How to train salespeople

Currently, market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Customers have a large amount of information and have less and less demand for suppliers. As a result, the influence of the supply side is gradually weakening, and it is increasingly at a disadvantage in the competition. In such a business environment, the ability of the sales force often becomes the key to a company's success. As an important means of cultivating sales capabilities, sales training should be more important. However, whether they are corporate executives or general sales staff, many people believe that sales training is not very helpful in cultivating sales capabilities and has little impact on company development. Why is this situation happening?

David Maister, considered one of the top 40 business thinkers in the world, pointed out in one of his articles that whether he or some others Most business management training is a waste of money and time for enterprises. Because very little of the training content is used in actual work. Most of the training, because it is not integrated with the actual operation and management system of the enterprise, is quickly forgotten by everyone.

It should be said that David Meester's views are very sharp. "Special tricks" that are divorced from reality have been proven time and again by practice to be nothing more than words on paper that mislead people and cause problems. Valuable sales training must be combined with the development of the enterprise and the specific conditions of the company. Only sales training that truly teaches students in accordance with their aptitude, individual needs, and time can be valuable sales training.

So, what is the correct way for enterprises and companies to train sales staff? I would like to analyze and discuss with you from four parts: First, it is necessary to clarify the responsibilities and authorities of sales training in a company, to clarify the division of labor and to implement responsibilities, that is, who should do the training and how it should be done. The second is to clarify what knowledge you need to know based on your own situation. This is what salespeople lack and what they need to learn. The third is to position yourself well and understand the actual situation of sales staff, that is, you need to know what kind of people are being trained and what kind of work they do. The fourth is what kind of sales training method should be adopted to achieve good results. It talks about how training should be done and what should be done.

Part 1: Clarify training responsibilities

Training sales personnel is not mainly a matter of the HR department, nor is it the responsibility of the product manager, but a matter of the leaders of our business department and sales department. We must clarify responsibilities and divide authorities. Training salespeople is extremely important. In many organizations, existing sales teams are mostly made up of older employees, plus about 15 percent new employees. Whether you are a "veteran" who has been in the business for a long time or a "novice" who is just starting out, everyone needs to continue to receive training and participate in learning. Some need to participate in course training, some need to learn on their own, and most of them need a combination of both. In addition, sales training is not a course, not a class, not a panacea that can be solved once and for all after one training. Sales training should be a long-term, continuous learning and improvement process. There are different focuses at different stages and different learning methods according to your different abilities. Sales training should be conducted every year, every month, and every day. As the saying goes, "The fist never leaves the hand, and the tune never leaves the mouth." No matter who you are, whether you are a sports worker or a salesperson, training and learning, improving your abilities, and learning new knowledge and new methods are what we all should do every month, every week, or even every day. Things to do.

Part 2: Conduct sales training

Whether it is a business leader, a sales manager, or a salesperson, they must clearly understand what abilities are required to be a qualified or excellent salesperson. That is to say, what kind of training is needed to obtain the corresponding knowledge, and through practical application and cultivation, finally obtain the ability in this area. To this end, I have listed it in the following four aspects.

1. Product knowledge. Our products and our solutions can be used for which customers and where they can be applied to these customers. Only when we understand the customers we serve, understand the industries of the customers we serve, and understand the customers of the customers we serve, can we do a good job in sales. If we find that we have gaps in these aspects, it is necessary to conduct targeted training to help us master this knowledge, reduce the gaps, and perform our work better.

2. Sales skills. This is the sales skill we salespeople need to master. Specifically, how to make sales calls, how to visit customers, how to make bids, how to give speeches, how to introduce your products, how to make summaries, how to make forecasts, and how to use Salesforce.com or SIEBEL or other customer relationship management software. Big data analysis for sales, these are all sales skills.

3. Personal ability. There are many opportunities in the market, which opportunities are related to our products, the regions we are responsible for, and the customer groups we are responsible for. You must have the ability to discover opportunities, the ability to seize opportunities, and the ability to analyze and solve problems. Another important point is time management. As a qualified salesperson, we have to face various challenges every day, deal with various problems, write some summary reports, and continue to learn ourselves. This requires us to improve our time management skills. Sometimes, unexpected problems will arise. Customers will ask some tricky and strange questions that they have never thought of. Some problems that have never been heard of will suddenly appear in the work. From time to time, some problems will appear out of nowhere. How powerful competitors can effectively deal with these unexpected challenges is a major test of personal ability.

