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Sales seminars and trainings. How to organize on-the-job training for sales staff Disadvantages of a presentation strategy

On March 20-21, the first practical conference on online education will be held in Moscow, where the most famous Russian educational brands will share their knowledge in the field of creating and promoting educational products.

Evgeny Lebedev

Director of Marketing and Product at Foxford Online School.

Assess the demand

Marketing your educational project begins at the stage of choosing a topic of study. If no one wants what you teach, then no amount of promotion and advertising will help you sell the course. Who, for example, needs courses on the use of mechanical accounts? But 30-40 years ago, this was a very useful skill for any seller in a grocery store.

You can estimate demand using several tools.

Analysis of the volume of search queries at wordstat.yandex.ru. Formulate what search query is most likely used by people who can potentially learn from you. Check its frequency and evaluate seasonality.

Social media demand analysis. Formulate what people write when they are looking for something related to learning and asking about it from their friends and in groups on social networks. Write this phrase in the search and analyze the quantity and quality of the displayed posts.

Study. The previous points allow you to study the formed demand, when a person already has a clear need and he is trying to satisfy it. But more often it happens that a person would be glad to learn something, but does not actively search. Then you can do your research. Create a questionnaire in which you will tell about your educational product and place a pre-order form. Distribute this questionnaire to your friends and friends of friends. So you will understand if there is a demand for a similar product in your environment. It is important that you do not need to create the content itself to conduct such research. You only pretend that you have it, and thereby test the real need.

Submit information correctly

If there is a demand and your expertise is in demand on the market, then it must be properly presented to a potential audience. Make a website (or a separate landing page) and describe the benefits of learning from you.

Show that you are an expert

The most important competitive advantage in education is the name of an expert and his status. A programming course from MIT (the largest US university) and a course from a talented self-taught person from Voronezh are perceived by a potential audience in completely different ways. Although it is not at all necessary that, from the point of view of efficiency, a self-taught course is worse.

If you are a recognized expert in the market, then do not be shy about it. List your accomplishments that are related to the course and share them with the audience.

If there is no big name yet, then show your qualifications with the help of a portfolio, certificates, diplomas, tell about the relevant position and experience.

Create a training program

The curriculum lets the audience know what you will be teaching. The course may be called "Analytics", but 100% consist of theory. And the potential buyer is waiting for the practice. He comes for a solution to a problem and wants to learn how to work with databases himself.

Demonstrate that your training program will solve the customer's problem.

In the program, it is important not only to identify topics for study, but also to show what skills the buyer will receive at the exit. You can go even further and “package” the skills for a specific benefit for the buyer: for example, show how his resume will look after completing the course.

Show the benefits of your course

How will your course differ from a dozen others? What is its uniqueness? If you can't answer these questions right off the bat or you're talking about the quality of the program and a cool expert, then think again. All courses are made by good teachers and are conducted according to effective programs. At least everyone says so. But buy courses with unique benefits. Think of them and create them.

Find a reason to believe you

In the presentation of information, it is important that it be believed. Statements like “146% of students were satisfied” have not convinced anyone for a long time. Give your potential audience a reason to believe (RTB).

Effective RTBs can be:

Reviews of real students on the site, which confirm that training with you will help you achieve results. The video format, posting them on the social networks of your students, a call to ask students for details, their contacts will help to increase the credibility of the reviews themselves.

A free webinar where you will reveal one of the topics of the training program and demonstrate your teaching skills and expertise.
Video (screen recording) from past classes or a webinar with a short story on the topic of the course.

A promise to return the money if the program did not suit the student. Only an honest promise with transparent rules.

Data on the number of people who completed the course. This is social proof that the course is worth enrolling in. To be believed, numbers alone are not enough, show your students and tell us what they have achieved.

Facts about the UX Design course, Skillbox.ru

Diploma works and feedback from students of the course "UX-Design", Skillbox.ru

How to start promoting a course

After high-quality content packaging, it's time to start promoting it. In general, work on the promotion of educational content differs little from work with other products. The basic checklist looks like this:

1. Define your target audience

young professionals who know the basics and want to improve their skills in order to get promoted;
experienced specialists from related fields who have decided to change their profession;
mothers on maternity leave who want to learn something fundamentally new.

