Most sales leaders cannot personally deliver all the necessary training to their sales team. There is simply too wide an array of skill sets that a sales leader typically does not have the time and/or expertise to be an instructor for everything. You likely have other people doing training for your organization but, ultimately, you are still responsible for your team.
Training is about supplying your sales team with the tools they need to effectively generate revenue. So why would you allow somebody else to do the training, inside or outside of your company, without having a solid understanding of what's being trained?
It's not uncommon for sales leaders to provide a training event or program and then check it off as done. The expectation is that the team will "improve". And maybe they will, but will they improve in a meaningful way that impacts the bottom line? Without leadership involvement there's a significant risk that the training will experience a disconnect from what you do as an organization.
Sales leaders, whether delivering the training or not, need to play an active role. It's important to know what the classroom training covers and that the team is bringing those lessons into their day-to-day activities. The goal is to have the new strategies and tactics become muscle memory.
So how can a leader help instill the lessons without holding the team's hand throughout the process?
1. Meet with people before they go.
Make sure the training that they're going to actually will help them increase the skills necessary for them to succeed.
2. Ask them what they want to get out of the program.
Every person attending training should supply sales leadership with the top two or three things that they want to get out of the program. Their goals need to be specific reasons. What do they hope to achieve? How do they see themselves using those types of skills in their day-to-day?
3. Project during training.
When the team attends the training program, give them a quick follow-up. A simple example might be a text asking, "How is it going? Is the program meeting and exceeding the goals that you had before going? Are there two or three other things that you've been surprised to learn from the program that will help you become more successful?"
4. Get a hot list.
Following up with the team after training is important to see what they perceived as impactful. Let them describe the ideas that they thought could be implemented in their day-to-day business to improve performance. Do they have those items written down? If so a quick photocopy is often valuable because it can serve as a future talking point. Get specific examples of when and where they plan on using some of these tactics that they wrote down.
5. Creating muscle memory.
Training is worthless if the sales team doesn't use it. The faster they implement it, the faster they start improving, which makes it easier for them to execute and hence a standard part of their day-to-day processes.
Training is about improvement. But training will succeed or fail based on, not the people or the program, but you as a sales leader. You need to prepare the team for training and reinforce it. This helps ensure that classroom training doesn't die when the class is over but rather signals the start of performance improvement.