What is the role of sales training in an organization? Is it just “nice-to-have” or a “must” for an organization? Is it an indulgence of the management whenever the budget permits or it is a part of its conscious strategy to achieve organizational goals? How sales training is perceived really depends on the organization. There are organizations that think it is really a waste of time and that sales team learn best while doing their job. There are other organizations that invest a lot of time and money to train members of their sales team. Let’s examine how important it is for organizations to impart training to their sales force.

For Increased Revenue: The sales department is the main revenue-generating department in an organization. The others merely have support functions. In this highly competitive environment, where a lot of companies are vying for customers’ attention, the onus is upon the sales people to offer the right product to the right customer at an opportune time. By providing training to the sales staff, organizations ensure no time is wasted in trial and error methods that individuals might adopt if left to themselves.

For Enhanced Product Knowledge: Information on one’s own products as well as those of competitors is fundamental for sales. A new sales person needs to be well versed with the product or service that he is going to sell. A training program will give an opportunity to organizations to inform the staff about the products or services that the organization provides. Information can be passed on in an authentic way, leaving no room for ambiguity or misinformation that might arise if the staff is left to learn about it on their own.

For Procedural Compliance: Sales training, imparts knowledge on the fundamentals: it includes the basics of sales procedure – prospecting, needs identification, providing solutions and closing the sale. Additionally, in many industries, organizations need to follow certain rules and regulations while selling a product or a service. It is particularly true in the service sector such as the insurance industry where employees have to adhere to the norms set by the local regulatory bodies. If employees are not made aware of these rules and regulations, companies may be answerable to the regulatory authorities. Hence sales team needs to be well-versed with all the mandatory requirements.

For Soft Skills Training: Selling is both an art and a science as it involves analytical skills as well as creative skills. By providing training in leadership, team-building and communication skills, employees will be better equipped to showcase companies’ products/services and use their persuasive skills to convince potential customers that their product/service best meets the requirements of the customer. This ultimately helps in more sales and thereby more revenue for organizations.

For Motivating Sales Teams: Sales is a high pressure job that leads to frustrations among the sales team very easily. Sales training also provides an opportunity for managers to keep their sales team motivated. With team-building activities and morale boosting workshops, managers ensure that the sales team does not lose focus of the sales targets and organizational goals. It reduces employee turnover and increases productivity.

For Ensuring Business Values and Ethics: With increasing sales targets, there is a risk of employees compromising on organizational business values and ethics. For an organization to succeed in the long run, it has to ensure that its employees follow the business values it stands for and training is an appropriate platform to drive home this message to the sales force.

In short, a sales training program:

• increases the efficiency and productivity of a sales person
• helps in accessing the abilities of a sales person
• improves the organization’s ROI

To summarize, one can say that sales training is an investment that will helps organizations remain sustainable and competitive in the long run. It also motivates the team and helps them to remain up-to-date with respect to the company’s products, market and competition.

Related posts:

1. Type of Training Required for Service Staff
2. Type of Training Required for Company Sales People
3. Sales Training – How Important Is It?

Non-technical skills are generally referred to those soft- skills that are generic in nature like interpersonal, communication, team work, time management, problem solving or creative skills. Organizations are increasingly giving importance to non-technical skills of their employees at the workplace for optimizing human performance for organizational well-being and growth. Hence, non-technical training programs have found a prominent place in the HR training programs of organizations in recent years.

Non-technical training involves training in aspects which are intangible be it leadership development skills, team-building, problem-solving or management techniques. The training program is facilitative in nature and focuses on outcomes that are definable using behavioral objectives. It is more learner-centric and needs the trainee to imbibe the skills being shared. Developing non-technical programs has its share of challenges which can be listed as follows:

• The scope of topics in Non-technical training programs is quite vast and narrowing it to the given context and making it relevant to the participant is a daunting task.
• It is difficult to convince and gain acceptance by a participant for the need for the non-technical training program be it time management, leadership skills, team building etc and participants cannot appreciate its long term benefits.
• The program has to be designed in such a manner that it is interactive with role plays, activities, simulated conversations or graphics so as to ensure that the participants’ interest levels are not lowered.