2. Set up analytics

It will allow you to determine the effectiveness of marketing channels and adjust the promotion plan.

3. Determine the set of channels for promotion

The main channels for promotion are usually the following:

contextual advertising;
advertising in social networks;
advertising on thematic sites;
publications in groups in social networks and in thematic media;
direct sales.

As a rule, if we are talking about a small, "craft" course, then the main promotion tool is advertising on Facebook and VKontakte.

4. Define a test budget

Remember that your task is to pay less for attracting a user than you will receive in the end from him. At this stage, you can work with two variables: the cost of the paying user and the price of the product.

Determine the starting price for the course, based on the analysis of the pricing policy of competitors.
Start a small ad campaign.
If you're happy with the ratio of ad spend to sales revenue, great.
If you are not satisfied, then try to raise the price and see if the volume of sales decreases. Or try lowering the price and see if the cost of the payer decreases.
If the ratio is still unsatisfactory, then call an advertising expert who will tell you if it is possible to reduce the cost of a paying user by fine-tuning advertising campaigns.
If everything is set up correctly, but there are no sales and you are not ready to suffer losses, then we return to the previous stages, once again check the demand and work on the packaging.

5. Scale your ad campaigns

If your content allows you to scale sales, then after finding the first marketing channel with a paying user cost that suits you, launch a second channel, a third, and so on.

Features of the promotion of the educational course

Despite the fact that, in general, the tools for promoting educational services do not differ from the generally accepted ones, there are several features that you should pay attention to.

1. It is very important from the first days of a product's life to think about the so-called word of mouth, and more precisely, about your brand. If you are running courses in your name, then your name is your brand. High-quality training, user happiness, educational result - a necessary minimum to develop a brand. If everything is in order with the necessary minimum, then ask to leave feedback on the social network. Personally write to everyone who has completed your training, ask for feedback and, if you liked everything, ask them to write a review on social networks.

2. Develop a referral program. Learning together is more fun! And your students can become your agents of influence.

3. Making a buying decision can take weeks or months. Therefore, the advertising that you launched today may only be effective in a few months. Be patient.

4. In educational content and its marketing, it is important to maintain motivation. Without motivation, the student will not have good results, and your product will not have a good reputation. Incorporate elements of positive reinforcement to keep you motivated: motivational emails after completing homework, success stories from your students, bonuses for top students. You can also work with negative reinforcement: for example, we call the parents of those students who miss classes, and parents become effective learning motivators.

25 people came to the first stream, about 50 people came to the second. It is not yet scalable as a business, but rather just a way to convey some developments to people. Yes, and earnings - a nice addition.

I decided to start the course because I always manage to explain different things in an accessible way. And everyone says that this is one of my strengths. I tried to develop my weaknesses for a long time, but then I decided to try to do something using my strengths. It can be said that this is a hobby, I always try to do something other than my main job, although all my hobbies are related to business.

I promoted the course through my personal network of contacts on Facebook plus advertising there. Because the audience relevant to the topic of the course lives there. From the first students of the course, I received powerful feedback, I understood what to do if I want to scale the project.

Alexey Kulichevsky

Director of Marketing at Osome.com.

It is difficult for me and many of my acquaintances to hire good marketers and analysts. There are very few people with the necessary set of skills, because no one teaches this. I have accumulated enough experience for 12 years, I love and know how to share it. There are enough design materials, CSS and HTML, instructions for working with advertising platforms on the Internet. Maxim Ilyakhov teaches me how to write and edit texts better than me. But according to the analytics, there was nothing. That's why I decided to do this course.

For a year and a half, 471 people passed it. It was included in the educational program of several universities. People are starting to list it on their resumes as an additional education. From time to time I receive feedback from familiar entrepreneurs that my graduates really work much better.

In principle, I am satisfied, but now I see many shortcomings in the course: some topics could be covered more fully or clearly, several important topics need to be added. I worry a lot about homework. I want my students to get feedback as quickly as possible, but I can't check the work fast enough.

I started creating the course by writing the first two lessons and making a page with a payment form on my knee. After that, he wrote on Facebook: “Hello everyone. Look, I made a course here ... ". This gave the first 150 students. Everything was done so primitively that I signed each student with my hands: I opened Yandex.Checkout, copied the email, went to Mailchimp, inserted the email, clicked OK.

