What Your Employees Should Learn in Sales Training Seminars
Posted by Tim Hagen on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 @ 09:59 AM
When managers send employees to training seminars, how do they know what their employees are really getting out of it? And how do they know if they are learning the right material? Most workshops should be designed to help your employees develop in four different areas: skill sets, behavior, knowledge and creativity.
The Four Tiers of Learning:
Skill Sets- to be able to perform or do something specifically.
Sales training sessions should be able to help employees improve in certain activities, such as cold calling or prospecting. If you notice that your sales representatives are struggling in specific work aspects then send them to a tailored sales training event.
Behavior- to execute without fear or anxiety and consistently without thinking.
While employees may have the skill set to cold call, they may lack the confidence, and that can seriously deteriorate sales. So, it is important that sales training seminars help workers overcome some fear of sales that they may have.
Knowledge- to know or understand.
Sales reps should know their product inside and out. They should know the features, advantages and benefits of their product as well as their competitors. Seminars need to give employees training techniques to going about learning all that they can. If you can increase product training, then employees can convey the product value more clearly to customers.
Creativity- to solve or address situations in nontraditional means.
Sales training should provide employees with ideas for communicating with their clients and prospect in new ways. Your reps should be learning new methods for staying in front of their customers. With so many similar businesses, it is important to stand out and be unique.
It is vital that your employees are able to improve in these four areas when they are sent to sales training seminars. However, the learning cannot stop here. Managers and supervisors need to continue to engage their employees after these sessions. Training reinforcement is important if your employees are going to keep implementing ideas that they learned.