Fortunately, the new Web-based tools allow managers to see who is actually using the process on a daily basis. The Fort Hill Company, founded by Cal Wick, has built software so that managers can track action item completion and training follow-through by individual, complete with dashboard and graphics.
“You need to check-up periodically and let them know that you are looking. A quick e-mail or some online feedback will put them on notice that you are checking and that you expect execution,” Wick says.
According to Wick:
Up until now, most training programs concentrated exclusively on what happened in the classroom. What happened afterwards was a “black hole.” In fact, what usually happened was something like this: Sales training put on a course to teach new skills and approaches to optimizing the sales process. In the concluding session, attendees were asked to write a goal for applying what they had just learned. They did. Then they put it in their notebooks, put the notebook on the shelf, and went back to doing what they had done before.
Technology is changing that.
As with the other technologies we discuss, a followthrough system alone is not a solution. To maximize the value of follow-through management technologies, managers and training professionals need to pay attention to what is going on. They need to use the system to track behavior and provide encouragement, recognition, or correction as necessary.
When that is done, postcourse follow-through technology increases the impact of sales training and the value companies realize as a result.
Moreover, adoption needs to be incorporated into comp plans and performance reviews of all managers for it to really stick.
One of Cal’s clients, AstraZeneca wanted to increase the amount of coaching its sales managers did, so it ran a program called “Breakthrough Coaching” but did nothing to ensure that managers followed up on what they had learned. Not surprisingly, not much changed in the field.
So the company went back to the drawing board and developed “Breakthrough Coaching II.” The big difference this time was that the company put a rigorous system of follow-through in place to make sure that what was taught was used.
Every manager who attended the program was required (1) to set two goals for improving their coaching and (2) to report on progress five times over a 10-week period. Area and regional managers had access to the follow-through technology so that they could see who was doing what they were asked and who was getting results.
The change was dramatic. Salespeople were polled three months after their managers had attended the program.
• 48 percent reported increased frequency of coaching interactions with their managers.
• 59 percent experienced a shift to a more coaching style of interaction.
• 61 percent felt that their managers were more effective or much more effective as a result.
One summed it up this way: “I am now receiving coaching even when the situation is positive. I used to feel like I only received coaching when I needed to improve on something. I feel like my manager is more in touch with what I am doing.”
If you want something to stick, you have to make sure that it is reinforced. The real work begins when the course ends.
It Takes One to Two Years — Do You Have That Long?
Our first step as managers is to expand our time focus. For an individual, research shows that it takes about 21 days to form a habit. For an organization, it takes one to two years of consistent and persistent reinforcement to create organizational habits.
You can get awareness in two hours through a book or a speech. You can start to build skills in a two-day training program. But it may take two years for your salespeople to figure out that you’re going to stay with this and for them to actually see the results when they use it versus when they don’t.
Real World and Relevant
A successful class alone will not ensure adoption. But a bad one will ensure failure. Word of mouth on the first class will make or break the effort.
The first step toward making a new process stick is to make the training relevant. Canned programs won’t work anymore. The best training actually involves working live deals in class. Similarly, in technology rollouts, salespeople have to see how it helps them with their everyday jobs.
If you use a case study, salespeople will never see their flaws. However, if you have them working their own deals, they see their own flaws — no one has to point them out. This self-discovery of pain creates the curiosity required to start developing new habits.
In our workshops, the first thing we do is add up the dollar volume of all the opportunities/accounts we’ll work in class. Then we discuss how we’re going to create better strategies and action items to make that either a bigger number or increase the probability of reaching that goal.
The transformation is startling. All of a sudden, it’s no longer a training class. It’s actually working on live deals — their competitors, their products, their issues, and their pipeline — and giving them something they can use at 8:30 tomorrow morning. When we focus on deals that are relevant to them, we have very few prisoners in class.
Tailored to Your Unique Sales Process
Before training begins, it is important to define your unique sales cycle and potential action items—built and designed by your people and owned by your managers. This not only makes the process of technology relevant, but it also gains the buy-in of front-line managers, who are the key to adoption.
The worst thing you can have is a sales manager, with arms folded, passing judgment on a new program while you’re training the troops. How can such a manager object to a process he or she designed?
Usually front-line sales managers, especially the intuitive ones who are not process-oriented, are hungry for a process to make their people more independent and to give them a coaching tool to keep deals in control. Tying the methodology and their sales process together by phase relates to what they do every day. Real deals mean that the results can be seen immediately. The question that must be answered by the reps is, “Was it worth my time?”
Keep the Tools Simple
The next step is to make any account management or opportunity management planning tool extremely concise. Processes that require salespeople to fill out a 12-page form are destined to fail.
If the integrity of the logical work flow of the tool is not preserved, or if there is excess redundancy, when the tool is integrated with your CRM, you can almost guarantee a failed CRM and a failed methodology.
In a pivotal meeting for us a few years ago, for which I will always be grateful, Phil Wilmington, then senior vice president of worldwide sales for PeopleSoft, said, “We need a one-page sales tool.”
I said, “Well, you have the author and owner here. Which of the six P’s would you take out?”
He looked at it and said, “None of them. I’ve got to have them all in order to win.”
“Well then, we don’t have a methodology issue. What we have is a management issue,” I said.
The challenge was discipline. But we did take the razor to our process and drove it down to one page of output and three simple input screens.
It has to be simple, but it also has to be effective. A blank piece of paper is simple, but it’s not powerful enough to help you lead a team. And a 12-page document certainly would be complete, but no salesperson is going to slow down enough to use it.
Successful, Credible Instructors — No “Facilitators” Allowed
