Don't Invest in Training if You Can't Answer These 3 Questions

"Investing in training is a waste of money and time."

"I seldom see any good returns when I send my team for training."

"I have been sending my people for training, but I haven't been seeing the rightful results to invest further."

I am certain either one or more of the above statements would resonant with most of you. And for the most part of it, I concur with the sentiments. All the hard earned money invested in bringing your hopefuls to a sales training, only turn our barren almost all the time.

While the reasons for such negative comments are aplenty, we thought the following three questions could help you safeguard any further losses when it comes to investing in any form of training for your organization in the future.

But before we dive into the 3 Questions, we have created a video to summarize this article, especially for those busy bees who prefer to skim through the lesser details.

QUESTION #1 : Do you need a Consultant, a Trainer or a Coach?

I chanced upon a book by Keith Rosen, titled "Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions". For those who need great advice in coaching your team for performance, I highly recommend this book. It is aptly practical, realistic and come with real-world examples.

In the book, Keith skillfully established the importance and differences of a Consultant, a Trainer and a Coach. The book described the key differences to each of the 3 roles as follows :

A Consultant

Is someone who provides you with market research and aggregate certain data according to your target market.

The Consultant would report to you about market conditions, trends, samples of research they've conducted and offer a concise solution. He or she may also suggest hiring other experts by outsourcing, hiring or employing the services of other professionals.

A Trainer

Is someone who develops and delivers the actual training needs to achieve the overall objectives, based on the overall solution that the Consultant laid out. The Trainer is responsible to teach you the fundamentals and how to play the game.

A Coach

Is someone who executes the sales coaching program using a comprehensive set of methods for continuous improvement of the performance of the sales team. The Coach is responsible to further sharpen the team's game, after the training is completed.

Personally, the above description from Keith Rosen's book is spot-on! He accurately underlined one of the core reasons why training fails majority of the time. Many organizations fall trap into the perception that the Trainer is also the Consultant and the Coach, and vice versa. As a convenience, they go to one person, expecting the person to play all three roles (unknowingly), which is usually never the case.

QUESTION #2 : Do you need motivation or training?

It is often easy to just send someone to a training and expect the person to come back as rock stars, feeling motivated to plough through all obstacles and shake off all bad habits like dandruff. After all, you invested your time and energy on them and they should jolly well come back being a better salesperson and reaping in better sales numbers as a result of the training.

However, does your sales reps need training to fill a skills gap, or actually require motivation instead?

Often, when we ask this question to our prospective customers, they would stared right back at us, blanked-eyed and all. After a couple of seconds of hesitation, they would reply both as the answer (often trying to assure themselves that they answered correctly).

It is critical to understand that Motivation is defined as reason for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation is also one's direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior.

Training, as the word aptly suggest, is to impart an individual with the necessary skills (or behavior) that he or she lack in order for them to perform a role better.

Sending your sales team for a sales training workshop when there is a deeper root of motivation issue would not make them better at sales.

On the flip side of things, bringing your team of highly motivated sales performers to a motivational workshop may not necessarily be welcomed either.

QUESTION #3 : What are you will to do to reinforce?

It is a proven statistic that training alone does not create behavioral change. To invoke permanent behavioral change,

- either the individual is open to be receptive to change and get out of their comfort zone ; or

- situation allows application for change ; or

- the environment allows it. The environment could relate to the company culture and the direct managers who endorses, encourage and even reward change.

A combination of all 3 above would be a perfect reinforce scenario.

Sadly, most organization we came across take little effort in striving for any application of the skills the sales reps learned during their course of training, leaving most of them to their own devices.

"Many organizations fall trap into the perception that the Trainer is also the Consultant and the Coach, and vice versa. As a convenience, they go to one person, expecting the person to play all three roles, which is usually never the case.

- Cherry B

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Before you string out your organization's hard earned profits to invest in your future rock stars, remember to answer the above 3 Questions. If there are any uncertainties to any of the questions, then hold back your investment. Moving ahead with it would only be flushing the dollars down the drain.

For a clap to happen, it require both hands to take effort.

Do you agree or disagree with the above 3 Questions? I would love to hear from you and your opinions.

Cherry-O!

#Consideration