After that, I had no time to advance: I have a head start - two weeks, and then every week I need to give a new lesson. If the topic was clear to me and I had already taught it before, then it took just a week to write, edit and design the lesson. If at least something was unclear, it could take 2-3 weeks, because it suddenly turned out that the topic was more complicated than I thought.

There are 16 lessons in the course, it took six months of work without days off to write them. When I finished the course, I redesigned the landing page and posted on Facebook again: “Dudes, I finished the course and made a new landing page.” Well, that's all. I didn't promote it any more.

Most important feedback: 150 sales two days after launch. First, I realized that the course is necessary and important. Secondly, I burned bridges. Money received, no way back. Will have to write.

Sergey Bolisov

Chief Distribution Officer to the site.

I consider my course quite successful. I do not spend it as often as I would like, but all the launches went well. Operating expenses are minimal, I do everything myself, so I stay in the black. This year I want to experiment with participation formats and packages, it seems like an interesting scaling option.

The course was launched for several reasons. Firstly, I like to explain to people what I am good at and what will help in their work. I feel like I'm helping them develop. Secondly, this is how I improve in the development and promotion of my own product - I fill bumps on a small scale, so that later I can avoid it in large projects. And thirdly, this is additional money that I spend, including on charity.

Basically, I recruit participants from announcements on my pages on social networks and on friendly sites. Sometimes I ask myself to post a post, sometimes someone does it on their own initiative. Often my announcements appear on the Tilda social networks, from which quite well-converting traffic comes.

I don't want to make a blunder, but I can't communicate with thirty students every day. Therefore, after the first launch, I realized that I would recruit only small groups. Not everyone will like this option, as if you are artificially limiting yourself to a certain ceiling, but so far I am more comfortable.

I also realized that people come not so much for knowledge and skills, but for feedback. It is important for them that someone who understands this topic better than them, looks, advises and directs.

One of the main insights: most of the time is spent not on classes, but on communicating with students.

Even if I explained everything in detail during the webinar, many questions will definitely arise. So I advise you to be patient. Well, in time, it will take much more than you think.

If you understand that you want to launch your own educational product, but you do not have enough knowledge, come to EdmarketConf-2018, which will be held on April 20 and 21 in Moscow, at the Skolkovo Technopark. At this practical conference on online education, top managers of leading educational companies will tell you how to create educational courses from scratch, promote and sell them. The conference can be viewed online.

How to organize on-the-job training for sales staff.

In fact, there are several ways to conduct training. First you must decide: who will be involved in training your employees? Maybe a head coach? An invited trainer to conduct corporate training in sales technologies? Or this "coach" will be your head of sales - or you will be yourself. Now let's think about what kind of return after training your employees do you want to get? Many companies rely on the best study of business specialization, i.e. an in-depth study of the product, or material, or service that the company represents in the market. And they forget about the most important thing - about Sales Technology.

Conduct an audit

I remember the case when two meetings were held with the leaders, they are also the owners of the companies. We came to a meeting at company N. The size of the company is average. The sales director has not been involved in sales for more than 10 years, and his deputy manages the sales department. Previously, managers were constantly trained. He taught himself, invited coaches to the company and went to trainings in Moscow. But for the last two years they have stopped conducting training, which now has a negative impact on the company's sales turnover. My colleague asked a banal question to the director: “Can you sell snow to the Chukchi in winter?” the answer came in a second, and I note with minimal cost and tangible profit.

Our meeting ended on a positive note for both sides. Then we visited the company NN, which is almost identical in size to N, and found out that the director himself is engaged in sales. That (recorded from his words) the head of the sales department knows little, and does not even want to talk about managers. Sales are falling, customers are leaving for competitors. A colleague asked the same question: “Can he sell snow to the Chukchi in winter?” He replied: “I think I can!” And she is so meticulous and again asks: “So you think? or can you?” After a short pause, he issued: “To be honest, now I think I can’t!”. We are interested in what he is doing to increase sales. And he conscientiously listed all the discounts offered, and ongoing promotions. Which, in his opinion, should increase the influx of new customers, and as a result - increase turnover. But as for increasing the professionalism of the sales staff - silence. To the question: “Who will win in the negotiations - a trained employee or just a self-taught person?”, He replied that he was naturally trained. But, nevertheless, he is not going to spend personal money on their education.

