How do you evaluate the impact of your sales training efforts?
Sales training is a crucial investment for any organization that wants to improve its sales performance and customer satisfaction. But how do you know if your sales training is effective and worth the time and money? How do you measure the impact of your sales training on your sales results, your sales team, and your customers? In this article, we will explore some of the best practices and tools for evaluating the impact of your sales training.
Before you design and deliver your sales training, you need to define what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. What are the specific skills, behaviors, and outcomes that you want your sales team to learn and demonstrate? How will you align your sales training with your sales strategy and objectives? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to track and evaluate your sales training impact? For example, you might want to measure your sales revenue, conversion rate, customer retention, customer satisfaction, or sales team engagement. You should also set realistic and measurable goals and benchmarks for your sales training, such as increasing your sales revenue by 10% or improving your customer satisfaction score by 15%.
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I agree with different perspectives put forth by other contributors. In my opinion, sales training has a primary impact on the input parameters 👉🏻 efforts, time, adherence to sales process, cost etc. These in turn affect the end result 👉🏻 increased sales, improved profits, enhanced customer perception, better brand image etc. Therefore, defining & monitoring input KPIs provide a better measure for sales training effectiveness. Sales training also impact attrition of the sales team, retention of active customers, conversion of competition customers etc. Along with one time sales training intervention, follow through interventions like OJT, Refresher, Booster etc. help to increase impact of sales training
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Instead of solely focusing on a 15% increase in the pipeline, set clear and specific goals for the actions we want our team to undertake. Should they refine their messaging? Strengthen their research and tailor their activities? Or perhaps enhance their ability to ask effective discovery questions? We can better understand the cause-and-effect relationship between enablement efforts and outcomes by establishing metrics that track these behaviors. Utilizing tools like Gong can provide valuable insights into conversations and actions, helping us move beyond assumptions. While these behaviors contribute to our overall business objectives, it's essential to consider the numerous other data points that shape these goals.
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In my experience, it is very important to define KPIs also on the quality of the training offered to find ways of improvement. Relevant indicators are a questionnaire of satisfaction to be sent to the team involved for a prompt feedback and certainly the number of enquiries for assistance by those teams in the coming weeks.
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I think a very easy way to evaluate the value of any training program is to look at the ideas and concepts that your team embraces and uses. Training is about helping people learn new skills to put those skills to use. To create new habits that impact their behavior and future results. If your team is not embracing these new concepts by putting them to work, the training fell short of its objective.
Once you have defined your goals and metrics, you need to choose the best methods and tools to collect and analyze your data. There are different levels and types of evaluation that you can use to measure the impact of your sales training, depending on your needs and resources. For instance, reaction evaluation is the simplest form of evaluation where you ask your sales team to rate their satisfaction and feedback on the sales training content, delivery, and relevance. You can use surveys, polls, quizzes, or interviews to gather this data. This can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your sales training and improve it for future sessions. Additionally, learning evaluation measures the extent to which the sales team has acquired and retained the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that your sales training aimed to teach. Tests, assessments, simulations, or observations can be used to gather this data. Behavior evaluation measures how much the learning from your sales training has been applied to actual sales performance and behavior. Coaching, feedback, peer review, or self-evaluation are useful for gathering this data. Lastly, results evaluation measures how much your sales training has contributed to achievement of sales goals and metrics. Sales reports, dashboards, analytics, or customer surveys can be used to gather this data. All in all, these evaluations can help you determine the effectiveness and quality of your sales training as well as demonstrate its return on investment (ROI) and business impact.
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Ismael Chang Ghalimi
CEO @ STOIC
(edited)As the saying goes, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Whenever possible, organize your sales training in relation with certain product features offered by your Sales Management tool(s), and make sure that you can track the utilization rate of such features on an individual basis. Also, as Tracy Bedwell wisely recommended on a great contribution below, make sure to couple training with coaching: the latter will allow you to capture all the little things that cannot be measured in an automatic fashion.
After you have collected and organized your data, you need to analyze and communicate your results. You should compare your actual results with your expected goals and benchmarks, and identify any discrepancies or variances. You should also look for any patterns, trends, or correlations that can explain or enhance your results. For example, you might find that certain sales training topics, methods, or formats have a higher or lower impact on your sales performance or customer satisfaction. You should also communicate your results to your stakeholders, such as your sales team, your managers, your customers, or your investors. You should highlight your achievements and successes, as well as your challenges and opportunities for improvement. You should also provide recommendations and action plans for how to improve or sustain your sales training impact.
Evaluating the impact of your sales training is not a one-time event, but a continuous process that requires planning, execution, and follow-up. By following these best practices and tools, you can ensure that your sales training is relevant, effective, and impactful for your sales team and your organization.
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Sales Training is far more than a simple % result. Sales training can hep: ✅Increase leads / pipeline ✅Convert leads into sales ✅Increase margins ✅Add new clients ✅Retain existing clients And it can also... ✅Motivate the sales team ✅Retain good staff ✅Attract new staff But it can't be a standalone thing, it needs to be coupled with sales coaching - so you can see improvements. It also needs to focus on the right things and be an ongoing process and not a standalone hit
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