Tim Mulvaney

SETTING EXPECTATIONS - A Sales Training Drivers Foundational CompetencySetting expectations for your training class is a reflection of your expectations from upper level executive management. The Trainer is expected to deliver a training program that delivers business results. Executives want to show the impact of your training in their financial statements in the form of increased revenue and employee productivity! (Hint: this is the key to obtaining that increase in your training budget!)Setting expectations is your most important organizational development responsibility when training a set of sales employees.This is very important!! READ ON!!BOTH the CORPORATE TRAINER and the SALES MANAGERS are expected to ensure that your sales training and field sales efforts will produce high performance teams! The objective now is to PARTNER and discover ways "come together" with a daily/weekly program of measurement and evaluation of sales employees that marry their respective educational and vocational knowledge, talent and resources. This will ensure that human performance improvement meets business results that are expected by upper level executives and stake holders.When setting expectations, the Trainer is seen as a trusted advisor to employees who are expected to master multiple sets of behavioral, psychological, linguistic, and communication skills for the purpose of producing business results that ultimately brings incoming revenue.Your bonding with your students is simple: Accept them where they are in the learning environment and assess their needs for selling in the field. Address the needs of each student behaviorally, isolate their strengths and help them become proficient in overcoming their weaknesses.What happens after the initial training is over and you are on to your next class?Is not your training job measured by the productivity and performance of your students?How is the learning function managed with the previous class and how is it measured to ensure your best practice training is effective long term?There is a huge break down in sales organizations today between:1. Talent / Training Management2. Field Sales Management.This break down must be fixed if business leaders want to increase revenue and sustain high performance sales teams. Your curriculum, learning activities and sales support must show that your student productivity is sustainable leading to high performance behavior. You are ensuring that a transfer of knowledge will result in skilled competencies. Repetitive Sales coaching, purposed-based recognition and encouragement are often missing in sales courses even though training lies as the heart of human performance and behavior change. Tim Mulvaney, an Organizational Development expert with The Mulvaney Group in New York City and creator of"Courageous Conversations" said this about sales development: "Go Big or Go Home!"Workplace Learning is just now becoming its' own valuable industry. Workplace Learning Professionals specialized in education training and human performance have not been involved in day to day individual coaching, monitoring and evaluating sales employee behavior after a training course is over. This has typically been the Field Sales Managers job.Is your training really that effective when your students are rushed into the hands of the Sales Manager?What happens when you are not involved in the field process?Why is it, (1) month later, and your training is executed with a "wing it" approach"?Question? Are the Sales Managers or Sales Support staff in your company skilled in:Talent Management processes?Instructional design methods?Managing the learning function?Human Performance Improvement Training?Why is the Field Sales Manager not educated on behavioral teaching when in a sales team building role?Why are Top Producers promoted to teaching a sales team when they have no teaching, behavioral psychology or proven team building expertise?Why NOT? There is mounting evidence that if Corporate Sales Training Educators and Sales Managers worked together on a consistent weekly basis with the sales team members, the sales team productivity, performance would dramatically increase!Isn't increasing business revenue and business results one of the most important goals of the organization?

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The article provides information concerning the companies' usage of podcasting to reinforce and promote training to its target audience. Managers and employees communicate with each other in sales meeting, job performance discussions, and meetings to discuss goals and career development. These meetings and discussions create many applications for podcasting to help make those conversations easier. The author stresses that audio and video podcasts can also be useful tools for training in courageous conversations.

Tim Mulvaney

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