If we compare these two companies, then one thread can be traced - training is necessary, the question is who will do it?

Life has already set its priorities, as progress does not stand still, but runs forward with leaps and bounds. And therefore, many believe that it is better to pay a specialist in this field of knowledge than to do it yourself. We, as specialists in sales training, who constantly conduct trainings for employees of their companies, believe that only a combination of different approaches can be truly effective. Maximum knowledge about the specifics of the product, the ability to negotiate exactly with those customers with whom your business works - all this is available to the directors and sales managers of your company. How can you give up this experience, the ability to sell in this particular specificity, and not conduct trainings on your own? But those effective sales technologies that can be obtained at trainings conducted by professional business coaches cannot be ignored. As well as new experience, and a fresh, "unscrubbed" look at problems - all this can also be obtained at professional business trainings.

Based on our experience, we can say with full confidence where the manager or sales representative has a weak link when starting work with a potential client. This is a complete lack of ability to conduct the first telephone conversations and conduct a competent first meeting. It's no secret that the impression of a person is formed during the first few seconds of communication with him. Therefore, it is necessary to know what methods of sales technology to use in this dialogue. A tech-savvy sales manager or sales representative knows how to build trust with a potential client. Which, ultimately, leads to the transition from a "potential" to the status of a "regular" client.

Recently, on one project, there was a case when a young "fighter" asked a specialist for help in holding a meeting with a potential client of "sovdepovskoy sourdough". He could not start a dialogue with her in any way, she met any of his undertakings "with hostility." Having previously asked him how he tried to build trust with her, they came to the conclusion (the most interesting thing was that the speech modules were preliminarily planned, but it turned out that it did not work) that the notorious human factor came to the fore. And in this case, an extraordinary approach to the client was needed. An experienced businessman who had practical and life experience advised how to build a dialogue. Those. you need to say hello with a smile, ask about health, if not very good - sympathize. And then just start talking about work. What happened, no one really foresaw. We arrived at the client, she was just in the trading floor. And instead of doing, as already discussed in the script, the young “fighter” started a conversation (official mentoring tone without a hint of a smile): “Hello! How are you doing?". She stood in the pose of a “sugar bowl” (in the common people “hands on hips”) and asks: “And yours, what’s the matter?”, He hesitated, blushed, apologized and moved away from her. Of course, in the end, after the specialist made adjustments, the dialogue nevertheless took place, and the second meeting was successful. But this could have been avoided by acting strictly according to the scenario.

So what's the best way to train? Here are some options:

Hire a trainer;
Invite a coach from outside (holding a corporate training);
Conduct trainings yourself or entrust the head of the sales department to conduct trainings.

Now let's look at the pros and cons of such training.

Hiring a coach on staff - in this case, the advantage is that such a coach becomes a "pocket", i.e. they can be used at any time. Training can be done at any time: before the start of the working day, in the afternoon or taking a little working time in the evening. The downside is that he will only transfer his knowledge (which you will not be able to check and evaluate, since this will take a lot of time). Or the theoretical knowledge of other teachers, which will also be in doubt. And where is the guarantee that what they will teach is new and effective, and not old and obsolete.

Conduct an express audit of the sales department on your own according to 23 criteria and identify sales growth points!

Conduct an audit

Invite a trainer from outside, in other words, invite you to conduct corporate training in your company. Or to go, for example, to Moscow for an open training in the same direction. Plus, we get it in any case, since we already have information about the coach himself, we also get knowledge based on first-hand practical experience. And at open trainings we also get acquainted with the experience of other participants in this process. As a rule, such trainings are held outside working hours and do not affect the work process in terms of time, but the knowledge that they receive is, as practice has shown, very effective. The only downside is the cost of training and travel.

