After careful consideration and knowledgeable selection, the new-hire is ready to begin the process of becoming a fabulous addition to your company! You’re happy with your choice, the salesperson is hungry and highly motivated to produce the best results, in fact, record-breaking results for sales statistics ever noted within your history! The excitement is palpable! The potential is oozing from both the company (you) and the newly-minted representative for your products! Hoorah! Everyone’s delighted!
Now the vital task of personnel development is about to begin. Capitalizing on all that new hire energy forms the foundation for success – of your business and the salespeople. In the hiring phase, you very carefully and very specifically delineated what you were searching for in a salesperson. You specified all the important qualities and assessed and measured and checked to ascertain that this person is the one that is the perfect fit for your requirements, your product and their drive and need for success. You’ve already invested a good amount of time and cash just vetting this person for an exciting future together.
So let’s get this person rolling toward a long, satisfying and mutually rewarding relationship!
Remember when you carefully specified what your needs were from this individual? Now you get to specify precisely the duties, the minute expectations for results, the best practices for achieving goals, the step-by-step training needs that will best develop a team in your company. Piece of cake, right? Assuredly!
However, in addition to those steps, might there be some very specific training needs that this person has that will bring out the highest degree of excellence, which translates directly into growth in sales and income for both you and the salesperson?
Firstly, what needs do you have that will maximize your ability to effectively and positively train this person – you know, keeping all that motivation and adding all those skill-steps to produce fabulous outcomes. Again specificity is required. Do you have the patience, the time, the skills to model what you want from this salesperson (and for this salesperson)? What are the gaps in your own excellence that you need to improve in order to impart the very best training for your eager-to-please employee? Where can you obtain the skills and information to be the best trainer ever!?
Assuming that your careful self-assessment has produced the awesomeness level of trainer that you desire, how do you begin to develop the raw talent that awaits the sharing of your wisdom? Just as with a toddler, baby steps. Short lessons with ample opportunity for practice.
You say your wunderkind has natural talent – no baby steps necessary here. Great, but take due care in assessing those skills so that gaps in excellence do not develop!
The amount of care and specificity you devote at this point translates directly into success for your staff and for your bottom line, so if you are inclined to slide through this step, be prepared to correctively instruct those “slidey steps” at a later date.
Obviously, experienced salespeople do not always need the tiniest of steps that a brand-new salesperson requires, but everyone benefits from a refresher course now and again. Additionally, reviewing steps allows you to assess the coachability of even “old hands” at the sales game.
Sales training is an on-going process; all of us benefit from finely honing those innate skills. Lesser experienced staff gain a variety of techniques and opportunities for polishing their presentations.
Author, trainer, consultant, and speaker Brad Huisken is President of IAS Training. Huisken has authored several books and training manuals on sales and produces a Weekly Sales Training Meeting video series along with Aptitude Tests and Proficiency Exams for new hires, current sales staff and sales managers. In addition, he publishes a free weekly newsletter called “Sales Insight”. For a free subscription or more information contact IAS Training at 800-248-7703 or info@iastraining.com. Visit his website at www.iastraining.com.