4. Work attitude. This is a very important point, but it is very difficult to learn. This is what we call positive energy, which is proactiveness and teamwork. This can be taught and promoted, but it is relatively difficult to learn.

This is the second part, which mainly talks about what our sales managers and sales staff need to learn and master. We have successfully developed two training modules. One module focuses on what abilities good sales managers need to learn, and the other module introduces what abilities a salesperson needs to have. If you are interested, you can participate in these training courses and gain in-depth knowledge in this area. We will also share the text version of the content through the "Business Review" platform.

Part 3: Determine Sales Positioning

For different people, different methods should be used. Sales managers and salespeople should try to know where you are now and whether you are brand new in the industry. To this end, I divide the company's sales staff into several categories. One category is those who have just graduated from school, holding a gorgeous diploma in their hands. When they arrive at our company or our agent, they have a thorough understanding of our products, technologies, and various The solutions are not very clear. But people are very ambitious and hope to do a career. This is a type of person. There is also a type of people who are transferred from other departments, such as the technical department. These people are very familiar with the products we are selling and the solutions we want to promote, because they are originally from technical backgrounds and do technical support work. This is another type of person. There is another type of people who come from other companies and companies. They are originally people in this industry. They have worked for many years, accumulated rich experience, and have good performance. Whether it is basic skills or basic knowledge, they are already rich. This is another type of person. Of course there may be other different types of people, but I won’t list them all here. For these different categories of people, training methods should be different to achieve good results.

In addition, different people have different learning abilities, and different people have different characteristics in doing things. For example, some people are particularly good at analysis and need to learn knowledge when they encounter problems. When looking for solutions, they need to get a lot of data and learn a lot of knowledge. They will look for various books and check various information on the Internet. Such people Is analytical. They learn through analytical research. For this type of colleagues, I provide several methods for reference to help them better learn skills, knowledge, and methods. The first is called the role-playing method. You can arrange it from time to time and let him, as a salesperson, visit different customers. When meeting different people among the customers, you can assume that the project is at different stages and let the salesperson practice what strategies he should adopt. Who should he meet and how is he going to introduce his products and solutions. Through role-playing, he can collect a lot of information while communicating with customers played by his colleagues. Since he is an analytical person, this information can provide him with a lot of help. Let him be fully prepared before actually meeting the customer. The second method can be to conduct a review afterwards. When a project is successful, what could have been done better, what are the secrets to success, and what almost went wrong, please pay more attention next time. For failed projects, let us learn about them together and review them carefully to see which links went wrong, which aspects were not noticed, where competitors did better, we can learn from them, and where we did better Yes, we can continue to carry forward the key points where we have made mistakes and avoid repeating the same mistakes next time. The third method allows them to split the large project into several smaller projects. For example, our "Yu's Six-Step Sales Method" introduces the different steps of sales, how we find the market, how to find potential customers in the vast market, and how to discover project opportunities through potential customers. After finding the opportunity and finding the project, he needs to understand what products and technologies our company has, what the customer's needs are, and what the customer's real and most fundamental needs are. Then according to the customer's needs, we provide the most suitable solution for them, and ultimately make the project a success. The success of the project is not the end. He can also consider tracking the after-sales service to make the customer continuously satisfied, become a high-quality customer, and provide the company with stable project opportunities. Let analytical employees provide this kind of target segmentation analysis method and provide a decomposition method that simplifies the complex and decomposes it from large to small, so as to master the sales knowledge of the entire project in detail and develop abilities in this area. The fourth method is to give analytical colleagues sufficient time to prepare. During the role play, when it comes to the bidding stage, or the customer technical or business clarification meeting stage, give them ample time so that they can fully Prepare to learn more, because the purpose of role-playing is to enable analytical salespeople to learn knowledge efficiently and to train analytical salespeople efficiently through role-playing. Therefore, various methods must be used , to facilitate their learning.