Since non-technical training involves behavior skills that need to be worked on over a period of time and depends on the individual, it cannot be measured in tangible way. As a result, it gets difficult to quantify the extent to which the skills have been imparted thereby judge the success of a program.

To ensure the success of the non-technical training program, a trainer or designer has to ensure that the course is tailor-made keeping in mind the needs of the participants. Though the subject is generic in nature in order to ensure active participation, the program has to be designed in such a way that the participants find it beneficial in the context of their specific work-place environment.

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1. Challenges in Designing Technical Training Programs
2. Tips on Training Your Global Workforce
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In recent years, many organizations have increasingly taken to adopting online training methods. Online training serves a way to create, foster and meet the needs of employees’ professional development. This is especially true for those organizations that need to deliver “hard skills” such as operating machinery, computer skills or safety standards to their employees.

Increasingly, HR departments are also looking to e-learning as a means to teach “soft skills, people skills, or non-technical skills” to employees. The most common topics requested by the HR department in this field include: leadership, communication skills, decision making, conflict resolution, time management, management techniques, teamwork and foreign language skills. This is still in its infancy though, and so some businesses ask, “Can you effectively teach non-technical skills online?”

Here, I would like to present a few strategies used to teach non-technical skills:

• Role Plays: Role plays offer practical and interactive scenarios to learners. Scenarios are created based on everyday workplace situations, accompanied by multiple possible outcomes. This enables the learner to relate to the scenario and allow him to choose the best outcome.

• Simulated Conversations: This form of simulation allows the learner to observe and listen to a conversation between two or more persons. This strategy allows the learner to observe the behaviors of others and their outcomes. This is one of the most effective strategies to teach non-technical skills.

• Job Aids: This is like a support tool to supplement learning and helps the learner to use his knowledge and skills at the workplace. Job aids can be in the form of procedural or informational guides. They are particularly useful in those courses containing difficult-to-memorize procedures, and to refresh one’s knowledge learnt previously, but not used frequently.

• Images and Visuals: One of the best approaches to teaching soft skills is through images and visuals. Meaningful graphics, photos, illustrations, animations etc. enhance learning, increase the impact of the course, and most importantly, help engage learners, thus reducing the gap between human and computer interaction.

The strategies shared here are just a few among many.

Related posts:

1. Enhance Soft Skills!
2. Role of Graphics in eLearning

As we have entered into a new year, here is a quick review of the most appreciated training blogs in the year 2010.These blogs focus on tips to strengthen training and make it more effective.

Storytelling An Effective Training Method!

Stories are an inseparable part of growing up. How many stories have we heard in our childhoods? As children, we all loved to listen to stories that people told us. Even as adults, we love listening to others’ stories, only this time we call it ‘experiences’ or informally, “the grapevine.” It is definitely an experience that most of us have gone through. But, is storytelling an effective training method?

Read More

Trainer or Learner – Who Motivates Learning!

Motivation comes in many forms and directions. You push yourself to finish a task because at the end of it you will get a reward; or perhaps you get punished in case you fail to do so in a specific time period; or because you love doing it or the prestige that is attached to its accomplishment. All these are different types of motivation. The former two are termed as external motivation and the latter internal motivation. As for learners, which is more influential? Who motivates learning: trainer or learner?

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Bridging the Gap between Learning and Performance!

If the gap between the present capacity and the required capacity to fulfill the target widens, it will cost you and your team dearly. It will drain your team’s energy as your team members will have to expend extra energy to cope with the new requirement. If this continues for long, it can adversely affect your team’s productivity. How to enhance your own and your team’s capacity to meet such tough challenges?

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Hurdles to Effective Learning in Organizations!

