It Never Ends...

There are four stages to learning a skill:

1.You don't know you don't know (unconscious incompetence).
2.You know you don't know (conscious incompetence).
3.You know you know (conscious competence).
4.You forget you know and just do it (conscious incompetence).

Here's what happens in sales. We take top sales performers and make them sales managers. Now, we have the people who have forgotten what they know trying to train people who don't know they don't know. This frustrates both parties.

In order to do sales training, you have to remember all of the things you have forgotten (or that you do unconsciously) and break them down into teachable units.

Then, you have to commit to an ongoing process.

Recently, I had a conversation with a CEO who told me he used to think of training as something to be checked off his list each year.

"Chris, I would pick a seminar and send everyone to it. Or, as we grew, we would bring in a speaker to address the annual sales meeting," he said. "And then I would feel good that I had provided training for my people. But you have finally convinced me training is a process instead of an event."

A sales development program is like an exercise program. You should never start either with the intention of ever stopping. And sales managers have to be involved in and support the training in order to get long-lasting behavior change.

That means coaching. In my world, "transfer of learning" means that the training you did actually made it to the field. A salesperson can attend a training session, take great notes, learn a lot and never do a thing with it.

Coaching is as simple asking them how they intend to implement their new skills and, then, fixing a follow up date to discuss how that implementation went.

Training needs to be active instead of passive.

Murray Sperber wrote Beer and Circus: How Big Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. A University of Indiana English professor, Sperber cares about imparting wisdom to his students. He calls the lecture format "pedagogically bankrupt." He continues, "But large public universities keep it alive for distinctly non-educational reason: It is the most cost-efficient way to gain maximum tuition dollars from regular undergraduates."

Sperber says the best model for real learning is the honors class. Honors programs include give-and-take discussions. Students read, discuss, question, present, debate and dialogue with the professor instead of receiving a series of lectures.

Change "students" to "salespeople" in the underlined sentence and you have the key reason to conduct an ongoing honors class in selling with your team. Assign a chapter of a book, an article, or an audio module. Then hold an honors class on the material at your sales meeting. Put a few discussion questions about the material on a slide or flip chart and let salespeople apply it. Here are some good discussion starters:

-- What was the key idea in this week's content that you felt applied most directly to you?

-- Has anyone had the opportunity to implement the idea with a prospect or customer?

-- How can you implement it with a prospect or customer?

-- What might happen if you implement it? What are the consequences of not trying this new behavior?

-- What could go wrong?

-- How can you minimize the risk?

You have now made your sales training process active instead of passive. In subsequent meetings you can ask for. The adult attention span is about 20 minutes. Holding discussion or conference calls on one topic once a week is better than sending salespeople to one or two day seminar once a year.

My friend the CEO thought of training as an event instead of a process. He's not alone. However, I hope I've convinced you not to seek out the next seminar to send your people to, but to conduct an ongoing "honors class" in sales as part of a weekly or bi-weekly meeting.

That's what works.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1.What was the key idea in this article that applies most directly to your company's sales success?

2.When will you implement it?