There is also a type of people who are hands-on. Most of their knowledge is learned by doing things themselves. If you ask him to study in class, he may not be able to listen. He hopes that it is best to let him do it by himself. The best way to learn is to do it by himself. You may tell him 1, 2, 3 or 4 times, but he may still be confused and confused. But if you let him do it by himself, he may master it quickly. He may learn faster and better than you think. It is entirely possible that he will master it very well, very deeply, and very thoroughly. Since this type of sales learns through hands-on practice and learns knowledge and skills in practice, we can also have several different methods for this type of employees. First, we can assign them a task, a very specific task for them to do, such as asking them to meet customers, develop the market, and get back lost orders, lost markets, and lost customers. That is to give them very specific tasks, let them do them one by one, and give them the opportunity to learn various knowledge and skills while doing things. Second, you can allow them to have relative independence, give them a certain amount of space and freedom, let them do it by themselves, and let them have a certain degree of freedom to do it and learn knowledge and skills from it. The third is to let them try and keep trying. The attempt may succeed or it may fail. If they succeed, they will sum up their experience. They have learned this method. If you fail, learn from it and avoid doing it again. In short, for hands-on salespeople, we should let them do it, try it, learn to work at work, and learn to sell while selling.

There is another type of people who are observational. If you give them theories and sermons, they may be completely indifferent, unable to listen at all, let alone learn. But if you can let him watch it once, twice, or three times, he may learn it quickly, and he may even surpass his master. This type of salesperson learns knowledge and skills through observation. So for this type of people, we can also have two types of methods. The first method is to give them an overall layout, such as describing the entire process through a "value stream map", from beginning to end, from project opportunity tracking to signing and receiving payment, the entire process of project settlement. What will happen to this year's project? What will happen to the project next year, and what will happen the year after that, are described in detail, allowing him to see both the panoramic view and the details. Because they have strong observation skills, these descriptions can help them learn this knowledge quickly and master the corresponding skills comprehensively and accurately. The second method is to let them find benchmarks inside and outside the company to see what other outstanding salespeople do, how they win orders, how they can complete tens of millions of sales tasks in a year, and look at these By perceptually observing how good salespeople do their jobs, they can gradually learn the tricks and apply them to their own work.

These are what we call three different types of people. Their learning styles are different, and they are good at learning knowledge, mastering knowledge, and improving their abilities in different ways. Therefore, we must adopt different methods, teach students in accordance with their aptitude, and prescribe the right medicine to the case. Don’t be one-size-fits-all, and avoid simple, crude, indiscriminate indoctrination.

Also, the sales performance of sales staff is not the same. What is most important in sales is performance, the realization of sales tasks, the tasks of completing or even exceeding the orders assigned by the company, the tasks of sales revenue, the tasks of collecting payments, the tasks of developing new customers, and the tasks of developing new channels. . These tasks, that is, sales performance, may be in different states for different people at different stages. Some people may have exceeded the target for this year, some may have exceeded the target for consecutive years, and some people have exceeded the target for the past three years and encountered challenges this year. There are also some teams that have been working hard for two years and are barely able to meet the standards every year, or even cannot complete the task after hard work. Of course, there are also some new employees who have strong learning abilities but cannot improve their performance. For these different people, we need to adopt different training methods.

Therefore, for different sales staff, if we can fully consider his work background, learning style, sales performance, etc., and tailor a suitable training plan, it is possible to receive Better results.

Part 4: Choose a training method

There are many training methods. As a sales manager, an excellent sales manager must have certain routines, certain norms, and certain systems. First of all, he must clearly set his goals with each salesman. The sales manager must clearly state his expectations and guide the salesman to formulate his plan. This is a general direction and must be clarified first! His goals must be clear, his tasks must be clear, and his action plan must be clearly listed. This action plan is not just annual, but quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even better, daily. Once you have a goal, you can check your goal every day, every week, and every month, check the gap with the goal, whether your tasks have been completed, whether there have been any changes in the actual work, and what are the impacts of these changes? Are you in control, can you continue to complete the task, or what new challenges arise. These new gaps and new challenges are the focus of our training and learning and the focus of improvement.

