If you’re reading this post, then you’ve bought into the concept that delivering consistent sales training is important. Hopefully you’ve blocked off time on your team’s calendar for weekly training (idea #1), and you’ve broken the news to them that they’ll be role playing (idea #2). Now, let’s implement idea #3, which will help you stay on focus for the long term.
Idea #3: Create a perpetual syllabus for the next six months.
The hardest step in any venture is the first one. Take away that challenge each week by creating a syllabus of topics on which to train your team for the next six months. This step will remove the anxiety of having to think of a topic every week … and trust me on this one – that obstacle will stop your training ambitions before anything else. Below are a few best practices:
- Don’t be a perfectionist. Many sales leaders try to get this step perfect. Don’t beat up yourself on this one. You don’t want to randomly jump around on topics from week to week, but don’t worry if the topics don’t perfectly align each week. The important thing is that you’re conducting training each week.
- Update the syllabus once a month. Block off thirty minutes every month to update the syllabus. Don’t try to piece-meal this task – group a month’s worth of creativity into a solid thirty minutes; and don’t let this exercise go for more than a month or you may never get to it. Finally, allow yourself to modify the parts so the syllabus that you’ve already completed.
- Take feedback from the team. Ask for feedback from the sales people. Proactively seek input from them and use their ideas – you’ll be surprised how good their ideas really are.
So, that’s it: block off weekly sales training time, role play frequently, and create a syllabus that goes out six months into the future. If you put these three best practices into action, the actual training will become a simple part of your process.
By the way, if you’re interested in a virtual sales training program for sales people in the security industry, check out vectorfirmacademy.com.