If you train yourself. The advantage is that you share your personal experience of participating in negotiations. Their turns of speech, their "baubles", their manner of behavior with a client. This is wonderful, especially since no one knows the specifics of your business better than you. But in this case it serves as a minus, no - not your time spent - but your communication with your own kind, inherent only to you. You are acting as what we call the “Booster”. Those. finalizing negotiations when concluding a deal or signing a contract. And in this case we are talking about the weaknesses in working with clients from managers and sales representatives.

If we consider the issue of involving the head of the sales department in the training, then all his practical and life skills will also be in the black. And in the minus should be attributed to his workload and a "blurred look" on some aspects of negotiating with his managers or sales representatives. It should also be borne in mind that he can be good at selling himself. But he cannot teach this to others for some specific reason. Unfortunately, not all experienced negotiators and sales managers are both able and willing to conduct business training for their employees at the same time.

For example, in one company, the sales manager was sure that only his manner of negotiating was the most effective. He, using the technology of conducting "hard" negotiations, made deals literally at the second or third meeting with the client. Therefore, when transferring experience to his employees, he persistently forced them, almost word for word, to memorize speech modules. Managers tried to do everything as he ordered. As a result, when summing up the results of the week's work, it turned out that out of 8 proposed contracts, only two were signed. Three were under consideration, although the likelihood of their signing was reduced to zero. And the rest refused at all. When they began to find out the reason, it turned out that the turns of speech of a 45-year-old man are very different from those of a 25-year-old girl. The behavior of a 45-year-old man is different from that of a 29-year-old guy. And in general, what is allowed to “Jupiter” is not allowed to the “bull”. It is good that the director of the company realized this in time and took appropriate measures. And now in their company everyone does only their job. One would like to remind: “It is not the one who does not make mistakes who is smart, but the one who can correct these mistakes in time!”.

From the above examples, it is clear what the head of the company can ultimately receive. When to conduct training is also up to him. The most important thing, in our opinion, is to decide who will do it. At the same time, do not forget the folk wisdom: "The miser pays twice." And in your case, three times, since you will lose the most precious thing - time.

The best way to quickly master and implement the technology of building a sales department is to visit K. Baksht's sales management training "Sales System".

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Sales managers are people without special education (because we don’t have such education). And if you want to mold real sales wolves “from what was”, then you definitely need to train them. In this article, we will write out a training plan for sales managers from the first day of work.

And first of all, let's do an overview of the training program for your future team "elimination of competitors."

3 ways to train sales managers

There are several "disciplines" that your sales reps need to master in order to start bringing orders regularly. Here is an incomplete list:

The specifics of your product/service (price catalog, market)
How to make cold calls
How to conduct face-to-face meetings
Maintaining documents for the sales department

Even if you wanted to, you can't outsource all the training to guest trainers. In any case, you will have to do most of the training yourself. And let's see how best to build a program to achieve maximum effect.

#1 - Practice

A person remembers best what he does himself. Therefore, literally from the very first day you need to give your employees a taste of “blood”. Cold calling is the best way to do this.

In general, cold calls are divided into several stages. Before the call itself, there is usually a stage of compiling “long lists”. But it's too boring and uninformative. Therefore, on the first working day, I would not force salespeople to sit down at directories and start writing out the names and phone numbers of companies of potential customers.

Better prepare long lists ahead of time and have them ready. At the same time, you, as an experienced person, must ensure that there are no too “fat” clients on your list. But on the other hand, the list should not be completely “rotten”. That is, managers should have a real opportunity to schedule their first personal meetings. It will be the taste of victory.

How to teach cold calling

Two important points for learning cold calling in practice. First, sellers should not call and say whatever they want. Before starting the calls, you must give them a prescribed script - a scheme for talking on the phone with the "gatekeeper" and the decision maker (Decision Maker). It will help you to draw up such a scheme.

The next important point is that your practical cold calling training should be a game. But the game will not work if the sellers legs are shaking with fear. And so it will be, if they have not done anything like this before.

Therefore, it is very important to explain to them from the very beginning of training that all these calls are just a game. That one should not be afraid to "mow". On the contrary, it is necessary to mow. Only it is necessary to mow "on an industrial scale" in order to immediately make all possible mistakes, and not stretch this pleasure for a year.

In addition, it is necessary to speak with them separately about the specifics of cold calls - this is rudeness and refusals. You don't want them trying to squeeze everyone and everything. And even less do you need them to crawl and humiliate themselves in front of any rude person on the other end of the line.

