up. It is one of the most amazing and spectacular places to visit and even has the World Longboard Championships held here every year. Some epic waves, particularly for longboarders. I might have mentioned it before. If I have, I apologise, but super cool place to live and really for me about living that aspirational life that we want to lead. And okay, so last week we really focused on the three box model. The way that we can simply measure our teams to avoid anxiety, to avoid misalignment, but also making sure we have a level of measurement to actually get things done. I talked quite a bit around how I'd hit my own ceiling late in my 20s, where I was leading a team without enough knowledge and understanding around what real management and leadership undertook. So basically I went from being that successful salesperson, I'd carried the bag, I'd got all the results. So my results had dictated that I should be promoted. Got into that role, really struggled because I didn't have any skills around management and leadership and the training that I had around me didn't get to the heart about how I could build systems and processes and ways to manage a team on a day to day basis. And then on top of that, my leaders around me didn't really have those skills themselves or the tools or the time to be able to help me through it. I was really lucky. I had a great mentor who came along. In fact, I had two great mentors who came along and taught me all of this and away I went and the rest is history, right? We had some very successful businesses and teams that came out of that. What I also explained last week was that for me, I do this because there's a commitment for me to get the basics out there to other sales leaders who might be going through the same issues. It's a lonely spot when you're leading teams, particularly sales teams, because you are so measured by your results. So it often means that for me, my experience is that sales leaders are reluctant to reach out for help, particularly around the basics, because you believe you should know these at least to the same level as others around you. So I've found that across my career I was really reluctant to reach out for help. So I'm putting it out there for all of those leaders out there that need a bit of help, this is the place to sit and listen because we are going to go through and we're going to continue to go through some really chunky stuff. So over the last month or so we've looked in depth at four key habits that consistently drive the success of sales leaders. Good sales process, right? One that's consistent and measurable, focusing on four key levers for peak performance. So that's the team step model. Peak performance is driven by strategy, talent and energy. We looked at the three box model, the one I just recapped about the really simple way to measure teams and keep them aligned and engaged. And the fourth that we've certainly spoken through is about how it's important to have a long term focus on training and particularly training around coaching and accountability. So the first three we've done in detail, today's the fourth of this process and that's all around making sure that we have a long term focus on the training of our teams. The first three, they're all terrific models that I have handouts available for the training part of these consistent behaviours that drive success. It's much more dynamic, it needs flex, certainly needs the ability to change, but a above the other three, it needs a relentless day to day commitment to drive consistency. So let's get into it and we'll talk about how it differs to the other three models as we go. So why is a training program just so important? It'd be easy to argue that experienced sales leaders don't actually need training because they know what they're doing. For me and I love the quote and I wish I could remember where I heard it from, but it goes along the lines of you can never have too much basic sales training. And it elaborated a bit further to say unless your teams are hitting their numbers every single day, week, month or reporting period, then they should be repeating the basic training. Because unless your targets are so unrealistic that they're just not achievable, then it means we're not necessarily getting everything right.

So for me, I think there's six.

Reasons that training is really important, right? One, everybody needs practice, right? Whether you're a beginner or an expert, everyone needs to continue to practice their craft. And for me particularly those that are at a mid to an expert level of knowledge and competency where they can teach the training. It actually helps them solidify the topics in their mind, but also get better at what they do. Second reason, bigger the base, higher the peaks. I love it when a salesperson has a huge peak base to draw from in front of customers because it allows them to have a level of agility when they're talking through problems, which in turn builds trust. Right? So that bigger the base of fitness, the bigger the base of knowledge that you have, the more easily you can bring it out in day to day conversation. Third reason markets change. So too should training. Every industry that I've ever been in has at a minimum, subtle tweaks to how it operates. Even if you think you're in the most mature, non changing industry in the world. We are currently in one of the greatest eras of disruption that we will ever experience. And it's not just that disruption about working from home and changing the dynamics about how we meet with our customers, but it's also the rise of AI. AI is such a powerful tool to help round out the edges of our sales teams, to help contribute to our strategies and our content, that we should be able to use it within our sales roles and there should be some training around it. Number four, dynamic feedback. During my training programs that I run, I have consistently received some of the best ideas around business improvement from these training courses. They are the single largest new product or new service funnel that I've ever experienced and it can be anything from tweaking a market offering through to a huge change. And let me think of an example. I think one around tweaking a smaller one. I have consistently seen with the teams I work with that when you focus on your quote templates, the improvement that comes into these templates is significant and regular. Right. It's almost compounding where your quote templates, you compare them against competitors, you compare them against what's working in the market and what's not working in the market, right? And you end up consistently improving these. I have had so much feedback from training sessions along the way that it would almost actually outrank