Episode #17: How to Implement Sales Training That Really Works

Today we're talking about training in sales and marketing - the good, the bad, and the ugly! This is something that is near and dear to Kathleen’s heart. Because, as many of you may not know, Kathleen has an extensive training background. Prior to us starting Quintain, she worked at a consulting agency with a training academy, where she helped develop online training programs.
And through this experience, she knows what works, but also what doesn’t work.
Video Training Alone Doesn’t Work
This is important, because, as inbound has gained more traction and matured, she’s noticed in the past year or so there has been a deluge of agencies and other organizations purporting to offer training in this area. But once you scratch beneath the surface of this new inbound marketing and inbound selling training landscape, all that’s really there are on-demand training videos.
Videos are a valuable training tool, of course. That said, someone isn’t going to really learn what they need to learn just from videos alone.
Kathleen says this is a failure of our industry, but with the caveat that there is a difference between continuous learning and learning a new skill. Videos are great for continuous learners, who are looking for a refresher or keeping things top of mind.
However, if you’re looking to obtain a new skill, as opposed to maintaining a pre-existing skill, a completely different training approach is required. She says it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about marketing or sales training; if we’re talking about learning new skills, videos aren’t going to cut it. Constant intervention is required.
What Kind of Training Programs Work?
In her experience, Kathleen has learned the very best training programs are those that combine classroom-based teaching (virtual is fine), practical application of knowledge, interaction and discussion through peer learning, coaching and some kind of individualized planning for how new knowledge will be implemented going forward. And in our industry, many of these components are not in place in most of today’s offered training programs.
For me, this begs the question: “Why is this such an issue?”
First, all of the factors Kathleen outlined are a lot of work. And the way technology changing, as well as the speed at which things are changing, and the impact of those changes create challenges for the implementation of these types of comprehensive training programs. Whereas putting together a half-hour video is pretty easy.
But the only way you’re going to change behavior is through consistent application and intervention over time through a comprehensive training, not through crash courses or videos. Videos aren’t real training. It’s informative, and you may learn something, but you’re not going to obtain and sustain a new skill set - something that Kathleen finds very frustrating.
This is (partly) why Kathleen and I have started a new company - Inbound Sales Academy.
Why Inbound Sales Academy?
As Kathleen points out, we noticed the lack of proper training within our own industry, particularly around inbound selling. This is due in part to the fact that it’s a very new field. But still, if you think you’re going to obtain a whole new sales skill set from a few videos, you are sorely mistaken.
She’s not saying to throw out video. We’re going to have videos, too. But it’s all about the blend of different kinds of instruction. For example, Inbound Sales Academy will have coaching, action planning, roleplaying, etc.
Bottom line: Training needs to be multidimensional, especially since people have unique learning styles and needs.
Who Video-Based Training Fails
Again, videos are not bad for those looking to brush up on pre-existing knowledge. But companies who are seeking training options where the outcome is for employees to learn a brand new skill - those are the people who are failed by exclusive video-based training.
Because saying, “Go watch a bunch of videos,” isn’t going to cut it.
One of the things I learned recently is that less than 1 percent of the average employee’s time is spent on formalized training, learning and development. Now, these same employees will instead spend around 30 minutes a day on unplanned, informal learning - watching videos, reading how-tos or attending webinars. Why? Because the market is not recognizing the other components needed to have a successful training program.
As Kathleen rightly points out, this is a classic case of, “You get what you pay for.” It’s counterproductive to think that you can plop an employee in front of a computer and tell them to watch five videos and become an expert in something. We get it though. These options are of little-to-no cost to employers, and require no time on the part of supervisors who need their employees to be trained.
But it’s like anything else - if you’re not willing to make the investment and do it right, is it really worth doing?
This is particularly true of sales training.
A recent article talked about what makes sales training effective. Guess how much companies in the United States spend on sales training in a year? Over $7 billion! Essentially 3 to 6 percent of your sales salaries should go to training, each year.
The article went on to say - with all that money - there is an inherent need to measure the success of sales training. Adoption? Revenue?
The funny thing is that a massive number of the people who go through these sales trainings end up losing the knowledge they’ve learned very quickly. Especially when you’re talking about one-day bootcamps.
