At ASTD 2014 International Conference & Exposition in Washington D.C., Sales Readiness Group hosted a panel discussion on how to improve the effectiveness of sales training. The panelists were Jenny Dearborn, chief learning officer and senior vice president of SAP, Robby Halford, learning architect of sales enablement at ExactTarget, Maria Leggett, director of learning design for Time Warner Cable, and Ray Makela of the Sales Readiness Group. Roxy Torres, manager of the ASTD Sales Enablement Community of Practice, moderated the discussion.
Here’s what they had to say about how training leaders were incorporating spaced learning, reinforcement, and measurement into their sales training programs. (Part 1 discussed motivation and customization.)
Topic 3: Spaced Learning
For many sales organizations, sales training has traditionally been offered in concentrated two-day workshop format. The panel spoke about the challenges this training format has on learning and using new technologies to deliver the sales training over a longer period of time.
Robby Halford discussed the impact of cognitive load on learning when a sales organization concentrate too much sales training into too short of a time period. He added that sales trainers should try to counter the “pasta” method of training: let’s throw training at the participants and see what sticks.
Halford also suggested that sales trainers should focus on simplifying training programs to reduce “clutter” and “noise.” One method he likes to use is blogging on a weekly basis on sales training topics, giving him the ability to share information and training content with the sales team on an ongoing basis. He noted that in his organization, 60 percent of the sales force uses his blog to get information.
Ray Makela discussed how effective virtual instructor-led training (VILT) programs can be when the content is “spaced out” over a period of time. For example, he explained how a traditional two-day sales training program can be delivered via VILT in 90-minute or two-hour modules, one module per week over a six- or seven-week period.
Jenny Dearborn observed that irrespective of how the training is delivered, nothing replaces good instructional design. It is important that the training be fun, engaging, and inspirational, and connect with what the participants care about—driving results.
Topic 4: Reinforcement
The panelists all emphasized the importance of ongoing reinforcement to maximize the long-term effectiveness of a sales training program. If you are going to roll-out a major training program, it is key to make sure the management and leadership are going to support and reinforce the training in a programmatic way. A consistent theme among the panelists was the crucial role sales managers play in post-training reinforcement, particularly sales coaching.
Maria Leggett emphasized the importance of post-training sales coaching and how frontline sales managers are best positioned to do this. A comprehensive sales training program should also include sales coaching training for the sales managers. She added that sales organizations should measure the manager’s coaching time.
Jenny Dearborn brought up Jeannie Meister’s work several years ago about what made training stick. A critical variable was that sales managers discussed the training with the rep before and after the training. Post-training, the manager asked the rep “What did you like?” and “What did you learn?” and took a lead role in coaching. She recommended that sales managers devote at least 3-4 hours of coaching time per rep per month.
Ray Makela discussed how sales managers need to clearly define behavior expectations for their teams. If the rep doesn’t know what to their responsibilities are and the manager doesn’t know what they should expect from the sales rep, you are not going to get the desired business results. He suggested that organizations should develop tools to help coaches set the right expectations and coach the right behaviors. He reinforced the point about creating a programmatic way to reinforce training by requiring the managers to do on-going sales coaching as well as structured post-training reinforcement sessions at 30, 60, and 90 day intervals.
Topic 5: Measurement
The final topic discussed by the panel was measurement, which is always challenging for sales trainers because numerous variables can influence sales results that are outside the scope of the training.
Nevertheless, the panelists agreed that measurement is the way that training departments must ultimately prove their worth. CRM data and results are good tools to use to support training measurement. The panel recommended that before any sales training programs gets launched, the business owners should define how it is going to get measured and provide a baseline.
Ray Makela discussed all of the practical challenges of measuring the effectiveness of a sales training program and reviewed the types of measurements the SRG customers use: many of them are using some combination of Level 1 (participant satisfaction), 2 (learning outcomes) and the more sophisticated programs use some combination of those plus level 3 (behavior change) and level 4 (business results).
This post is reprinted from the Sales Readiness Sales Group blog.