Each of your sales managers should have the right to "send" someone they don't like. This sacred right immediately unties the hands, and the young begin to understand that they are trusted. The main thing is that at the beginning there should be a “senior” nearby, who, if anything, will help and pull you out.

And here we move on to the second option of training salespeople.

#2 - Mentoring

New managers definitely need someone experienced who would tell them what to do at the right time. And at the first stages with a mentor, training is based on the principle of "watching - learning."

Your commercial director can become a mentor (by the way, we’ll talk about him a little later), you can be a mentor. The main thing is that this person really knows how to sell, and not just tell the seller that he "does everything wrong."

Mentors are especially helpful in teaching face-to-face encounters. At first, be sure to send at least two people to personal meetings - a mentor and one new seller who made an appointment.

Next, the mentor will conduct the first meeting, and the seller will sit nearby and listen, and fill out a questionnaire. Here is the very important point. The questionnaire is an indispensable tool for training new sales managers.

For the stage of personal meetings, the client profile is like a script for cold calls. You must have a list of questions, according to which even the most beginner, with a pencil in hand, can draw up a portrait of a potential client.

One mentor for several sellers

At first, the mentor asks questions, and the beginner listens to the answers and fills out the questionnaire. Then he watches with his own eyes how this questionnaire turns into a ready deal. And then he must repeat this magic on his own.

At the second stage, the new seller can go to meetings on his own, but he must bring a completed client questionnaire from each such meeting. Then the mentor will, together with the beginner, analyze the questionnaires and give advice on how best to act in a given situation. Thus, you can use one mentor for several sales managers at once. An example of such a questionnaire can be downloaded from this link.

#3 - Coaching

Once every one or two weeks, you definitely need to conduct special training for your salespeople. As practice shows, such training has a very positive effect on the level of motivation of people. That is, they begin to run faster and call more insistently.

You can invite trainers from the outside, or you can appoint the most successful employees of the sales department as trainers. It can even be a beginner who has successfully completed some kind of transaction. Let him tell you how he acted, step by step. This will be very helpful.

I would advise to conduct such training at the beginning of the week, on Monday. This way, your salespeople will have the opportunity to try out and apply new knowledge during the week. And if you teach on Friday, then by Monday they will forget everything a hundred times.

Other teaching methods

Once a month, organize a “round table” during which the sellers will talk about what they have experienced during this time at work, and how they coped with them. The leader must listen and say what was done right and what could have been done differently.

Another learning option that no one has canceled is reading. Just don't expect your managers to go to bookstores themselves. Organize a small "library of sales" right in the workplace. Put the best sales books you can find in there.

Give people books only for a certain time so that they read them faster. Then you can ask some employee to conduct corporate training based on the materials from the book.

At the end of each month / quarter, certification exams can be held on the materials that were studied in the trainings. The results of certification can be taken into account when assigning quarterly cash bonuses. So the manager will be motivated to repeat all the materials again before passing the certification.

Summary

It is imperative to train sales managers to make them professionals. And most of the training will have to be done by you.
The best way to learn is to practice. Give salespeople the opportunity to experience the “taste of blood” on cold calls on the first day. The main thing is to let them "mow".
Be sure to assign a mentor to each new salesperson so that the manager learns by example. This is especially useful for the face-to-face phase.
Give new sales managers ready-made tools - telephone conversation patterns and a client questionnaire, so that they can at least do something.
You can invite outside coaches or use the best staff to provide additional training once a month.
Once a month, hold a round table where your employees would share their practical experience with other sellers.
Organize a “sales library” and ask salespeople from time to time to provide training based on the materials of the books.
Once a month or once a quarter, conduct appraisals for managers so that they have the motivation to repeat and consolidate all the material covered.

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Thanks to this article, you will learn how to more rationally select employees and train sales managers.

A new sales manager needs to be formatted right away according to your requirements. In a few months it will be too late: the employee will get used to his own, not the most effective models of work, and the belated attempts of the management will be perceived as “tightening the screws” and nitpicking. Therefore, every manager must go through four stages of preparation before he proceeds directly to sales.