It’s a huge problem. And this is why you need that continued support through coaching and practical application.
The Importance of Action Planning
When Kathleen used to work in the training industry, they used to create something called “action plans,” where you require your students in a program to put together a personalized action plan that details exactly how they’re going to apply what they’ve learned. Down to key performance indicators, time-bound tasks and specific goals.
When you have a plan like that in place, the likelihood of new skill adoption increases.
What’s more, if you’re an employer who has employees going through this training plan, and you know they are supposed to leave their training with this kind of plan mapped out, you now have something you can hold them accountable for. Whereas if you send them to a training plan, and they come back with nothing, there is no communication loop for accountability against what new skills they should have learned.
All you have instead is, “Hey, how was it? Was it good?”
Training in the Age of Shrinking Attention Spans
I think, however, we have to address the evolution of training, in the face of realities like shrinking attention spans. So it’s no longer acceptable to some to commit to going to a week-long training - or even a day. People want training that is mobile and hyper-accessible. And thanks to our now Twitter-like attention spans, training needs to be broken down into manageable bite-sized pieces.
Are training companies just getting lazy with being content to just send people off to this ineffectual training? Kathleen says we can blame the “moocs” - or massive online open courses - with thousands of people.
These can work in certain cases, but to bring this back to inbound marketing and inbound sales, this model doesn’t work. Particularly with inbound sales. It’s a new sales methodology, and sales skills are so ingrained in the DNA of the individual representative. Those who make a career out of sales often have similar traits - they like the challenge, they like the hunt, they are competitive, etc. Changing those kinds of behaviors is really hard.
That’s where the “moocs” of the world fall short. They don’t foster that kind of behavior change. Sales training needs one-on-one coaching and role-playing. There needs to be a way to apply generic methodologies to specific types of sales calls and processes.
This is important, because sales training has a lot of money at stake.
How Much Will Bad Training Really Cost You?
Currently we have an eight-week seminar running called Learn How to Hire High-Achieving Inbound Sales Reps at the Inbound Sales Academy. And in this seminar, we have a worksheet for attendees that tracks and calculates their sales ghosts. Sales ghosts are the hidden costs that a company incurs either with a miss-hire, bad hire or turnover. It’s a great way to quantify the true cost of a bad hire or poor training.
Kathleen would also argue that you really can’t afford to give up the time required to find out that those free training programs aren’t going to work. For example. let’s say you have an employee who does two to three months of free, self-guided video training. But it turns out that kind of training wasn’t helpful.
In sales, you don’t have two to three months. Especially if you have a larger deal size. You could have hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue lost, thanks to that poor training.
This, however, gets into the realm of not just sales training, but onboarding - something else we address. For successful sales hiring, you need to have a defined hiring process. We also strongly recommend a skills assessment test (we use the Objective Management Group assessment tool). And you have to have a sales onboarding plan.
We suggest you map out the first 90 days of a new hire’s time at your company. Literally, just block out the time on their calendar every day with the different things that they need to be doing when they’re onboarding.
Onboarding Matters
But as Kathleen rightly points out, not everyone knows what new hires should be doing during onboarding. In fact, she had a call today with a company that is very successful, and they’re looking to put a more robust salesforce in place. But as it stands, the partners in this company have never managed sales teams before.
The same thing happens on the marketing side, as well. We used to be rather small, but we’ve grown really quickly. We hired a lot of people in a short amount of time, and the growth got ahead of us. We didn’t have a proper onboarding process, and Kathleen feels bad for some of the people we hired during that time. They ended up being thrown in the ocean, so to speak, and then being told, “Okay! Now swim!”
Now it’s totally different. It consists of taking video classes, but also there are practicums. On top of HubSpot videos - which are great, but they aren’t enough - we have them apply their newly learned skills to real marketing situations with our own marketing. A new employee will take over our Twitter account for a month with particular growth goals. Or we’ll ask them to build and refine landing pages. And if they don’t mean the targets, that’s where the one-on-one coaching comes into play.
This is also what you see on the sales side. Learn something new. Then try to apply it. Then get coached. And then have a timeline in place. That’s when training really works.
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