Tracking Your Investment - Sales Training
Most sales training doesn't stick. Here's how to boost your long-term results
By Rebecca Aronauer
Last year companies spent an estimated $51.1 billion on formal training. One year later, has that investment paid off? Maybe not, according to a recent study by ES Research Group, a sales training and consulting research firm in West Tisbury, Mass. The report revealed that 90 percent of sales training programs result in only a 90- to 120-day boost in sales productivity. Less than 20 percent of companies enjoy sales productivity gains after one year.
The cause of the disappointing long-term results, according to Al Case, the coauthor of the report and research fellow at ES Research, is that many training programs simply don't work. The temporary gains are a result of the extra focus on the sales process that accompanies training, not from useful instruction or behavior modification. "Most of the short-term gains are about paying attention to people," Case says. "They know they're being observed, so they increase their performance while they're being observed, but that doesn't stick very long." After management and teachers stop scrutinizing, salespeople go back to their bad habits.
The second problem, Case says, is that most companies don't realize when their investment has gone sour. Few companies track the long-term results of their training, so they don't know if their staff's progress is continuing and the training has brought a high ROI. "It is impossible for an organization to [measure] ROI on their sales training without having an effective program to measure their ROI," he says.
Figuring out ROI can be as simple as taking diligent measurements. If the training is aimed at increased lead generation, for example, then managers should find out how many leads were generated before and after the training. Even though recording growth in specific areas seems easy, most companies don't do it. "The vast majority of organizations I've spoken to have no program to do that," Case says. As a result, many corporations don't realize there is a problem, so they can't fix it.
Before investing in a training program, Case advises figuring out your company's numerical goals. This will make finding the right program easier and the outcome more fruitful. By realizing your goals beforehand, it will be simple to see what categories to track and later see if your training program has a high ROI.
—Rebecca Aronauer
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