Give the Devils their Due

Salespeople are people too, but boy are they different.

Most folks will considerately sit through the most boring training sessions with no more than a quiet yawn.

But not salespeople. They'll leave the room and head for the nearest pay phone.

Since a large portion of salespeople's take-home pay is based upon commissions, they’re attending training on their time and their own dollar.

And they'll walk out if they aren't getting their money's worth.

Wouldn't you?

My advice is to give the devils their due.

Experienced sales trainers are able to beat the cell phone syndrome by designing training to fit the unique needs and temperament of salespeople.

Good Sales Training Should...

Cut to the Chase

Clearly identify who needs the product, for what, and how to convince them to buy it. No more, and no less.

Be Activity Rich

A void boring lectures. Sales- people should spend less than 25 percent of the time listening to you talk. They should spend the other 75 percent involved in role plays, games, discussions, and simulated sales presentations.

Be Benefits Oriented

Continually stress the benefits of the product or program for the salesperson (e.g., higher commissions, greater visibility, expanded account base). Remember, you need to sell them before they can sell anyone else.

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman

Technical Training Doesn’t Have to Hurt

Technical audiences are wonderful. They'll sit through just about anything. Most of the time they'll even take notes feverishly. At worst, they'll quietly nap. But let's not take advantage of a good thing.

Technical Training Can Be Fun.

We've had lots of luck with two unique types of activities:

§ Colorforms presentations

§ Technobabble role plays

Colorforms Presentations

Smaller versions of these were very popular in the 50's as a kid’s toy. They're plastic sheets that are cut and drawn to represent anything you want (e.g., elements of a flow chart, system components). These cutouts easily stick to the white boards you see in most conference or training rooms. Don't limit yourself to having only instructors use them during presentations. Also let students use them in individual or group exercises to develop their own flow charts or network diagrams. Try them. You'll add a wonderful graphic dimension to your technical courses.

Technobabble Role Plays

We use these for training both sales and support audiences who interact with customers who may be more technical than themselves. Three people are involved in each role play: a customer, a sales/support person, and an evaluator. The customers job is to trip the sales/ support person by throwing around all the "technobabble" (e.g., names, abbreviations, and acronyms) they can to throw their opponent off-base. The sales/ support person's job is to use their knowledge and job tools provided in the training to translate what the customer said and not get thrown off-track. The evaluator measures how well each is doing.

Sound interesting? This technique also works well as an afternoon pick-me-up!

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman

Training is not the Answer to Every Questions

"God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

- Reinhold Niebuhr

It's not our job to make sure that employees are provided with challenging work in a pleasant setting and are paid a fair wage. Our job is to provide them with the skills to do their jobs and let management worry about the rest.

But It's Not Working!

Even the best-designed, thoroughly constructed, and fully multi-mediated training programs can't provide peace in the Middle East, cure global warming, or tear my twelve year old away from his computer games.

Training is not the Answer to Every Question!

Many years ago someone gave me an excellent piece of advice.

[f you are going to stay in the training field, never guarantee that you will change anybody's behavior unless you can conduct long-term psychotherapy (figure on about 10 years), convert people to a different religion (new converts will do anything) or perform frontal lobotomies. "

- Jack Asgar

No training program, as sexy as it may be, will be worth a dam unless the reason people weren't doing the "right" thing in the first place was because they didn’t know how.

An old professor of mine was fond of saying, "If they can do it when you stick a gun in their head, don't bother training!"

Few of us are fortunate enough to be able to implement this rigorous form of testing, so here are a few tip-offs that it's the work environment, not the skills of the employee, that's the culprit:

• The organization has a history of management turnover

• Deadlines are often missed

• You observe substantial duplication of effort

• Employees' roles and responsibilities are not clear cut. People wear many hats

• The flow of work appears inefficient or complex

• Personnel spend a substantial amount of time on unimportant things, like searching for information

• Equipment is often down

But Don't Just Sit There; Do Something!

There is just something in the physical and nonphysical work environment that's stopping them and someone's got to remove it.

Muster up the courage to blow the whistle. Tell your management that training will not cure the problem and call their attention to what will, such as:

• Providing better management

• Clarifying and simplifying employee roles and responsibilities

• Providing employees with the authority they need

• Upgrading equipment and information resources

• Simplifying the work flow or organizational structure

Give it a shot! You might get lucky

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman