The Numbers Don’t Lie: Post-Sales-Training Reinforcement Works

While most organizations do provide initial training for their sales force, only 44% of organizations use post-training reinforcement to provide long term support for their sales teams, according to the Aberdeen group. But, how can salespeople, especially new hires, be expected to beat expectations without post-training reinforcement? That is, how can individual salespeople improve their performance quarter-over-quarter without long-term education and sales performance support that changes dynamically to meet customer demands and expectations?

While only 44% of firms do provide post-training reinforcement to their sales teams, that 44% also realize real value through this type of investment in education. These firms achieve stronger year-over-year improvements than those which do not support sales team learning in the long term. Specifically, those firms which use post-training reinforcement report:

• 79% team attainment of sales quota v. 69% for all others
• 74% customer renewal rate v. 69% for all others
• 63% reps achieving sales quota v. 54% for all others
• 55% first-year reps achieving sales quota v. 41% for all others

So, if you work for one of the “all others”, how do you get started in investing in “skilling-up” your sales force?

Enter the LMS

The best sales intelligence is only useful if it’s manageable, accessible and relevant. Best-in-class companies consistently lead under-performers through aggressive and effective use of mobile and digital tools to manage sales assets.

Enter the Learning Management System, or LMS. With a flexible, modern LMS, the creative possibilities for delivering maximum-impact post-training reinforcement can be limitless. For example, use your LMS to reinforce lifelong sales learning by:

• Managing content by easily uploading the new, removing the out-dated, and allowing for content reviews by key stakeholders and SMEs.
• Aggregating content for each sales team into a common series of courses which can be accessed by each individual at the time of need.
• Tracking course completion and passing scores, and mapping to performance measures (such as attainment of quota) to see the relationship between information access and quota attainment.
• Allowing salespeople to complete training on their own schedule and at the point-of-need. No more 7:30 am mandatory training webinars where everyone has the speaker on mute which multi-tasking.
• Integrating real sales conversations into the learning, increase collaboration and communication.

And, that’s just a start toward generating ideas to reinforce sales training to engender continues sales learning while focusing on the bottom-line numbers.

Focus on the Numbers

When it comes to sales, the numbers don’t lie. When you see the tangible gains that companies realize from engaging in post-training reinforcement with their sales teams, it’s clear that a long term training strategy results in optimum sales performance.

Gauri Reyes is a talent developer and learning leader with extensive experience in roles ranging from software management to managing the learning function in organizations. She is Principal Learning Strategist and CEO at Triple Point Advisors and Founder of the YOU^th LEAD program. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+.

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