Training's ROI

Distributors need to measure the return on their investment in sales training

By -- Industrial Distribution, 12/1/2000

An important question sales departments need to ask is: Are we getting a return on the time, effort, expense and emphasis we place on training?

Those companies that believe "training" is all about those boring, laborious, repetitive "product knowledge" sessions and little more, are not getting a return. That type of meeting only demonstrates how little a manufacturer knows about a seller's needs. On the other hand, general managers who have concluded that sales training is an expense rather than an investment equally are out of touch with the marketplace.

Sales training is something I know a great deal about. I, with several associates, authored and put in place the sales management development program for the Mobil Oil Corp. In addition, each year my firm presents its Beveridge Institute of Sales and Sales Management course in the Chicago area. A host of firms send employees to the program to upgrade their skills and gain cutting-edge sales expertise. We produced, in the last three years, sales training films for several associations and corporations. So we are well aware of and involved with sales training.

An important first step in any training program is to look at who is to be the trainer. Please deliver me from in-house professional trainers who have limited sales experience and who have not functioned in a sales territory in the last three years. Their offerings are not current, their lesson plans either generic or old hat or both. The position of sales trainer must go to an individual who was recently in a successful sales territory and is in line for promotion to sales manager. Additionally, the person must be in the sales trainer position no more than 36 months. Now, we begin to get an ROI from sales training.

There's more. What happens when a salesperson returns to the territory following a developmental program? In most cases, nothing. Whoa! Wait! We just invested time, effort and a bunch of money. Are you going to tell me you do not expect, anticipate and require increased productivity? Are you suggesting there is not a demand for increased sales, improved margins, new accounts and/or better selling skills? Have you not sat down with the salespeople and helped them translate what they were to learn into new or improved territory activities?

Well, if you haven't, then you are not getting an ROI on whatever you are investing in sales training.

Frankly, in today's more complex, more competitive sales environment we need similar accountabilities in the training function as we have in the selling function. You should discuss with the training person what improvements, what increases and what upgraded skills should be anticipated and by what date those benefits will arrive. And then hold him or her accountable for delivering those results.

Sales training is not an activity free of accountability from the sales trainer or the sales representative. Sales training is a mandatory, good investment from which most of us are not getting fair return. Ask for it. Manage it. Anticipate and expect it. Demand it.

Don Beveridge is president of Don Beveridge Jr. & Associates. He can be reached at (561) 793-4330.