all the other areas in terms of importance from the results that it's delivered. Fifth reason, opportunities arise. Right? So when we get teams together, cross pollination tends to grow. So that's when we're talking about a certain topic. Let's say we're talking about social proof, I use that quite often. And we're out there talking about A customer that we're presenting to who is in healthcare. When we're talking about the training around how we can pitch better to this type of customer, I actually often find that the cross pollination from salespeople overpowers the training. So we end up having a team of people, whether it be a small team or a large team that are contributing ideas around how we can do things better. Super engaging, super empowering for our team and also gets great results. Last but not least, the cultural aspects. Teams that play together, stay together. Training can be fun. If you get training right, people come to it with a great open mind about what they're going to learn and then it builds terrific relationships with teams. I definitely am not someone that recommends training happen in an afternoon and then a team goes out for a drink or some food afterwards because I think your brain's not quite as sharp then. I'm a big believer of training being in the morning. But what I often see is that teams will go and have, they'll have a quick coffee together afterwards or they'll sit down and they'll break out into their own separate ideation meetings or support meetings afterwards. And really that can happen any time of the day, but in the mornings is certainly most powerful. So for me, lots of really compelling reasons as to why we want to get a training program out there and why it's so important. So next step, what does a great training program cover? And we're going to get into some of the details about how you can build this training program. This stuff's worth writing down, I think, because it'll give you some great ideas for what you can train on. So creating a great training program that's engaging is difficult. Some of the great structures though that work for me is breaking your training program down into key areas. We typically will use three areas when we're setting up training. These ones are definitely worth writing down. So the first area is a program that's based around sales skills. So this is all about how the teams sell and engage with customers. It'll include things like lead generation, it'll include things like networking. Right. So the networking type of training could be something like teams getting together to brainstorm, to research customers, to have a group of targets that they all want to be involved in, where they then come back and present to the group in a training session. It could be targets that are working, targets that are not working, and the types of people that you want to be networking. Right. Really powerful session that you can run in many different ways. Sales skills will look at very much the structure of a sales process. So how a team can get the most out of the meet and greet process or needs analysis, right? How we can effectively be qualifying our customers and finding out what their problem is or their opportunity is. How you structure a sales call, how you prepare a quote, how you pitch that quote, right? Objection. Handling something that should be omnipresent in all sales environments is something that very much comes under these selling skills. Closing deals, right? How do you effectively close? What's your business's way of closing? How do you leverage the skills of other people in the business? Win, loss, deal reviews, right? So once a deal's won or lost, having a look at actually why you won or lost that social proof, big one. I've mentioned that before. Selling skills should really specifically drive down into social proof and how you can leverage it. And then even things like softer skills like influencing handling uncertainty, dealing with adversity, right. Some of those sales skills are really important that you can roll in out of that. There's probably 12 to 14 topics in there. Straight away you can start writing down. The second area that I like to structure a training program into is all around technical skills. So that's everything the team needs to know specifically about your product. Selling skills, all about how to sell or how to build relationship or how to have an engaging conversation with a customer. Technical skills, all about your product and your solution, right? So these are things like your features and benefits of your products, the applications of your products, the limitations of your products, new products that are coming, right? And advancements of products or deleted products that are on their way, right? So you stop selling them. Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 products, you know, those type of products where you can aspirationally sit in front of a customer and say, hey, this is our solution now and this is the first step of your journey. But here's what you can expect to happen over the coming months and years when you work with us. Here's how your journey looks over time. Here's the partnership that we're going to go through, right? Awesome. To know what's coming so that you can sit in front of a customer and talk through that. Competitors big part of your technical skill training, looking at their products, looking at their quotes, looking at what they're doing. Well, I remember a competitor review in one of the industries I was in, I believe it was in a service industry and the competitor was using drones as an output from their project. So once they completed their project, there was some drone footage happening of the work. They'd done. We never thought of this and for us it was a fantastic tool to learn because we were able to then see how we could use it, but use it better. And the team then did end up using it and they were quite successful with it. Landed some really big deals by contributing in this type of information troubleshooting failed projects. Great. From a technical skill point of view, why did the product not stack up? And then also from a technical skill point of view, ideas from the field. Right. I've spoken about the learning, the ideation that can come in, but technical training where you allow the team to bring back their ideas. Fantastic, right? Of course, technical training often will be run by subject matter experts within your business or from your suppliers or from adjacent industries. Really, really powerful when you get it right. Last but not least, so we've got sales skills, technical skills, and the third one is all about business skills. So these are generally non selling and non technical skills that are important to