How often do you hear, "There is a hold on discretionary spend, so all sales training is on hold"? Likely far more often than for marketing spend, product training, or health and safety training.
Why do so many people see sales training as discretionary?
The common misconception
The answer may lie in a perception that we only hire salespeople to win business and therefore:
We should only train new salespeople
Successful salespeople already know what to do
We just need to teach them about our products, tools, and processes
To borrow the famous phrase from the film "Glengarry Glen Ross," we expect them to "Always Be Closing."
Measuring sales performance
If our salespeople should always be closing, many default to measuring:
Activity (calls, meetings)
Average sales cycle length
Conversion rates
Average deal value
Pipeline strength
These metrics often become OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Anything that positively impacts these is deemed to be good, so we link any training investment to the things we can measure and decide if the ROI is acceptable. But often, they are self-fulfilling prophecies.
If your focus is on "have more meetings" and you tell everyone you are measuring the number of meetings, guess what happens?
The same holds true for:
If you test product knowledge, people will focus on memorizing facts
If you emphasize pipeline size, you'll get inflated pipelines
The Kirkpatrick Model of Training Evaluation
The focus is on driving key behaviours, turning them into activities that have measurable outcomes, and then tracking them. This should all be quite straightforward; after all, we have the Kirkpatrick model we can fall back on:
Reaction: Did they enjoy it?
Learning: Did they acquire new knowledge and skills?
Behaviour: Are they doing something new?
Results: Are we getting better outcomes?
ROI: Did the investment generate more value than it cost?
So if we know what we want to happen and we measure its impact, then we can show ROI.
But are we measuring the right things and communicating the right message?
Let's remember that currently many prefer investing in new enablement tools over L&D, believing tools will:
Drive desired behaviors
Force change
Deliver results
This is especially the case in many fast-moving tech businesses, where product development is often based on the "build it and they will come" principle.
Measuring the Right Things
To show true ROI, L&D should focus on the impact of change, not just new learning. Here's how:
Before you measure anything, define the change you are looking to drive. What are the new behaviors and activities people should be doing, and does the business agree that this will drive success?
Communicate the need to change and check that senior management has bought in.
Identify/assess what people are currently doing so you have a current state.
Communicate the current state so everyone is "consciously incompetent," and then promise the development to make them consciously competent.
Roll out the development and, at set intervals, identify/assess what people are now doing.
Migrate from formal learning to coaching and make the connection between identifying/assessing what people are currently doing as the driver for the coaching conversation.
Measure the impact of people becoming consciously competent and then unconsciously competent.
Claim the success and show the ROI.
By putting an objective assessment at the center, you are able to drive change. By treating it as part of the regular cadence of manager and team interactions, you get data that will help you be more agile and shift focus if change is not happening.
If you want to know more about how this can happen, email me at mark.savinson@strategytorevenue.com and we can discuss.
Links for you:
How we create engaging & budget-friendly learning content ➡️ Click to read.
How we transform sales organizations to sell with a buyer's perspective ➡️ Click to read.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7155185001007841281
Comments