Today, most learning is by personal experiences rather than the bookish knowledge we gain. It’s important to understand that what we learn today may not hold value 10 years down the line. Experiential learning is what holds the maximum importance these days. But, why is learning not so effective at the organizational or corporate level. What hampers the learning process?

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Use of Avatars In E-Learning!

It’s a human tendency to like someone to take us through at times, whether in one’s personal or professional life, because this makes things easier for us to be guided and to learn new things. This is applicable to us all, children or adults. And, in the case of e-learning, it is an advantage if we have an avatar to make our learning effective. Avatars are the characters that guide learners through a course. How to use an Avatar? What are the parameters that need to be considered while using Avatars in elearning?

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Should Experienced Employees be Trained!

Not all positions in an organization require a fresher. Some positions demand experienced new hires. Many newly hired experienced employees expect to start right away in to their new job as they feel that their experience and knowledge are more than sufficient. This is true to a certain extent, but many companies ask its new hires, fresher or experienced, to undergo induction training. Which approach of training is best suited for them?

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Types of Assessment Questions Used in E-Learning Courses!

Basically, there are two types of assessments, formative assessments that help build learner knowledge and summative assessments that help to assess learning at the end of the topic. What are the other types of assessments that can help to better judge the level of understanding of the learners?

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Change Management Training – Managing Resistance to Change!

The adage, ‘Change is the only constant’ is true since most people resist change. They prefer to live their lives, professional or personal, dictated by a routine. Though change is inevitable, people fear it because of the reasons like, incapability to understand change and its implications, consider changes to be irrelevant and inappropriate, the feeling that this would impinge on their family time, Lack of faith in their ability to learn new skills and feeling of too much happening too soon.

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Enhance Soft Skills!

Soft skills or “people skills” are characteristics that influence an individual’s personal and professional relationships, work performance and career prospects. Technical skills are specific skills, tasks or activities that you need to be proficient in to be eligible for a particular job. But, which is more important, soft skills or technical skills?

Read More

I thank all the people who shared their views and experiences. Your suggestions and feedback are huge encouragement that helped me in covering interesting topics in the field of learning and training. I look forward to your continued support and encouragement in the year ahead.

Wishing all a Happy, Prosperous and Peaceful New Year 2011!

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Related posts:

1. How to Make Online Assessments Effective?
2. Types of Assessment Questions Used in Elearning Courses to Evaluate Learning
3. Organizing Training for Different Learners

Basically, learning has been categorized into two forms – push learning approach and pull learning approach. Push is defined as the formal learning and pull as the informal learning. Earlier, in the elearning industry, the course designers just focused on delivering the content to the learners. The primary motive of this conventional mode of learning was to provide the learner with all the information on the topic. The courses lacked interactivity, irrespective of the learner finding the course interesting and engaging.

However, the technological advancement and competition in the elearning industry has led to the designing of interactive and engaging courses. People have started focusing on the pull learning approach, which has changed the structure or style of presenting the information. The courseware designers emphasize on embedding interactions in the courses, making them more appealing to the learner to pull the content.

The big question is which form of learning is best suited for a particular industry or a specific concept. For example, in security and safety industry, the learner has no other choice but to learn and memorize the legal issues and safety rules. Also, the time factor matters, the course designer has to prioritize on content delivery rather than making the course interactive and engaging. Hence, the learner has to study the course and clear all the assessments in a specified time.

Whereas, for soft skills training, the courses need to have interactivity and stimulation features to engage the learner. The learner needs to pull the content he/she requires and apply it differently. A well-illustrated scenario-based design for soft skills courses could help the learner easily understand the concepts and apply them in real situations.

I think the approach of teaching varies with respect to the type of industry, the target audience and the concepts. Besides, depending on the time factor and other requirements, there could be variations in content delivery and interaction levels.

What do you think about this evolution from push learning to pull learning?

Share your views!

Asma Zaineb

Sr. Executive – Business Development

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