Why are my sales people so stupid?

Of course the answer is that they are not stupid (In the most likely case anyway!). So how come you spend so much money training them, to find that they don’t apply what they’ve learnt?

Maybe you are overlooking a critical factor.

When children learn they absorb information freely; ask very few questions; and rarely challenge why they are being taught something. They will make that decision later in life.

Adults however learn in the opposite manner. Adults start by challenging the validity and usefulness of learning content, before deciding if they want to invest the time, effort and grey cells to learn it.

Put more concisely we ask “Why bother?” Studies show that adults found only 12% of what they are taught professionally to be of any direct use. Why is this so low? Do we really set out to teach meaningless content to our staff?

Before investing in a training program we really need to resolve the “Why bother?” challenge.

In most organisations we have a team setting targets; another team actively delivering the results; and in the middle, people overseeing this delivery. Each has a critical role to play if we are going to resolve the “Why bother” dilemma.

But lets backtrack a moment. For someone to bother to invest time in learning it must be relevant to either their current or near-future role. It shouldn’t be more than they need (to avoid making it seem overly complicated) nor so basic that it doesn’t achieve the purpose…its got to be just right.  For these reasons, we can see that a training program needs to be modular in complexity and subject.

So who decides what relevant is?

Well simply put it’s the learner, despite what you may decide as a manager. For you to convince someone to learn, they need to know “Why?”

Why will this help me do my job? Why will the outputs contribute to results? This could be a tool (CRM), and process, or training module.

Who is best placed to answer the why question? Is it the executive team who set the targets, or the management team overseeing the activities? It’s both, although the nature of the “why” answers may be considerably different. If the executives cannot convince management of the validity of their chosen targets, how would you expect the management team to convince their own reports?

In more practical terms we are talking about aligning business results with objectives and the activities that drive them..sometimes referred to as ROA.

So before you invest in a sales training program, look at your business. Break it down into relevant groups. Identify what you want to achieve in way of results. Be sure that everyone not only understands the targets, but knows why they are doing what you ask of them when you train them!