Sales manager training program

Sales manager training, stage 1: Acquaintance with the company, introductory briefing (1-2 days)

The HR manager introduces the newcomer to the company's policy (learns the goals, gets acquainted with the code of corporate ethics, conditions and remuneration system);
He also introduces the new employee to the staff and shows the main premises of the office, including the workplace (desk, equipment, places for storing documents and other common materials);
The system administrator instructs on the use of technical means, if necessary. At the same time, he talks about all the features of using the company's network and gives introductory advice on the use of specific software products;
The head of the sales department explains to the manager his tasks, brings the requirements for his work and answers questions;
The HR manager introduces the sales manager to the work instruction, regulations and standards;

Sales manager training, stage #2: What does the company sell? (1-2 days, but depending on the complexity of goods and services, it can take up to 3 months)

The manager can, in parallel with other stages of preparation, move on to searching for new clients, collecting information about the potential of enterprises and contact persons. Otherwise, after a week of training, when you put an employee on cold calls, it may turn out that, due to personal characteristics, he is not able to actively search.

Example. In a telecommunications company, a new sales manager was trained in services, tariff policy and sales techniques within 10 days after being hired. Then the newcomer proceeded to "cold calls". 50% of the interns were eliminated: some could not overcome the fear of calls, others could not meet the standards existing in the company. In order not to waste time, we changed the learning process. After the initial briefing on the services and stages of sales, within two days, the employee was given a tele-algorithm (script) of the "cold call" and put on a call to potential customers. After some of the new employees were eliminated, the rest were already more deeply trained in services and tariffs, without wasting the time and effort of the manager on the “refuseniks”.

There are several ways to acquaint the future merchant with what he has to sell, and it is better to use all methods in combination:

Studying information about the goods (services) of the company according to catalogs, website, information materials. Important: the manager must master the characteristics of locomotive products, that is, they occupy a large share in the company's sales. If your sales department has staff turnover and the manager has to regularly train new sales managers, it is better to make an educational video about the products. You can record on video a slide show prepared in advance and voiced, for example, by a commercial director. You can also add video recordings of the provision of a service or the production of goods to the film. This task can be entrusted to the personnel manager together with an internal product expert (this can be the head of the sales department, the buyer, the merchandiser, or the director of production). It will take several hours to make a movie, but it will save the head of sales or the personnel manager from constantly repeating the same information to newcomers;

Example. In a company that sells PVC windows (23 sales offices in one region), the issue of organizing a remote staff training and development. To organize it according to uniform standards, the director set the task for a technical officer (calculator) to create an educational film on products. He also brought in supplier representatives. They talked about the supplied components (profile, double-glazed windows, fittings), and he recorded them on a regular video camera in his office. The result was a training video course of 19 lessons. These videos he encoded for copy protection and placed on computers in all sales offices. After the certification, employees received high scores on product knowledge. It also made it possible to train sales managers 2 times faster.

Acquaintance with the range of goods in the warehouse (if the company provides services, it is better to demonstrate them to the manager visually in the process of work of other employees);
Familiarization with the price list;
Familiarization with the terms of delivery (delivery time, the possibility of providing a deferred payment, the features of working with new and existing customers, etc.) or the provision of a service;
Then interview the manager to determine if he has mastered the basic knowledge about the product or service. This can be done in writing (fill out the form, for example) or in the format of a conversation. For example, what to do if the product is out of stock and the customer needs it urgently?

At this stage, it is important not to have a thorough knowledge of the product or service, but to understand the key points in the assortment.

Sales manager training, stage #3: How to sell (1-2 days)

In a number of newcomer companies, for mastering key skills in sales, usually assigned to an experienced employee. The method is the most economical, but also the most unpredictable - you cannot be sure that the "veteran" train a new manager only useful. A friend of mine still remembers his first day at work. The first words that the mentor said to him were: "I will teach you how to write off gasoline." To avoid this, it is necessary to choose as mentors employees who have the desire and ability to teach others. It may be worth paying extra for a mentor for an additional load. Moreover, it is desirable to link the size of the allowance with the results of the beginner (fulfillment of plans for the number of effective calls, completed customer cards, collected applications, volume of orders, etc.). If there are no candidates for mentors in the company, then the head of the sales department should fulfill this responsibility. The instructor must show the following:

