Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007 - (Page 15)

TRAINING the Pitch Want Yesterday’s Learning or Tomorrow’s? What to do when your training goes stale I n most sales and marketing organizations, training is not nearly fresh enough. In a fast-changing marketplace, ad hoc learning opportunities often are far more useful. “People seek to fulfill their own needs,” says Tom McGee, vice president of Triple Creek Associates in Greenwood Village, Colo., a consultancy in mentoring. If people want answers, they’ll look for colleagues with knowledge, and that’s where “the deep learning will take place.” That, he says, is a corollary of Chaos Theory, which says that systems tend to organize around some sort of strange attractor. An employee interested in learning about something will probe and form synergistic relationships with others in the company, and eventually the organization will learn because of a single person’s need. Companies should open their eyes to this phenomenon, McGee suggests, because the way they address training is based on “a kind of control principle.” To wit: “We fill your head with the things that we think are important,” he explains. “And we build systems to document that you have learned what we think is important.” If people can’t get the new knowledge they need when they need it, the learning will slow down. Also, people need to be sharing what’s working well for them. “If that doesn’t get shared, it gets hoarded— and again, you slow the organization down,” McGee says. Mentoring is one way to foster cooperation. Go across boundaries. Try to create an environment where direct reports are not in competition with one another and feel they can cooperate with co-workers in other parts of the organization. One large equipment manufacturer that Triple Creek is working with actually requires mentees to select mentors from an area outside their own business unit. “The reason they do it is they feel somebody outside might ask more penetrating questions,” McGee says. Sales and marketing tends to be “a command/control type of learning environment,” partly because competition is in these departments’ DNA. “The trick is to design a way to approach sales and marketing from an organizational standpoint so you foster both competition and cooperation,” he says. “Many people in sales and marketing have to change jobs in order to learn to get out from under a controlling manager,” McGee warns. To change a fossilized learning system, start by asking direct reports what they are learning in their day-to-day sales activities, and what they think they need more of. “Your job is to draw that out and learn what’s going on in the minds of your sales force,” McGee says. —Julie Barker [THE PULSE] SOURCE: CAREERBUILDER/HARRIS INTERACTIVE SURVEY OF 5,727 U.S. EMPLOYEES 44% of employees say they’d be willing to relocate to another state, province or region for a new job. CASE STUDY SKILL SET SAMPLER seminars. He also notes that when salespeople are only looking for a quick refresher on certain skills, a full-on seminar can be overkill. Sales Snippets turned out to be a good fit for McMillan & Associates, a Las Vegas insurance broker with a very small sales force— exactly the sort of organization that might be reluctant to pay for Lombardo’s full services right off the bat. And feedback from McMillan’s sales team has been exceptionally positive. “This is a very economical way to get a taste,” he says.“It’s also a good steppingstone for getting full-blown training.”(Editor’s Note: Sales Snippets are available at PeakSalesConsulting.com/Sales_Snippets_Training. htm, or by calling 702-655-5652.) —Jeremy Cohen OCTOBER 2007 SALES&MARKETING MANAGEMENT Get a crash course in essential sales techniques As founder and president of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC, Russ Lombardo makes his living teaching sales professionals the skills they need to survive and thrive. The only problem is, sales reps don’t have lots of free time, which can make the prospect of signing up for one of his one- or two-day seminars less than inviting. So the Las Vegas-based Lombardo decided to offer an alternative approach: Peak Sales Consulting now offers “Sales Snippets,”Internet-based training sessions covering a range of basic selling skills. Ranging from 10 to 20 minutes in length, each Snippet consists of a PowerPoint presentation narrated by Lombardo. “People forget things afterward,” Lombardo says of traditional www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com 15 http://PeakSalesConsulting.com/Sales_Snippets_Training.htm http://PeakSalesConsulting.com/Sales_Snippets_Training.htm http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007

Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007 Contents Editor’s Letter Management Strategies Why Prospecting Gets No Respect Sales Strategy: Spotlight your Services Marketing: A Social Intelligence Primer Management: Steer your Team to Success Motivation/Incentives: The No-Pain Way to Gain Training: Looking for Yesterday’s Learning or Tomorrow’s? Technology: Get Trade Show Satisfaction with the Video Massage Focusing on SMB Solutions The Best Sales Force The Hottest Job Industries Overseas Aggravation Gadgets & Gear: Pen and Ink as an Art Form Books that Improve Strategic Thinking, People Skills and Sales One Foot Out the Door Work/Life: Calling in the Fitness Cavalry. Take-Aways: Bite-size Strategies to Help You Sell More, Market Smarter and Manage Better

Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007

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