WHY STAFFING SALES TRAINING FAILS
By Bob Lanza
If you read this column on a regular basis, you may already be familiar with the five-step process for forging a staffing sales culture.
- Assessment: The evaluation of your current sales and recruiting staff as well as how new hires are selected.
- Design: Designing an orientation and training curriculum from a multitude of choices.
- Delivery: Deciding how the material will be presented. Will you have a classroom setting and/or web-based program?
- Reinforcement: How will the material be reinforced in the field by management?
- Accountability: How will we hold reps accountable for implementing what they have learned?
Most staffing firms I speak with do not even invest the time or energy to complete Step1 of the process. When time permits, most firms research and select an “off the shelf” product and deliver it to their staff. This flavor of the month approach constitutes their Step 2 and Step 3. My experience is that the majority of firms will stop right after Step 3 and won’t take the time to consider the critical final two steps.
So why do most staffing sales training efforts fail? It’s a question that traditional sales training firms just don’t want to address. The answer is surprisingly simple yet frustratingly elusive for most companies that invest in sales training. The answer is that most staffing sales training programs don’t offer on-going coaching, involvement, accountability, and measurement.
The tricky part is how to deliver this without it getting in the way of generating and filling job orders and without putting yet another task on the plate of an already overburdened manager.
Follow-up, reinforcement, and accountability are the keys to implementing an effective selling system throughout your organization! The selling system is key. The ES Research Group conducted a survey of staffing companies. Their survey included respondents from 50 staffing firms ranging in size from $100 million to less than $5 million dollars. One of the key findings in the study came from the question, “Do you have a documented sales methodology?” 62% of the surveyed respondents indicated that they do not have a formal documented sales methodology. Also, 50% of all organizations even invest in third part staffing sales training.
Regarding sales staff turnover, 52% of the companies reporting had sales turnover ranging from 34% - 100%. Another key finding pertaining to sales training days; 75% of the respondents provide 8 or less days of training, and 48% provided fewer than 5 days.
As you can see from these numbers, if you have no formal methodology the odds are stacked against you. Even if you have a formal methodology but do not reinforce it, the odds are still stacked against you.
Staffing industry executives can continue to do nothing or they can begin to examine where to make changes.
Former Miami Dolphin and now University of Alabama football coach, Nick Saban, said it best –
“If we continue doing what we are doing then we will continue getting the results we get - Guaranteed.”
Without the essential element of reinforcement and accountability there is virtually no way to guarantee that the concepts you have invested will work. Just so much will be adopted and applied in the field. The truth is that far too often managers get sucked into putting out fires, time consuming administrative duties or busy work. The result,the most important job (coaching) never gets done.
So, what do you do? Here are four steps that staffing managers can or should take to ensure that you are getting the greatest return from your training investment.
- 3-Month Follow-up:
Facilitate a minimum of 3 months of weekly follow-ups focused on tactical reinforcement. This program requires only a small amount of time; 1 hour/week for 3 months, but it delivers big results.
Gather everyone together or conference call and select one of the tactics that is contained in your program. You can select from prospecting, probing, overcoming objections, applying solutions, convincing and tying up the sales. Have one of the participants briefly review the important points in the module and see how everyone is using it in the field. By implementing this program you have created peer-enforced accountability.
- Management Field Audits.
This system requires management to be in the field making sales calls. You are riding with your reps visiting prospects using the sales methodology you promote. You should create an audit sheet that lists each sequence in the process. An example may look something like this -
a)Was the prospect qualified properly?
b)Did the rep have the correct names for prospect contacts?
c)Did the rep utilize initial bonding statements and statement of intention when they met the prospect?
d)Was the probe properly executed?
e)Did the rep leave the probe at the correct time?
f)Did we identify 3 – 5 points that we could apply recommendations to.
These are just a few of the areas you audit. The manager should be an active participant on these calls. Remember to pre-call plan before going on each appointment.
- Bi-Weekly Case Study Meetings
In the January/February 2006 issue of Staff Digest, I dedicated an entire article on facilitating the case study meeting. I can email it to you if you like. Just give me a call or drop me an email at the contact shown at the end of this article. The basic principle here is to create a forum to identify and advance your top prospects. This is, once again, facilitated in a team environment creating peer-enforced accountability. Every prospect is put up on the board and presented by the representative. After the reps’ presentation, the team recommends solutions for advancing your position with the prospect.
- Return-On-Investment
Baseline or calculate the gross margin of each rep at the start of training. Track the gross margin increase on a monthly basis. You can also track the success and gross margin of case study accounts. The end result is an increase to the bottom-line for each participant and the company as a whole.
Contemporary research on training, adoption, achieving and bottom-line results is clear: Training programs that are followed by an extended period of reinforcement produce longer lasting retention and implementation of the material in the field.
I believe that if you do not have any method to reinforce and hold your reps accountable you are better off not investing in anything.
For more information on how to set-up a reinforcement and accountability program, contact Bob at 908-322-1480 or email .