Training - the Afterthought…
Louis (Lou) Casados III asked the question on LinkedIn “Can you offer some best practices to ensure the flame that is started continues to burn?”
This relates to a post I had written about reinforcing training to make sure it is not wasted. So I promised to write a blog!
Drawing on my experience, and the best practices of our clients, I can offer the following tips:
Before
Start by being clear about your intentions BEFORE you embark on your training - if you have not defined the before, during and after expectations of your training program then how do you expect to hold people accountable?
Tell everyone, sing it from the roof tops - make sure you cover the ‘What’s in it for me’ and ‘What’s expected of me’ angles.
Be clear about what skills and behaviours the training is designed to impact. Better still benchmark where the sales team are against those today so you can measure the ‘after’
Define milestones that should be met or team based objectives that trigger at certain stages
Engage the Sales Leaders - they are so pivotal in making this work and getting it to embed and stick for the long term.
During
I don’t need to go on about this - there are plenty of training best practices out there. However, a couple of my thoughts:
Teach people how to give and receive feedback - so often overlooked but the best trainers I have worked with or been trained by have this at the heart of their delivery.
Get everyone to commit to what they will do next.
Have them write it down
Have them diarise it
Have them share it with their Manager
After
Sales Leaders are pivotal in the success of any training program - make sure there is a consistent follow up action plan across the board
Have the sales leaders track the follow up commitments made by their team.
Coaching, coaching & more coaching - You defined the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact, now double down on coaching activities around those competencies to get the value from the training. As a Senior Leadership team, set out coaching objectives for the sales leaders and teams.
Include this as a priority discussion point in your weekly roundup meetings.
Plan a follow up internal comms campaign - highlight areas of best practice, who’s doing well using the new skills, stories of gains using the new learnings. Communicate communicate communicate!!!
I like to have my team do a video replay of what they’ve learned. Way better than a ‘test’ to ensure the knowledge is embedded. Have them record their learning takeaways and have their manager feedback on areas they need to focus on in follow up coaching. One step further, have them include their plans to use and embed the new knowledge - it helps with personal accountability.
Give your sales teams a voice - Peer learning and reinforcement is a fantastic way to embed new ideas. If a new win was influenced by what was taught in training, have the sales rep write up a blog using the terminology. Gamify it with rewards for sharing.
Call / meeting observation and coaching - make sure sales leaders are held accountable for attending / listening to calls / meetings (and not getting involved) and providing feedback based on the use of the training elements.
Have individual goals and objectives that are tracked and linked back to those skills and behaviours learned.
Measure the milestones and take action if they are missed.
Measure the skills and behaviours the training was designed to impact and benchmark this against the starting point
Of course, I’m bleating on about this because I’m passionate about it but also because the e4enable platform enables you to achieve all of the above and have it visible to all stakeholders.