In the span of a few weeks, the work world has shifted en masse from regular offices to working at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For sales organizations, this means moving everything to virtual, including training.

Many of our clients are concerned about how the evolving COVID-19 outbreak and related travel bans will impact their business, sales, and training initiatives.    In the video below we address best practices in virtual and on-demand training. 

According to industry research, sales managers that devote more than three hours of coaching per month to each of their team members achieved 107% of their team quota. On the other hand, teams that received no coaching met only 82% of their quota.   Coaching works because it helps you create leverage, and leverage is the key to be a successful sales manager. Leverage means that your salespeople do the work, not you. You spend less time “putting out fires” and more time working on important issues. You create leverage by developing and coaching your team so that their skills improve. With better skills, your salespeople are better able to solve their problems without your constant involvement.  

One of the most important differentiators for any sales professional is how they sell.  Given the importance of selling skills, it is natural to want to include sales training at an SKO.  The challenge many companies face is that the agendas for SKOs are increasingly tight given the number of competing priorities. As a starting point, it is important to realize that an annual SKO serves multiple purposes including:

Traditionally the sales professional has been viewed with cynicism based on the perception of self-serving salespeople who are overeager to convince customers to buy the product(s) they are selling. This view is based on a long-standing stereotype of salespeople who speak more than they listen, assume they know what a customer wants or should want, and are hyper-focused on convincing customers to buy from them. 

I’m often asked by prospective clients, “what does good sales training cost?”. Although, the correct and straightforward answer to this question is, “it depends,” I wanted to share the following five key factors that impact sales training costs.