Career Planning & Training Schedule: Building an Effective Sales Team

Mark Bradman, 15 April 2012

Gone are the days when “education” was defined by what you did at school before you started your first job. With the speed of technological change in today’s society, ongoing education can now be defined as being critical to keeping your job.

With this in mind, what are you doing to keep you sales team members in touch with the modern world to ensure that they and your products and services continue to have relevance in the ever changing market place in which we live?

 

In today’s blog, we briefly introduce the final 2 components of your sales methodology:

• Career Planning/Progression
• Training Development Schedules

Career Planning is the incentive, the carrot, for attracting the type of staff who are excited by learning new technologies rather than having to settle for those who would prefer to know the minimum required just to do a particular task. The difference between these two types of employees is not only in your hands but could determine whether you have a job yourself when the next technological advancement rocks your marketplace.

In sales, it’s not always a matter of paying more money because a successful sales person pays himself based on the commissions they earn. It’s more a matter of providing the environment for them in which to flourish, helping everyone earn their stripes to tackle new challenges like higher worth clients, opening new offices, launching new products and services, etc.

But these things don’t happen without some considered planning at the top of your organization. It is only when you lead with exciting plans for the future that your team can get excited about what you do themselves.

So set big plans for yourself and reward your top performers with something exciting to strive for.

A Training Development Schedule demonstrates to your team your commitment to their on-going learning as well as ensuring that the smartest employees in town are always on your team.

To those organizations that are too fearful to train their staff in case they leave to go to a better paying job elsewhere, the only thing to say is:

– “What if you don’t train your staff and they stay…?”

With online Webinars, internet-based courses, even training available through social-based media like You-Tube and endless array of Blogging, ongoing training has never been easier or less expensive. Your learning resources are almost limitless without you even leaving your office.

Trade associations and networking also offer additional avenues for even more learning resources.

• What industry guilds and collectives should your staff belong to?
• What publications should you subscribe them to?
• What books should you make prescribed reading?

Please note that the word “schedule” implies something that is both planned and written down. A half an hour of training exercised each day will have longer lasting results than a full day’s course once a year that that can too easily become “Proud Words on a Dusty Shelf”.

Work out what courses would be most useful and get everyone involved. In that way everyone in your company can become members of your ‘Product Development Team’.

What better way can there be of staying abreast of changes in your industry than for your organization to be the trend setter instead of the dinosaur left behind?