Second, as a manager, we need to remember some good, existing, simple management routines, such as MOS (Management Operation System): you and your Does the team have regular meetings? Have you held this meeting? How do you hold it? How do you hold the meeting efficiently? Regarding how to hold a weekly sales meeting efficiently, we have a special module that talks about how to organize an efficient sales meeting. In this module, we introduced the following methods: first, be fully prepared in advance, second, notify the meeting agenda in advance, third, be pragmatic and not fussy, fourth, only talk about problems with solutions, fifth, one topic at a time, and sixth, To remove obstacles to sales, the seventh is not to procrastinate during meetings, the eighth is to encourage everyone to participate, the ninth is to encourage sales to be loosened, and the tenth is to follow up and implement after the meeting.

As ​​a sales manager, you should have regular one-on-one communication, one-on-one conversations, and one-on-one meetings with your sales, preferably every week have. Of course, as I said before, different people may be at different stages. If you manage a total of about ten members, then I especially recommend that you communicate with those novices, those who cannot complete the task, and those who have difficulty completing the task, every day. Of course, if he always overfulfills his tasks, for this kind of person, you may do it once a week, and you don't need to check his work, but ask him more about what I can do for you. As a sales manager and a sales director, what can I help you with, what good experiences do you have to share, and what secrets to success do you have to share with us.

Another method of training is to praise. Specifically praise the good team members, good practices, good attitudes, and good behaviors found in your work. Let other colleagues know through praise what our company and our team encourage, advocate and promote. I personally believe that praise is more effective than criticism. Of course, if a problem is discovered, when necessary, as a manager, you cannot wait until the end of the year to tell your team members that the task has not been completed; you cannot wait until the end of the year to tell everyone which bad behaviors need to be corrected and which are not good. The attitude needs to be corrected and what new knowledge needs to be learned. It’s best to tell everyone in time during your weekly sales meeting. Once an error is discovered, raise it in one-on-one conversations anytime and anywhere. First, criticize individually, correct it in private, and tell him what needs to be improved. If there are some people who are not very sensitive to criticism, slow to respond, and there is no significant improvement after one, two, three, five or even ten times, this time it may no longer be private, you need to be in your team , reminding Zhang San or Li Si, how long has it been since he completed the task. And introduce what you have done, what help you have provided, and what opportunities you have given, but there is still no improvement. Note that we must speak with numbers and facts. At this time, you may have to publicly expose the person who is not doing well in your team, and work with everyone to find ways to help him and urge him.

In training, there are many methods. For example, you can specify reading materials. This material can be our product knowledge, sales skills, or sales books; You can also participate in external training; you can also participate in training at the Honeywell Performance Materials and Technology Group Sales Academy. We have carefully prepared a total of more than 20 modules of sales training in China for everyone. This is a series of training courses focusing on sales skills and abilities. Of course, there are also various types of training in society.

Another way is to share successful cases. I especially encourage everyone to have every salesperson summarize his success stories or lessons learned from his failures at regular sales meetings. Any salesperson, no matter how good he is, may not be able to achieve 100% success. I participated in the bidding for fifty projects and won all fifty projects. I have never seen such sales. Therefore, as a salesperson, no matter how good he is, he will always have the experience of "walking around". So why the project was not obtained? Can we analyze, dissect and share it with everyone? In this way, whether it is old sales, new sales, particularly outstanding sales, or sales whose current performance is not very good, everyone can sum up experience and learn lessons together. What if it is a new sale and there are no orders yet? You can let him introduce the products he recommends, and you can train him through role-playing. For example, invite two or three people to do a practical exercise: We now have a product, one person plays the role of sales, and one person plays the role of customer. Let's demonstrate together, how to do the first visit, how to do the follow-up visit, how to do the bidding, and finally the product. The result determines the winner. Customers have to decide which brand and product to buy, and what should they do at this time. How should the boss talk when meeting the customer, and how should the purchasing staff talk when meeting the customer. We can design some questions to help salespeople learn new knowledge and skills.

I believe that as a sales manager, as long as you think more about how to train employees; as a salesperson, as long as you think more about how to improve every day through training. I firmly believe that together we will be able to gain something and make progress in sales training, and together we will be able to exceed the sales target.

Source: Business Review Network Yu Feng