Sales training is big bucks for many companies and especially for those
companies that provide sales training. From new car dealerships to
manufacturers, keeping a sales force motivated and churning out those sales is
an everyday challenge. Yet, what should you pay as a sales manager to CEO for
sales training? Well, read why my answer is that depends.
Before any sales managers, human resource professional to C Level executive
decides to invest in sales training, this question needs to be answered: What
are the desired results that I expect from this sales training?
Now this question seems very simple, but what I have discovered is that many
decision makers cannot fully answer this question. The usual immediate response
is more sales, more money in the bank, more customers. Yet is this the actual
desired end result?
For example, you are a new car dealership and want more units sold. Your
salesmen are not selling cars. Yet, even though research supports that walk in
traffic is down and that your sales people need to go and market your
dealership, you mandate that your sales people need to be on the floor.
So investing in any sales training that trains your people to better market
themselves is actually a waste of dollars. The real issue is management and
probably a lack of alignment coupled with poor organizational communication.
Maybe your desired result from sales training is that you want your sales
people to be more productive. In many cases, salesmen waste a lot of time due a
lack of planning. Instead of investing in an expensive national public workshop
where the costs ranges from $1,500 to over $2,000, maybe you should first look
to a local time management workshop that can easily infuse some basic selling
skills into the time management. Again, the investment for this sales training
should range from $500 to $750 depending upon the local provider. National
public workshops with CEU's cost between $1,500 to $1,800.
Another way to justify your sales training dollars is to look at the value
that each new customer brings and the value of existing customers. In many
cases, poor customer service makes it harder for the salesmen or saleswomen. No
matter how much sales training your staff receives when your support staff
upsets customers, the issue is not sales training but customer service training
to better strategic planning and organizational communication.
The question you need to ask yourself is: What does it cost me to lose a
customer? In speaking with a potential new customer, I learned that the average
value of each new customer exceeded $150,000. With a staff of 10, even paying
$5,000 per person for sales training would still generate a 2 for 1 return on
each dollar invested for just securing one new client. (And no, I did not charge
$5,000 per person.)
Another customer wanted to add a new sales person. Taking such action would
create an additional $60,000 drain to the bottom line. However, by providing
some sales training, time management training and customer service training to
the existing 4 sales persons at the cost of $3,000 each could secure a 4 to 1
return on each dollar invested.
The cost of any sales training needs to be balanced against the desired
results and should actually addressed the real problems not symptoms facing the
organization. What I have experienced and observed is that poor sales are
usually a result of many factors including management. If you are considering
sales training, make sure that you know the results and that those results are
actively measured and managed.
Leanne Hoagland-Smith
http://www.processspecialist.com/
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