Sales training should be approached with the goal to increase production immediately. Think about how Derek Jeter would use a batting cage prior to game time. Sales training is done daily in order to sharpen your skills for that day and make more sales! Training needs to be approached as a valuable and vital ingredient to increased production, and THE WAY to increased sales and revenue.
Sales training must be delivered in very short segments and should be interactive. What is short? Two to five minutes and shorter. Most training fails today just because the segments are too long and they lose the attention of the trainee. Our on-demand interactive training sites utilize multimedia interactive engagement in order to provide sales professionals with very concise, short segments that are focused on exact sales situations.
Training must be measurable and rewarded. Training that is not easily measurable, like any process or best practice, will fail. If it doesn’t increase production immediately, then it is either not being used or not being used enough. The correct way to set this up is to provide you with daily reminders when training is not being used.
Effective sales-training programs should focus 80 percent of the training content, time, and energy on the TOP people in an organization, not the new ones. If the content is truly relevant and cutting edge, rather than just a repeat of the basics over and over again, it should get the attention of top performers.
Sales training should be made part of your day and should be accessible continually throughout the day. All staff meetings should include training, with salespeople following that up with a minimum of two to four segments each day on their own, and then the sales team should be supported with sales solutions during the day. We added this last component via our virtual technology whereby salespeople can interactively consult me in real time, and I am actually able to coach them through a transaction and demonstrate ways to close more deals. This combination of training throughout the day is similar to how you would correctly hydrate the body with the fluids in an IV drip.
For sales training to be effective, you need a commitment to it; it must be made the first thing each day, be a continued activity daily, be available when you need it, and increase your sales production. If you think it is expensive to train sales teams, think about the expense of missing sales.
MY TRAINING REGIMEN FOR YOU
Daily: Listen to sales-training programs while driving. Cover topics such as handling objections, generating ideas for calling clients, following up, closing tips, and the like. Avoid hype and motivational material and focus on SALES-oriented strategies specifically.
Daily: Watch two to four video segments that cover some part of the sales process.
Role-play situations that you experience trouble with or find yourself withdrawing from.
Use me as your personal coach during the day with our Quick Fix Solutions. Due to technological advances, I can assist you in real-time to make more sales. Check out www.CardoneUniversity.com. This is vital because after losing a sale, it is quite typical for you to make up wrong reasons for missing the sale and then get stuck with a wrong solution. With Quick Fix, you can prepare for a sale, get assistance during the sale, and also correct yourself after each encounter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
With increasing numbers of people heading online as their first step to research your company, product, and even your personal information, it is mandatory that you create some type of social media presence. This is not a choice or something you either want to do or don’t want to do, nor is it something you have or don’t have time for: YOU MUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA.
Social media is a way for you to connect, prospect, and make yourself known to those who may have an interest in what you represent. As I wrote in If You’re Not First, You’re Last, obscurity (not being known) is a bigger problem than money. If people don’t know who you are, then they cannot do business with you. If they know you but aren’t thinking about you, they won’t do business with you. You have to be known, thought about, considered, and hopefully, the first or dominating choice in your clients’ minds in order to ever sell anything to anyone!
Today it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and who knows what will come next. One day I am sure these names won’t even exist, having been replaced by some other technological improvements. These names today are like the newspaper ads of early newspapers or the first billboards that showed up alongside highways and city streets years ago. Social media, except for the time it takes, is a free way for you to make yourself known. The key is you have to know HOW to use it rather than be used by it. Social media for the most part is like walking into a bar or party. You may mention business at the party or to the person in the bar, but you are probably more likely to talk about more social things than straight business. If you want a good example of how to use social media, check out the following pages that I created to demonstrate to people how to get interaction and involvement: Twitter@grantcardone and www.facebook.com/cardonesuccess. Watch how much interaction, feedback, and involvement I get while still pushing who I am.