success in the team. Right. So they might be things like how to use your CRM, the base level of compliance that you need, advanced training in. CRMs about how to set up automation with customers. Right. It's really important that CRM training actually has quite a breadth about it because they really are such an important part of the modern business. What other business skills? Sales metrics, Updates from other departments. These are really important for building cohesion. So these might be updates from your customer care department, updates from your delivery department, updates from your marketing department. The sales teams I've worked with love updates from their marketing departments and they often become two way. Other business skills are things like time management, managing through adversity, health and fitness and mental fitness. They come into your business type of skills because we want well rounded people in our business. Happy people end up being people that can perform better. Right. So you might even have training sessions around yoga or meditation or some other types of skills that your team members can take that will work for them outside of the office. Things like overall business performance. How's the business going? Well, often we'll call them town halls, but you can certainly bring them into business. Skill training, strategic planning, updates. There's lots of things we can put in business skills. So for me, by categorising into those three elements, sales skills, technical skills and business skills. What it does is it creates some structure for you and the team. It allows you to build some variety into that structure and chop and change between the training modalities that you're running, but also by compartmentalizing them into certain areas, your Team can really tune their brain into what they're learning for that day. Right. Generally, they're going to bring a different attitude to a technical session than a sales session. So for me, my biggest piece of advice here is lean into the consistency of this training program. So build it. Make it so repeatable and so entrenched in your habits that it just flows throughout everything you do with your team. Right? So lean into that consistency, let it flow into your day, and try structuring that into sales skills, technical skills, and business skills. Okay, so we've got some broad topics. We know why training's important, but how do we build and implement that effective training program? All right, so what are the ways we go about building it? So for me, engage your team. You'll hear this from me all the time. Engaging a team will generally lead to greater alignment and buy in. And in the end results. It does take a little bit of extra time, but for me, it's worth every moment. So ask your team what they want to be trained on. Do a survey monkey. Poll them in a meeting. Ask someone from the team to take the lead and collate information. Lots of ways you can do it. Do the same around the organization. Ask them what they'd like your team to be trained on. And even if you have great relationships with your customers, particularly some of your friendly customers, ask them what your team could be better at. Create rules of engagement. So when you're building this program and you've polled your topics and you've broken it down into sales skills, technical skills, and business skills, create some rules of engagement with your team. So how are you going to show up to your trainings? Are you going to be there for certain amounts of time? What are the attendance requirements? How long are sessions going to go for? Right. And how will everyone conduct themselves across the journey? We've had lots of great fun with this, particularly around when people are late for training sessions. Right? That mentality of lock the door, you're not allowed in, that does not build a safe environment. But the mentality of, hey, if you're late in, make sure you come with coffees for people or make sure you come with a great story to tell or sing a song or do something like that, right? You can have lots of fun that then also keep people accountable to being on time. For me, when you're building an effective training program, we must make sure that we bring in lots of different experts. Right? Understand what your strengths and your weaknesses are and then supplement them with people who can add to that. Right? It's really important also that training can be conducted by people in your team. If you have a subject matter expert in your team, if you have someone in your team that is just terrific at building trusted relationships, get them to run a module on key account management. Right? If you have someone in your team that's terrific at closing, get them to run the module on closing. Right? There is nothing more powerful for your team's engagement than hearing from those within. There's also actually some really good data, right, about how when we teach that we actually learn even more effectively ourselves. And again, lots of data out there. That hierarchy of learning goes from least effective to most effective. Goes something along the lines of least effective being what we read and hear and see, moving into more moderately effective around what we see and hear together or what we discuss. Right? So we're actively involved in the training, but then the training that's really effective. And have a look at Harvard Business Review, they've got lots of literature around. This is around what we experience and what we teach others. So in field learning and what we can teach and talk in detail with others, this is where we start to get really effective learning happening. So lean into bringing in experts, particularly those within your teams. So change the modality of your training for it to be effective. Some will be on site, some will be off site, some will be based on video, some will be talking, some will be listening, right. There'll be lots of different ways that we do it. And same as changing the delivery method, right? It could be quizzes, it could be instructional, it could be role plays or workshops or decision making or exploratory types of meeting. Right. Lots of different delivery methods you can run. Make sure you schedule it at the right time. There's two areas I really want you to avoid. Straight after lunch, right? Terrible time, Terrible time for people's engagement. And I'm sure we have all had meetings where people are very heavy eyed after lunch and also late on a Friday. Friday afternoon's a terrible time for training also because people have their mind on what they're doing over the weekend. Next one, make a forward calendar, right? And then leave some flexibility. So for me, I like to build calendars six months out and