Articles

Taking a Systematic Approach to Sales Manager Training
By Nino Lamberti and Gwen McLean

Meet Jerry. Last week, Jerry was promoted to the training department to focus on improving the performance of his company’s sales managers. As a former top sales manager himself, Jerry knows the business and is ready to bring some of his own expertise, as well as that of other top performers, to the sales manager team. His overall end goal: To provide sales managers with the skills they need to grow sales and market share in their regions.

First on his agenda was to outline a plan to meet his end goal. As a former sales manager, he fully understands the value of having a carefully designed plan. He came up with the following six steps as a “skeleton”:

Identify and understand the complete set of competencies top-performing sales managers use to excel in their job now and will need in the future.

1. Develop a list of critical success factors (a subset of the total competencies).
2. Complete a gap analysis by using top-performing sales managers as the standard.
3. Develop training that addresses the gaps uncovered during the gap analysis.
4. Implement training.
5. Assess return on investment (ROI).

Jerry mulled over each step and then decided to present the “skeleton” plan to his new manager for feedback. Her immediate response: “Great! I love it. But how are you going to accomplish all this, and within budget?”

Jerry had some more work to do. His next steps were to, in the next week, flesh-out his skeleton plan (and give it a “body”) that would help him accomplish the six steps.

Step 1: Understand the Must-Have Competencies

Jerry knew what it took for him to be a top-performing sales manager, but he also knew that all top-performing sales managers are not alike. So, how was he going to define the common competencies of successful sales managers? First he needed to identify the overall competencies that help a manager to succeed, regardless of the manager’s experience, age, style, territory, or gender. See Jerry’s action plan below.

Action plan:

1. Set up 30-45-minute phone and/or in-person interviews with stakeholder focus groups (including former and current sales managers, knowledgeable executives, and human resources).
2. Ask groups about:

• Culture of the sales manager team
• Job roles, duties, tasks of managers
• Future needs, challenges, and changes for the position
• Critical skills and competencies of sales managers
• Current effectiveness on tasks and competencies
• Common competencies of top-performing sales managers
• Common performance derailers
• Perceived training needs

With this information, Jerry concluded that he would be able to gain a thorough understanding of a sales manager’s job (not just from his own perspective), and be able to list the multiple competencies that lead to success, as well as the challenges that can often impede success.

Step 2: Identify the Critical Success Factors

Proving corporate-led training around each of the multiple competencies identified, however, would be overwhelming. Jerry decided that he would need to trim the list by determining six or seven critical success factors (a subset of the competency list) to really focus on. To determine which of the competencies qualified as critical success factors, Jerry devised the following plan to propose to his boss.

Action plan:

1. Rather than assess each and every sales manager, identify a representative sample of top- performing sales managers and average performing sales managers to include in a study. The results of the study would yield the critical success factors and help define the severity of gaps (in Step 3).
2. Assess this sampling of sales managers using individual, structured, behavior-based interviews. This very focused methodology allows for the capture of both the innate and technical critical success factors.

Through this process, Jerry would have clearly marked the critical success factors that he would need to focus on in his training curriculum moving forward.

Supplemental Competency Training

Although it would be difficult and overwhelming to train the multiple competencies at the corporate level, it can be effectively accomplished at a regional level. Try implementing coaching programs that provide regional managers with the tools they need to coach their sales managers to master the competencies that did not qualify as critical success factors, but are still important.

Step 3: Complete Gap Analysis

Once Jerry knew the critical success factors that led to high performance in sales managers, he would gain an understanding of where he wanted all of his sales managers to be. As part of Step 2, he interviewed average performing sales managers as well as the top performers. To determine where he would need to focus his training efforts, he would need to identify which critical success factors average performers had, and then do a comparison with top performers to identify the gaps in critical success factors to see which ones average performers lacked. By identifying the gaps, he would be able to identify training needs. Jerry listed the following steps in his action plan.

Action plan:

1. Assess differences in critical success factors possessed by top performers and average performers.
2. Develop list of training needs based on gap analysis of critical success factors.
3. Develop secondary list of development needs based on complete list of “left-over” competencies, to be rolled out at the regional-manager level through coaching programs.
   

Step 4: Develop training to address the gaps

As a new member of the training department, Jerry was unsure about how training initiatives were actually created and implemented from a development and logistical standpoint. He knew that as a sales manager, he had been given numerous handbooks, attended several workshops, and had even taken a course on the Internet. He knew what he liked about each method and also knew that the content of the training optimally should drive the medium in which it was delivered. He was unsure whether his company developed all of its training courses internally or whether they worked with outside vendors to create some of them. He planned to address these development issues with his manager, but was able to devise preliminary action steps necessary to complete this step.

Action plan:

1. Identify necessary content of each training course within the overall curriculum and determine the best medium to deliver each course.
2. Determine whether budgetary funding can cover the optimal delivery medium, and if not, what the next-best medium would be.
3. Determine whether the courses will be developed in-house, in collaboration with an outside vendor, or purchased as an off-the-shelf product from an outside vendor.
   

In setting out this action plan, Jerry hoped that he would be able to devise an integrated curriculum of training courses, delivered in a variety or formats, that would meet the needs of sales managers and effectively improve their performance.

Step 5: Implement Training

Once the training courses were developed, Jerry would need a roll-out plan. He knew from his experience as a sales manager that it helped to gain audience buy-in from the start. He recognized that, like many of his colleagues, he has always been one of those people who liked to learn, but didn’t like being told he needed to learn. Here’s what he listed in his action plan:

Action plan:

1. Consult with sales manager supervisors at the curriculum planning stages to gain input as well as buy-in.
2. Bring sales managers themselves in once a training course has been developed to gain input as well as buy-in.
3. Kick off training courses with introductory letters or other notices to build excitement.
4. Run each training course (eg, distribute handbooks, hold a workshop, provide a web-based program over the Internet, etc.).
5. Reward sales managers who excel during the courses.

Jerry knew what it was like being on the learning side of training, and he wanted to avoid the pitfalls that can happen when a great course is poorly received, only because the foundation for a good reception was never built.

Step 6: Assess ROI

Jerry’s boss had mentioned budgets more than once, and Jerry knew that money spent needed to be spent well. If he was going to ask for a piece of the budget to fulfill his training goals, he would need to have a method of measuring his return on investment. He came up with an action plan for both before and after the training.

Action plan:

1. Link critical success factors to bottom-line revenue generation of top sales managers, identifying which behaviors are most associated with financial success.
2. Before the training, demonstrate the potential financial impact of developing a particular critical success factor among sales managers as a whole.
3. After the training, demonstrate the actual financial impact that the training had on sales manager performance.

Jerry thought that this was a great idea, and one that would work to help encourage acceptance of proposed training programs prior to implementation. So often, it seems, ROI can only be evaluated after the fact. But, with a little creativity, Jerry thought, he could use predictive reasoning to assess potential ROI beforehand, and then use actual results to prove real ROI after the training.

The System Makes Good Sense

Jerry emailed his action plan to his boss and set-up a time to discuss it for the next morning. He didn’t have to wait that long though. Just 10 minutes later, his boss came into his office with the print-out of his action plan in hand. Jerry couldn’t tell if her expression was one of horror or awe, but then she said, “This looks great! Systematic and goal directed. With you at the helm of our sales manager training initiative, I have no doubt they will soar, and that our total sales and market share will follow close behind.”

She then paused and said, “We’ll talk about the budget later.”