Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘professional development’

Is professional development (self improvement) part of your goal to increase sales?

Yes, I know you are busy, there is not enough minutes in the day, you are working with more demands and less resources and worse yet your company does not provide any additional sales training coaching (self improvement) opportunities.  However, maybe this story may help you to reconsider the importance of a professional development action plan.

Two lumberjacks in the late 1800’s were vying for a coveted prize – a top of the line quality axe.  Each had to fell a very tall tree with many branches. At 8:00am, the starting gun discharged and both men began scrambling up their respective trees.  Then about 20 minutes later one of the lumberjacks came down and disappeared for about 5  minutes. He reappeared, scrambled up the tree and resumed cutting. Another 20 minutes later, he came down again, disappeared and came back in 5  minutes. This behavior continued all morning long and into the afternoon.

By noon, the crowd was quite confused since the other lumberjack was significantly ahead.  Then as the shadows started growing, the tide began to turn in favor of the man who took a break every 20 minutes.  Suddenly, one of the trees fell. The winner was indeed the lumberjack who stopped every 20 minutes.

When he received his prize, he was asked about his somewhat strange behavior.  The man smiled and replied that to win the prize the blade of his axe had to be at its best. To achieve that goal, he had to keep it sharp and so his breaks were devoted to honing the blade on his axe.

Now think about you as a salesperson. Substitute cutting the tree as earning a sale. The coveted prize is your commission.  Your axe is your selling skills.  How sharp are those skills?  Possibly the reason you are not realizing your goal to increase sales is because your sales skills are dull. Sales Training Coaching Tip: You are responsible for your own self improvement and professional development first and foremost.

There are many resources from daily to weekly ezines to free ebook on sales in today’s technology driven society that can help you keep your sales skills sharp. Of course you may need to assess those marketing and selling skills and again there are free assessments to more formal ones such as the Attribute Index.

Henry Ford best summed up life with these words:  “If you think you can or you think you cannot, either way you are right.” My only 2 cents if you think you can, then ensure that positive thought with a action plan to turn those thoughts into measurable results.

The goal of sales training is to improve sales behavior leading to the completing the “Increase Sales Puzzle.” Yet in many cases, this professional development goal is never realized to its potential.  I was reminded of this when reading Kevin Eikenberry’s blog on Seven Key Actions to Greater  Personal and Professional Development.

Credit: Clipartof.com

Until newly acquired knowledge or information is taken in and then matched to existing schema (see Piaget’s Theory on Learning) behavior change cannot happen. One of the best questions to ask beyond “What I have learned?” is “What am I doing differently today than yesterday or last week?” This question also places responsibility back on the salesperson.

Individuals must have awareness about their behaviors. By asking this question of what are you doing differently helps for those within the sales training program to begin to make connections.

Then the next question is “What results have you seen or experienced from those changes?” Through this question, you have taken performance to the 4th level of evaluation as identified in Don Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation.

When sales training programs are constructed with a understanding of how individuals learn (and there truly is not that much difference between the learning styles of children and adults no matter what the experts say), then sustainability (behavior change) and a positive return on investment can be secured. Also any learning environment must be engaging and relevant to those attending the event.

Remember this Sales Training Coaching Tip:  One time learning events are the quickest way to drain your T&D budget without any positive return especially if you have not invested the time learning the talents of each sales team member through a thorough performance appraisal process.

You can complete the “Increase Sales Puzzle” when you invest the time to do it (sales training) right and not to do it quick (looking for the quick fix).