Can you get new salespeople up to competency in the right way in an ideal timeline?

Is either of these two modes what your current new hire training is structured like…

#1 – Sink or Swim

You bring on a new hire, provide some training about the company, the product, and how it’s sold. Maybe just a few days of this. Then you put them into sales conversations.

Since you hired salespeople, they know how to sell. So, you don’t feel the need to teach them sales—just how to speak about your product.

Basically, you are walking them up to the edge of the pool, telling them how to move their arms and feet, and pushing them in. Since they have made it in life this long, they should survive being in water.

#2 – Everything

You bring them in and put them through days and days (maybe weeks and weeks) of classroom training on the product, program, company, and sales process. You have them go through the sales process over and over again, from front to back.

You might not have hired experienced salespeople, which means you feel like you need to teach them everything about everything. Of course, if your product is complicated, it makes sense to go with mode #2. But for that scenario, what I see is a company spending weeks of training on the product but almost nothing on actually talking to scared, confused humans who don’t know what the right decision to make is.

Which is the Ideal Way to Go?

First, as you expect me to say – it depends.

I have built longer training programs, only to find out that when someone does finally speak to prospects, they literally forget everything that we covered and have to learn all the lessons again – the hard way (by losing sales).

I have built abbreviated programs where we are shoving people in the pool on day two, but with lots of lifeguards present to help them survive long enough to learn how to swim.

To me, I think the best ideal – no matter the length – is to focus on what matters most: being able to master your successful sales process.

Products/programs are easy to learn. Proficiency with the admin side (CRM, applications, agreements, POS systems) will come with repetition. But what hangs most new reps up is the actual stages and phrasing of your sales process.

A Visual Comparison: Coaching a Kid’s Basketball Team

Imagine you are the new coach of a kid’s basketball team, and no one on the team has ever played before. They have no idea what they are doing or what the rules are.

If that were your situation – in the first week of practices, you wouldn’t spend half the time in the classroom reading about basketball and the rules, and the other half getting everyone on the court to run full game scrimmages and plays.

That would be terrible.

Layering Skills: The Right Way to Train

You would start, day one, with having everyone dribble. For hours. Your ultimate goal is to get them to dribble without having to look down at their hands to see what is happening.

Then you would move on to passing. While standing, not even walking or running.

Then you might try dribbling while walking. Then passing while moving.

Then some shooting drills.

Eventually, you would practice some plays (I always loved the 3-man-weave). And then, scrimmage a full game.

You would add on layers of basic skills and then combine them together into the final product – a game scenario.

But in sales, we say: here is the product, now let’s run through this hour-long sales presentation, conversation, demo, etc. over and over again until you have it down.

Instead, you should drill portions of it and then add on layers to your foundation.

Practice the Key Steps of Your Sales Process

Literally practice the discovery portion over and over again (like dribbling).

Then your Trust step – talking about the company and product.

Then part of your demo/presentation.

Then another part.

Then the application (if there is one).

Then pricing.

Then objections.

And so on.

Conlusion

Break down your sales process into the main parts, then drill on those over and over again.

Your goal should be to get that new hire to know the parts of the process so well that it is second nature. Even if they can’t fully explain the product/program – that is the easy part to learn. It doesn’t do much good to teach them about the product/program if they can’t even talk to people and move them forward.

By the way – this does require that you have an actual, structured sales process, and not just a team full of salespeople who wing it and do/say whatever is needed to close deals.