How does a manager work with documentation (make proposals, draw up contracts, applications, reports);
What algorithms have been adopted in the company for the interaction of employees of the sales department with employees of other departments when reserving goods, signing an agreement, issuing an invoice, shipping goods, preparing transaction documents;
How to work with the client database (CRM-system), including what information should be entered there after contact with the client;
What is the division of customers between sales managers in the company;
How does the company segment customers?
Where to get information about potential customers and how to work with databases (if the sales manager is actively searching)
How to work with a quotation template based on a price list. That is, calculate the cost of a product or service based on the terms of delivery (for example, the size of the discount depending on the volume of the order and the grace period);
What are the features of the technique of selling goods or services of the company. The manager needs to explain the stages of their sales (do not confuse them with the five stages: establishing contact, identifying needs, presenting, handling objections, closing the deal). Each product or service has its own sales logic (which differs in nuances from the classic stages), in accordance with which most transactions are concluded. These are some steps, stepping on which, a potential customer gradually becomes a client.

It is also desirable to give a tele-algorithm (script) for "cold" calling.

Example. In a web studio, a new employee had to first make a call according to a script in order to reach a contact person: “Please tell me the last name, first name, patronymic and position of the employee responsible for the institution’s website?” If asked on what issue he is needed, he must answer: "On the issue of changing the website of the institution in accordance with federal law No. 8-FZ." Then the sales manager recorded the information in the CRM system and planned a contact with this official. He made the next contact with the right employee according to a different script. This approach allowed the beginner to get a small intermediate result and a positive incentive for the next call.

First, scripts simplify the learning process. Secondly, this way the new sales manager will make fewer mistakes when making "cold" calls - he will not need to invent what to say, it is enough just to voice the written speech modules. Thirdly, it simplifies the control over newcomers - it is clear how they will behave when communicating with customers.

Sales Manager Training Stage 4: Getting Started

After training, the sales manager starts working with clients. It is desirable to proceed to this stage as soon as possible after passing the previous key points. Deeper knowledge is best obtained in the process of working with clients. His responsibilities at this stage include searching for potential customers and entering them into the CRM system (listing), calling customers using the database provided by the manager.

Example. In an IT company, new sales managers started calling on the 2nd day. It was done in the form of a survey in order to update the database, collect information about the potential of organizations (number of computers, use of a local network in the organization, etc.) and contact persons. To encourage IT professionals in client organizations to participate in the survey, sales managers promised to send them an e-book on setting up MS Office for system administrators after receiving answers. As a result, even beginners managed to collect 60% of the completed questionnaires. To make such calls, the employee did not even need to have knowledge of the product. Newcomers made follow-up calls to prospective customers after passing an exam on the company's product line.

Sales manager training in the process of working with clients (table):

STAGE	WHAT A MENTOR DOES	WHAT A SALES MANAGER SHOULD DO	HOW LONG IS THE STAGE
	The instructor communicates with clients. Before calling the client, the mentor must announce to the newcomer his goals in the upcoming communication and the main steps that need to be taken to achieve them - the employee must understand not only what needs to be done and how, but also why.	Observes the mentor and asks questions about past contacts	2-3 contacts
The newcomer is active - the mentor intervenes only in a difficult situation for the manager	At this stage, the mentor should intervene in the sales process only if the newcomer has completely driven himself into a dead end (for example, he stimulated the client to a question that he himself cannot answer), resigned himself to failure, forgot about any stage of working with the client ( for example, he began to name prices for products without clarifying the volume of purchases) or works incorrectly with objections.		3-5 contacts
Beginner is active - mentor is passive	At this stage, the manager communicates with clients completely independently, and the mentor controls. After the manager has communicated with the client, the mentor should do the following: 1. Ask how the manager evaluates the contact that happened, what he succeeded in and what could be improved. 2. Express your point of view (be sure to start with a positive - let him praise what the manager managed to do). 3. Parse the mistakes made. 4. Ask what conclusions the manager made from this discussion, what he will apply in the following contacts.	Communicates independently with clients	3-5 contacts

Completion of all these steps will significantly reduce the risk of excessively high training costs for sales managers and make this process as efficient as possible.