One Man’s View of Rep Training

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When considering the question concerning what training is best for independent manufacturers’ representatives, the big answer, offered from 10,000 ft., isn’t just specific to reps, but rather applicable to any organization that has salespeople as critical to their primary go‑to‑market initiative.

After any organization puts together their yearly business plans they should:

• Consider the specific skills their sales professionals need in order to meet and exceed those specific plans.

• Then, they should take a careful look at their people resources to determine what skills they already have, need to do better, or need as new.

• Next, they should look for what organizations and methodologies have the expertise and knowledge to provide these people those skills in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

• And, finally they should lay out a training plan for their staff to follow while at the same time clearly defining expectations and measurements in order to make sure what is learned gets used.

When managing Fortune 500 training initiatives I found that it’s important for organizations to resist benchmarking against their best salesperson.  What happens all too often is a regression toward the mean because we are not benchmarking that individual against what we really need and what their full sales capacity really is.  We could be benchmarking against a 70-percenter, for instance, and only be working to bring others up to something less than that.

When it comes to discussing training, the word certification can also be dangerous.  I get the idea that everyone should have some standard skill level, but the interpretation of the word is often defined differently by different people.  For instance, some may view “certification” as something that has a defined end and, of course, we know that selling is too dynamic for that. Business climates change and organizations need all of their people, especially those closest to the money like sales professionals, to adapt, grow, and change to meet those changes.

Finally, just as organizations tweak their business plans each year, they themselves should look at people skills each year.  In other words, training itself does not have an end but needs to evolve continually to meet evolving business plans.

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In addition to his above views on the subject of training, Bill Heyden notes that he has a skills’ checklist — that he’d be willing to share — that many of his clients have used to assist them in their skill assessments of their people. He adds, however, that “Ultimately, it is absolutely best that they themselves do this.” Contact Bill Heyden, Heyden Training/Signature Sales Performance Skills (www.heydentraining.com); phone: (630) 305-7267; e-mail: [email protected].