What was your favourite subject at school? English? History? Physics? Art? For most of us, our favourite subject was, at some stage, taught by our favourite teacher. They brought the subject alive for us. This could have been their teaching style, the fact that we liked them or the classroom environment itself. But it was almost definitely NOT the content of the teaching itself.
Academic content, for many years, has been dictated by the national curriculum – every school, every teacher given the same content to share with their pupils.
The conclusion, therefore, is that it’s the ‘HOW’ of content delivery that matters, not the ‘WHAT’. To a large extent, the same is true of sales training.
A sales training company could, of course, have terrible content but, for the most part, the fundamentals of sales are universal (research, listen more, talk less, practise etc). What’s most important for sales training to be effective is HOW it’s delivered, more than WHAT is delivered.
Here are 5 questions to ask the next time you consider sales training:
- Will the trainer engage the room?
- Will your team buy into them and listen?
- Will the trainer find ways for people to consider changing behaviours?
- Will they be able to encourage people to try the new ideas?
- What’s the plan to embed new behaviours long-term?
Sales should be every business leader’s favourite subject. To help make the improvement of sales skills your team’s favourite subject, look at how the sales training is delivered ahead of the content itself.
