Progressive Distributor - In search of training excellence

In search of training excellence

Bearing Service wins Progressive Distributor Sales Training Excellence award

by Chuck Holmes

The recognition of Bearing Service of Livonia, Mich., as the first recipient of Progressive Distributor’s Sales Training Excellence award represents a new departure. Instead of surveying the industry to determine what’s happening in sales training, the magazine is recognizing a company that’s making something happen.

There is a growing concern in the industry that sales training as usual is not meeting the challenges of today’s market. Occasional, opportunistic and casual sales training simply doesn’t prepare today’s salespeople to deal with today’s customers.

One reaction to this concern is to create more structured and comprehensive sales training programs, often based on a certification program. A number of industry associations are at some point in creating the curriculum to certify salespeople.

Another reaction is to turn to emerging technologies such as the Internet, intranet, computer-based training or CDs. However, as the Bearing Service sales training demonstrates, effective, comprehensive sales training can be created using the tools we already have without waiting for new tools to be invented.

The message is that effective sales training is available to any company willing to work for it.

Three keys to success
Three aspects of training are particularly important.

The first is that training is a company mission. From the top down, the management team is enthusiastic about and involved in training. It’s a part of the company budget, and it is the primary responsibility of the training team. They meet every month and deal with everything that has to do with training.

The director of sales is continually and personally involved. Not only does he conduct a significant part of the on-the-job training himself, he reviews all of the outside resources used for sales training before they are presented. If they don’t fit — or if, for any reason, he doesn’t think the sales force will consider the training time well spent — he doesn’t use them.

The second important aspect is that it is needs based. The company has decided where it wants to go, what its salespeople have to know to help it get there, and how it’s going to provide the skills and knowledge.

The third aspect — as important as any other — is that the company collects data that reflect training effectiveness and acts on it. Because management can spot individual skill and knowledge deficiencies, they can tailor the training to correct them.

There is nothing “gee-whiz” about Bearing Service’s sales training program. The only technology used is an occasional product program delivered on CD-ROM. LeRoy Burcroff says he’s looking at other delivery systems and would like to use the Internet or computer-based training, but he won’t use them until he finds something that delivers the content he needs more efficiently than what they are doing now.

In a day when the two most common reactions to burgeoning technology is either denial or embracing it at any cost, this may be the most rational approach of all: recognizing a tool for what it is and using it only if it works.

Chuck Holmes is president of Corporate Strategies Inc., an Atlanta company specializing in training, consulting and market development tools for distributors. He can be reached at (770) 491-1239, or cholmes@corstrat.org.