10 Things Any Business Can Do to Focus on Individual Sales Training Plans
Remember our theme – one size does not fit all! With jeans, with shoes, and most definitely with sales development needs and plans.
Discuss any or all of these with your leadership team. Decide what’s worth even thinking about.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. Do not get hung up on details that won’t matter if what you try isn’t rolled out to a broad team. Try a pilot. Or just try one thing once. Keep pivoting. Trust your team and your instincts. Measurable results should be taken into consideration, but not necessarily needed to pilot something new.
- Make your next sales training (program/workshop) opt in. Maybe even consider some required pre-work to secure a seat in the class.
- Add a pre-test or quiz to something development focused, and let those who pass with flying colors skip the in-person, virtual, or self-paced learning lessons.
- Ask sales professionals to nominate themselves for a program with a limited number of seats.
- Ask sales leaders to hand-pick high potential associates for training and development focused on growth.
- Consider if an opt out program would work for you for something you’d usually make mandatory. Even high potential and high performing sales professionals sometimes cannot commit to the time needed to focus on development. This could be life stage related or something else going on in the business.
- Offer a skills self-assessment and figure out how your current sales teams score themselves right now…and where they want to be a year from now.
- Facilitate an open discussion with your sales team about what kind of development they think they need at different stages of their tenure to surpass their sales goals. Virtual small group video calls are more than sufficient if done well.
- Offer sales skill development at various times of the day and throughout the week. Ask your teams what works best with their current life stages.
- Offer sales skill development through various mediums – not everyone will learn well with asynchronous, self-paced virtual learning, even if that seems to be the direction a lot of teams are going.
- Work with your sales effectiveness partner(s) to discuss the viability of individual sales training plans – for the balance of 2023, all of 2024 and into the future.
And remember you do not have to tackle this alone. Engaging with an outside partner, like me, could help you talk through which options are best for your team and which options might bring the best results.
Take advantage of “pick your own fee” Summer Fridays to get started on this now. Check out the details.
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(Photo credit Ricardo Gomez Angel)
