Training your sales people on the job

One of the most effective ways for developing your sales force is still a joint customer visit. Field coaching is great way to follow up from any sales training that the sales team have received. It also helps to ensure that the learning points are implemented in meetings with customers. However if your sales team are to benefit from on the job coaching you must not go with them as the sales manager, but simply as a mentor, developer and friend.
 
Richard Stone, leading Sales Trainer and Coach from the Spearhead Training Group, provides the following recommendations on this subject of on the job training for sales people.
 
For effective on the job training, you must accompany the sales person regularly. And by regularly I mean at least one to two days every six weeks. Only by doing this can you help the field sales person.

It is important that you choose the visits. Ask the salesperson to give you a rough weekly schedule and choose interesting visits at short notice, otherwise you will be presented with unchallenging meetings. After all, you want to get to know a normal day's work.

Prepare yourself and the field sales person thoroughly. Before you go into the client, discuss the customer’s current situation with the sales person. In addition discuss the reason for the visit, and the aim of the meeting. Also settle with your sales person in advance the discount that they can concede to the customer using the right negotiating tactics.

At the client’s premises, do not play the role of the boss. This begins as early as the introductions. Keep yourself in the background as much as possible so that you can experience how your sales person conducts him/herself in the meeting. Only by doing this can you later correct them during the de-briefing conversation. If you are addressed by the customer then tactfully pass the question back to the sales person to handle. Therefore you do not solve problems yourself, however tempting this may be. Remember this is a sales training session and every gain you make for your image is a loss of standing for your sales person.

Let your sales person have the experience of success. Orders which are achieved during joint trips should always be recognised as achievements of the sales person.

Do not start the postmortem straight away with a road side conference. Only mention the positive side of the meeting. Wait until later to have the real postmortem later, perhaps during a lunch break. Whilst giving feedback, always start with praise to build up the sales person. Move to technical criticism and finally to questions about what the sales person would like to improve in the future:  How do you want to go about things in the future to optimise ... ?

Agree two goals at the end of the day. Close the with a summary. Work through the main points for improvement jointly with the sales person. Agree at most two goals with them and set a date for this within a maximum of four weeks. When concluding tell your sales person once again what you liked about their work.

Check on the improvement at the next meeting. Do this jointly with the sales person.  Praise any improvements and recognise their achievements. These very similar principles are used on sales training courses.

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