I will leave about 25% of it to be flexible because we find that different things come across our table. And I like to have that ability to chop and change my program, embrace feedback and the occasional train wreck training session. So what I mean by that is don't be worried if you go into an innocuous session that suddenly turns into a free for all where you identify lots of different problems or opportunities that come from that topic. That's absolutely cool, right? In fact, having these meetings where ideation rules allows you to get better. What we want to avoid is having train wrecks repeatedly and regularly in meetings. But when you have one every now and then, that doesn't go to plan. Just put your hand up and say, hey, this is fantastic. This session isn't going to plan, but we are coming up with a whole lot of ideas and ways to get better. So what you might do then is take all those ideas out, roll them into future trainings and reschedule whatever the topic you're on now is for later on. The last few areas around making the program sticky is invite everyone, right? Share the invitations out around the organization. If you think other people will benefit, that does nothing but add weight to the quality of your training program. And the last two, by far the most important successful training programs have action oriented outcomes. It's follow up by date, it's follow up by who the person responsible for is to get the work completed. And it has an outcome around how data or the solution is then communicated. Is it represented? Is it in writing? Is it a change to your quoting template, for example? Right. For me, I've also seen some really effective trainings go over multiple weeks, so don't be concerned if that happens. And last but not least, the second most important for me is being incredibly consistent. Make sure you have training every single week. If you have a public holiday or a national holiday that falls on training day, try if you can, to reschedule it for later in the week. Okay, so what are the outcomes you should expect from running a training program like that? I'd expect to see engagement rise. I'd expect to see issues within the business more quickly come to the surface. Right? It's a canary in the mines. If you can get these issues out and about quickly, then they're less likely to impact your business long term. Expect a safe environment for people to learn to come from this. If you run it well, right, people feel open to talk about what they'd like more training with. It's a great data point to gauge the performance of individuals. It's a soft data point, but I often find that what comes out of it is salespeople who are struggling. So it allows you to zero in a bit more. And last but not least, results. Right? There's no substitute for this. I'm not someone that's in the business of promising 10x on your sales from listening to a podcast, right? There is so much more to running a sales team than that. But for me, I have seen the results firsthand that when you invest in the multiple areas of systems and process to build your sales team, that you can get the types of 80% quarter on quarter growth. Really significant numbers I've seen within my teams. Okay, so next steps. What's your challenge for today? All right, I'd like you to do seven things. Number one, pick the time you want to run your training sessions and lock it in. Easy. Number two, brainstorm the topics that you would like to run yourself. Spend 10 minutes doing this. Work out exactly what you want to be running. Number three, segment your training to the three areas separately. Sales skills, technical skills, and business skills. Number four, add all of the training sessions into a calendar. Right, get it into your team's calendars. Once you start, you won't stop. Number five, get some base feedback from your leaders and other departments about what they'd like to see in your calendar. Number six, get some feedback from your team about what they'd like to see in the training calendar. And then number seven, start right. All really easy chunkable things. So number one, pick the time you want and lock it in. Number two, brainstorm the topics you want to run. Number three, segment into your three areas. Sales skills, technical skills, and business skills. Number four, add the training sessions into the calendar so they're a lock.

Number five and six, get some feedback.

From your leaders and other departments and also from your team. So you start to build out that calendar. And number seven, get started. Right? Nice, easy, chunky things to do. If you want a little bit more help than that, you know where to find me. But get started yourself and see what you can build. I'm really comfortable that if you're listening to this podcast, you have a commitment actually to your own self learning, so you should be able to at least get this started. That said, though, you know where I am whenever you need me. All right, let's finish off with a quote. I love Jack Welch's quotes. He was a terrific leader at ge. He grew the business to be significant over his time there, but one to finish off with. And here it is. So from Jack himself, an organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage. I love it. So there you have it. A deep dive into designing a training program that will actually impact your team's results. So if you couldn't get everything that I went through, please jump onto the show notes in your own time. They're also up on the website www.strongersalesteams.com. of course, if you want a little bit of extra help, let me know. Feel free to book in a discovery call with me and I can specifically help you out. You can get in contact through stronger sales teams on Instagram or LinkedIn. I personally get across every single connection made into the business, so likely you'll hear from me directly. Before we leave today, I want to make sure I pass through that health and wellbeing tip that I do each episode. This one Small but Mighty the three hours before you go to bed is such a critical time to impacting how you start the next day, right? Alcohol for me, not drinking within the last three hours before bed. Huge impact on me the next day. Food. Trying to avoid really heavy sugary foods in particular. So the dessert stuff, the snacky stuff, getting my hydration right. Not drinking for example, too much before I go to bed. Then I'm up and down all night. And last but not least, my mindset trying to end the day with a really calm, purposeful and happy approach is really powerful for how I wake up the next day. There you go. Small but Mighty. Give it a go. Until next time though. Keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.

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