Being competitive comes from people who are well aligned with their organization’s intent and mission. If you take that extra care to recruit and select such people, my question is:
How easy is it to waste the opportunity you have created?
Certainly, having faith that “they will get it” is not a strategy. Without real investment of your time, onboarding will be hit and miss. So, let’s look at that investment and how best spend time with New Hires.
The reality is that even experienced sales people need a solid relationship with their leader, one where they have confidence in their willingness and ability to coach so they can reach quota quickly. And, salespeople can only be effective quickly if they have a firm grip on what they are selling and who they should be selling to.
Next is the application of product knowledge which is difficult. For example, an ASTD (American Society of Training and Development 2012) study showed that 90% of sales training initiatives failed. This application problem can only be solved by weaving personal learning and coaching that goes beyond teaching to create Sales Mastery. But first:
How do you set up nu-joins for quick success by performing to expected standards and quotas?
One problem is that they want to please and will show a superficial understanding of what they are supposed to know yet, in reality they can’t deploy such knowledge in front of a customer.
The first response to this problem is effectively imparting new knowledge to Nu-Hires, and existing sales people. We’ve all experienced lectures and how much we didn’t retain. Also, how those lecturing us seemed distant even aloof. So, we ask:
What risks do you run in sabotaging your relationship with Nu-Joins by “lecturing” to them?
It’s a leader’s role to help align New Hires on the “Why” of what they learn. To help them really “get it” and align at a deeper level. But, when time is limited and the pressure for results rises – What should you spend your time on as a leader? How about reducing the time you spend helping them acquire knowledge? Let’s face it; knowledge only describes the territory not the skills to navigate by.
It’s inefficient and relationship-damaging to rely on pushing information at them and has a real price. Ineffective and inefficient learning increases the pressure to perform. When New Hires lack confidence in their knowledge they take short cuts. When this behavior impacts customers, then the rot sets in. We all know inexperienced and ignorant sales people ask fewer questions and rely more and more on feature-dumping. This sets up sales failure. And you know what rejection will do to a person’s confidence? They will disengage and either leave or wait for you to fire them. You know there’s no replacement for building New Hire confidence in what they are selling than practicing their verbal skills with supportive yet stretching coaching.
So, how do you overcome such problems?
First make sure you know what outcome you need – Sales Mastery not just course or class completion. Sales Master is the ability to rapidly assess a customer situation, recall the right facts about their product or service then pick the right question or statement and use that selected behavior in a customer aligned way
Crucially, as in many skills it is execution speed and agility that demonstrates mastery. To the observer such speed and agility apparently leaves no time to stop and think. It’s what Clare Bucklin termed – Fluid Adaptive Reasoning Ability. It’s fluid because it operates sub-consciously where the brain has far more capacity than conscious thinking. For salespeople such mastery does double duty. It creates seamless performance because this work flows between the sub-conscious while freeing up conscious thinking to really listen to the client.
So, onboarding especially needs to have Mastery-Based Training & Coaching System that achieves seven objectives which in combination can dramatically improve sales performance. They are:
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Identify only the most essential product, process and other knowledge to be learned
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Isolate only those sales competencies, skills and performance standards which are closely aligned with your sales strategies
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Develop high levels of alignment with their coaches, managers and those that support their sales efforts to create top performing teams.
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Help senior executives on how to cut the common structural barriers to increasing sales performance and create peak sales performance environment.
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Develop custom product, sales and coaching training that reduces time to performance for new salespeople as well as your current sales team.
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Re-align compensation for incentivizing the coaching process and New Hire learning
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Develop a tracking system to track all New Hires learning and mastery