Let’s say you went and got yourself a new pet cat. For the first week or two, you fed it twice a day, made sure its water bowl was always full, brushed it, and took care of its litter box like a responsible pet owner should. After the first couple of weeks though, you get too busy with other things and you stop feeding and watering it, and sort of just hope it “figures out how to live on its own.” What kind of result might you expect?
Here’s a hint: it rhymes with “meth.”
This approach might sound familiar, considering it’s pretty similar to how the average business owner or manager tends to his salespeople in this business, not necessarily because they don’t care, but because they have a billion other things going on and they fail to structure continual attention into their system. The first couple of weeks you try to train them as best as you can, give them what they need, and then it’s basically “sink or swim,” survival of the fittest, brushing it off as, “I’ve done everything I can at this point, and if they can’t figure out the rest then they’re just not cut out for this job.” At that point, it’s easier to point the finger and blame subpar results on laziness or complacency, summing it up as, “I just haven’t found the right sales person yet.” I’d really like to challenge you to change your perspective on this.
If you want to get in shape, you need to commit to exercising multiple times per week, week in and week out. When you stop working out, your results stop, too. If you want to keep a clean house, you need to keep up on laundry, vacuuming, and dishes, week in and week out. Once you stop tidying, your house gets dirty again. If you want to maintain a properly running vehicle, you need to regularly change its oil, rotate the tires, and get tune-ups. If you stop maintaining it, it starts to go downhill. Do you see where we’re going with this?
If you want your sales team to continue to sell, get higher closing ratios, boost their lead generation, and ultimately stay sharp and continue to get better and better to produce more each week, month, or year, then they need to be learning how to get better at each area of the business week in and week out. If they aren’t constantly growing and evolving, then neither are their skills or results.
In other words, training shouldn’t end when “training ends.” A team of salesmen who are not constantly growing and improving is a team that will constantly need to be added to with excessive recruiting. Of course recruiting will always be an ongoing process, but what would your sales force look like if you had a steady team of loyal key players with solid skills who get better and better every year? That’s a powerhouse!
Provide continual training in house, such as focusing on a key area during each sales meeting, or arranging a bi-monthly speaker or training “intensive.” Encourage your salesmen to seek further education to sharpen their skills such as coaching, courses, reading, or seminars (hint: we provide all of these as well). Invest in your team. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: fancy tri-folds and door-hangers, expensive company shirts, and snazzy truck wraps don’t close deals. Salesmen do. Investing in your salesmen is the single most effective thing you can do for your company. The better your team is, the better their results, and the better their results, the better your success. Everybody wins.
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