I think that’s a great comment and one of the things you mentioned. Every workshop that I’ve ever put on the sales people, I can always pick out the sales people because they were the ones on their smartphones with their head down, typing to somebody. Sales guys were always busy in a workshop. How do you train those sales people? Are they trainable or is it that you have to create this on-the-job type training for them? – Joe Dager
Related Podcast and Transcription: Brock on Sales Management
Dave Brock: I think that the view of training has evolved and changed. I mean, you and I are probably trained with a lot of kind of classic butts and seats type training and so on and so forth, where you went and spent three or four days in going through a workshop and then on Monday, you went back and did your job. A lot of that training has been very ineffective, so you have to look at training, how do we train people most appropriately? How do you do – a big fan of ‘just in time’ training, so a lot of that principle is based on how do I create e-learning experiences.
I think we have to chunk training up quite a bit and make more of it just in time. There’s the experiential piece where I think you do need to do things like role plays. The other day, I was actually running a strategy session with a group of senior executives, and we were talking about a major shift in what they wanted their salespeople to do and I said, okay, role play it out. Role play it out to see. If we can’t figure what those conversations and what the sales people are going to do, there’s no way we can get the sales people to do it. I mean, first that caused fear and consternation but then, just simplifying those things, providing them the tools and so on. 
The other thing and this is something we as a company, you have to embed that ongoing coaching into every training program that you have, and so we always embed coaching the coaches. So coaching the first line sales managers over I’ll call it a figurative 30-60-90 Day program, following any training we do, and that’s non-negotiable. If people will want us to eliminate that from our bid, thinking that they’ll reduce price or so on and so forth, we say, you might as well not spend your money because if your sales managers aren’t continuing to coach and develop what the person was supposed to learn, the half-life of that training will be measured in hours or days, not years. If somebody refuses to accept that, we say, don’t spend your money; you’re wasting it. And with us, that’s non-negotiable.
About: Dave Brock (Partners in Excellence) is recognized as a thought leader, sales and marketing, new product introductions, and strategic partnering. Dave speaks frequently on a wide range of business, sales, leadership, and related topics. He has addressed audiences in more than 40 countries around the globe. He is featured in many leading publications, including Selling Power, CEO Express, ThinkSales, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and other journals and publications around the world.