In describing how and why he opened his agency’s doors in Northern California years ago, Danny Dodge notes that “I opened my agency with no lines and no customers, but I knew how to sell.” Today Dodge heads the single-man agency Component Solutions, LLC, in Alamo, California, and since he’s successfully weathered changes in the marketplace not to mention changes in the product lines that he represents over the course of his agency’s 20-year history, he obviously still knows how to sell.

Likewise, Tim Poturny, Regional Sales Director, Metro Industrial Sales, a Division of Northeast Industrial Sales Inc., New York, New York, maintains that “There are no rookies in our organization. If you arm us with the needed product knowledge and sales literature, we do a solid job for our principals.”

The views of these two independent agents located at opposite ends of the country confirm what MANA members have told the association and Agency Sales for years. In general, agents report, “We know how to sell. That’s what we do for a living. We bring the sales ability to the table. What we need from our principals when it comes to training is product knowledge.”

Fair enough, but the fact remains, manufacturers, agents and sales professionals agree that there’s a need for regular sales training if the agent is charting a course for consistent success.

Training done when there is nothing else to do is doomed to be weak at best, and probably completely ineffective. What that means is some independent agents don’t view training as a growth tool; rather, they see it as a remedial tool. This is hardly the most effective way to view training.

The reality of it is most agents have more on their minds than training. This is especially true when business is slow. When business is lagging agents are making that extra call and doing a little cold prospecting as the way to improve the numbers. But if you have been wise enough to initiate an established training program — and you stick to it — you’ll see training for what it really is — an ongoing process, not the magic answer for a sales slump.

Importance of Planned Training

Keep in mind that a planned and ongoing training program is not just for the mega-sized agencies that have full-time training people on staff. A planned program is just as important for the small agency as it is for any size company. What really counts is setting goals for the program, developing a program and sticking to it.

Remember, what’s being referred to here are training objectives, not sales objectives. A training objective is one which improves a salesperson’s skills. A sales objective is something else entirely — more sales, new accounts, etc. Naturally, training objectives should lead to sales objectives. But for the purpose of creating and managing an ongoing program, the two should not be confused.

Ultimately training goals should be established with an agency’s management goals firmly in mind. Only when your training goals are compatible with your management goals should you adapt your approach to your sales and marketing objectives.

The management goals usually associated with successful training of sales agency personnel are growth, volume and profit. As might be imagined, sales objectives can and often are quite different depending upon the current emphasis of the agency. For example, if the agency is especially interested in volume, a different sales approach is going to be effective than might be considered if the goal was immediate profits. And your training program should be developed to stress this emphasis.

Determining Goals

Once agency management has determined management goals, it’s time to look at some of the major factors of a practical ongoing sales training program. Most effective sales agency training programs will emphasize three things.

1. Information — The information aspect of sales agency training can be especially complex when the number of lines a typical agency carries is considered. However, it’s not just product knowledge that is important, it’s an overall knowledge of the agency, its customers, principals and the products. A good agency sales training program will provide trainees with a history of the agency and its place in the market as well as similar information on each of the principals the agency represents. In addition to the historical aspects, the training program should provide trainees with clear operational pictures of each principal. Every principal is different from the other and unless trainees know and appreciate the differences, problems are bound to crop up as trainees take to the road to sell.

It’s critical that trainees know the agency’s policies and rules for day-to-day operations. Some agencies, for example, want their field people to report in daily; others only want to hear from them when there is something important to communicate. There is no right or wrong in these situations, just an understanding of what is expected from the salespeople.

As emphasized by the two independent manufacturers’ representatives at the beginning of this article, product knowledge, naturally, is especially important, and passing it on to trainees should be the joint responsibility of the agency and the manufacturer. This knowledge is often very complex, including such factors as applications, specifications, services and installation parameters, and competitive states. On the competitive front alone, there will be a huge amount of information.

Trainees need to know and understand the pricing policies of each of the principals listed on the agency’s line card. Some principals are generous with credit, others are not. Some insist on high credit standards, others will ship on any kind of an order. The trainee must have all of this information available to him or her. It’s seldom practical to insist that the trainee “know” all of this. However, it’s important the trainee know that there are many and varied pricing policies from each of the principals. The training comes in explaining how to work with the established policies, making sure that agency salespeople know where to look for the information and that they know how to use it.

It’s critical that trainees are taught about the variable factors of their territories. Customers in one territory buy differently than customers in another. Make sure your trainees know the characteristics of your customers and your competitors.

And, finally, a well-structured training program should include a thorough exposure to the support that is available from the agency and from each of the agency’s principals.

2. Abilities — The training of abilities is another aspect of a solid agency training program. Since time is the major currency in most agencies, the abilities aspect of most training programs is usually found in some sort of coaching situation. That is, a skilled salesperson accompanies a novice on a few calls and comments on the novice’s approach after each call. Real-world sales abilities can seldom be taught in any kind of classroom situation, and they are all but impossible to learn from reading a book. However, trainees can gain the information they need from books and the classroom, but they need to try it out in real situations and to have constructive criticism made to help them hone their skills.

Many agents have found it helpful to assign a junior to a senior salesperson and just have the junior observe for a number of calls. Then, in an open give-and-take situation, each asks the other questions and develops a framework for the actual sales encounter.

3. Behavior — Behavior and skills go hand in hand; however, there is a subtle difference between the two. A person may demonstrate having the requisite skills in a classroom situation but behave in a totally inappropriate way in a real sales situation. As a result, a well-crafted training program should include some system of feedback for all involved. The trainer and the trainee should know of progress and lack of it. This is not for punitive purposes, but to help gauge the pace and approach of future training.

Behavior is really a system of good and effective habits on the part of the person being trained. Good sales skills include the ability to get and schedule appointments. The ability to schedule calls close enough so that there is no lost time, but not close enough so that the person will be late for succeeding calls. Other good habits include the ability to understand a customer’s problems and to present the product that will do something to solve the problem. And perhaps most important is the ability to cover a territory effectively. We’re not talking about the simple act of understanding and working the geography, although that is important. But we are talking about all aspects of territory management, which includes the ability to make good judgment calls when planning a day, week, month or even a year.

Keeping a sales training program on track is not easy in an agency. When business is good, you don’t want to waste time doing training because there are orders to be taken. When business is poor, there’s a lot of scouting and follow-up that has to be done in order to bring in the needed orders. In other words there are always reasons why not to have training. Don’t follow that trail. Continual training and doing it regularly means that you can handle the good and bad times with little or no panic.

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MANA Training Services

One MANA member noted training as one of the most valuable services that the association provides its membership: “What the association does is to pull together hundreds of people who have chosen the same career path. The benefit of that is that they can all learn from each other. Then there’s the various training programs that the association provides. Just as baseball or football players have to go through training, so do reps. And, MANA has been there to provide what we need.”

Independent manufacturers’ representatives — and manufacturers for that matter — should take note of the range of training services that MANA has available. First, for its agent members, a visit to the MANA website (www.MANAonline.org) provides a variety of training tools from teleforums, special reports, Agency Sales magazine online, and much more.

Manufacturers should note the MANA Manufacturers’ Seminar scheduled for later this month in Chicago. This is the latest seminar offering that takes manufacturers through the various steps they need to navigate in order to find, select, sign and work effectively with a network of outsourced sales professionals.

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].