How To Make Corporate Sales Training Stick For Your Entire Team, with David Mattson, Episode #135

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By far, the biggest issue with corporate sales training is that most of what you or your sales team learns at the event is gone within days of attending. Statistics show that when stepping back into the pressure and demands of the sales arena, most sellers revert to their old, established sales practices. What can be done to ensure that the time and money invested in sales training isn’t wasted?

On this episode of The Modern Selling podcast, I had the honor of speaking with Dave Mattson, the President of Sandler Training. His organization conducts sales training for organizations large and small and he has years of insight into what makes a good training event—and more importantly, how to make what is learned at a corporate sales training event stick with your team so you can achieve the results you hope for. Listen to this episode to hear all the details of how to make it happen.

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Why Doesn’t Corporate Sales Training Provide The Results We Hope For?

Dave Mattson admits that even Sandler Training doesn’t have the impact that it should have. Why? Clearly, with a professional and long-tenured organization like Sandler in the mix, it’s not faulty information. There's something else going on, so I asked Dave about it. His answer was common sense once I thought about it.

First, Dave says that participants and sales leaders in attendance don’t acknowledge that they will likely lose most of what they learn at the training event if they don’t take action to prevent it. In other words, they are lazy about their level of engagement, sloppy with their notes, and don’t fully participate on a level that makes the training event meaningful for them on a personal level. 

Second, Dave says participants who fail to benefit from corporate sales training events are those who fail to implement things they learned immediately upon returning from the event. Immediacy is key in making the concepts stick because it demonstrates their efficacy—and experience is everything!

Dave has a few other tips for getting the most out of your next corporate sales training event, so listen to this episode to ensure you can make the most of it!

When You Attend A Sales Training, Are You Only Looking For Tactics?

Dave points out that most sales professionals who attend a training event arrive with hopes of unearthing tactics that will help them with a specific issue or problem. That’s fine, but tactics alone won’t increase sales effectiveness. Dave has learned over 30 years in the sales world that three things are required to ensure growth. He calls it the Success Triangle and the three points on the triangle represent: 

Attitude  Behavior  Technique

Dave does a masterful job of explaining exactly what he means by each of these components and he gives practical illustrations of how they look in the sales context. You’ll want to listen to hear them described. But he also talks about the importance of coupling these three aspects of sales rep success with proper follow-up and oversight by sales leaders. It’s a one-two punch that works every time, so don’t miss it.

Sales Leaders: You Are The Reason Most Sales Training Doesn’t Stick

During our conversation, Dave was not shy about putting the responsibility for effective sales training where it belongs, on sales leaders. He said, “The biggest thing that will make or break a sales training program isn’t the training curriculum or the people in the classroom, it’s the sales leadership.”

Why does he say this? Because it’s sales leaders who are responsible to reinforce, refresh, and remind the sales team of what they learned at their corporate training event. They will likely have to revamp procedures, sales scripts, and training materials to reflect what the team has learned. And they will have to be disciplined to stick with the new concepts even when crunch time hits at the end of the month and everyone is feeling the pressure to hit month-end goals. Listen to learn from Dave’s 30+ years of experience as a sales leader himself.

4 Steps To Quickly Onboard A New Hire To Your Sales Team To Profitability

When you hire a new person for your sales team, how long does it take you to get them up to speed and profitable? A year? Six months? 3 Months? Do you recognize that the faster and more effectively you can shorten that onboarding process, the more likely you’ll be to meet and even exceed your annual numbers? Dave provides a four-step process for accelerating any new hire onboard. He suggests:

STEP ONE: Make a list of everything a sales team member needs to know to succeed in your organization. STEP TWO: Prioritize and sequence the list with the first item being the most important—and so on.  STEP THREE: Give the new team member an example of what each step looks like in action. Provide both text and audio resources so they can study and practice anywhere and at any time. STEP FOUR: Test their learning. Implement required role-plays, recitations of sales scripts and product knowledge, and do it in planned ways. You’re building in timelines and accountability that will help them succeed and help you identify bad hires and rising stars. 

Dave Mattson, CEO of Sandler Training provides a tremendous amount of valuable information around these four steps on this episode, so be sure to listen. This section of our conversation alone could increase your sales numbers this year in exponential ways. The entire conversation will help you make the most of your next corporate sales training event, whether you are a sales leader or an individual sales professional.

Outline of This Episode [2:17] How Dave moved from client to CEO of Sandler Training [18:20] Why the investment in sales training doesn’t seem to stick [26:30] Sales leader reinforcement is so vital to changing behavior [28:20] 4 steps to making a new sales team member successful [41:15] How to make time to create these sales training components [45:05] Technology is turning marketing and sales into a science Resources Mentioned

Be sure to mention this Modern Selling Podcast episode when reaching out to Dave personally and he’ll send you a “Crash The Class” pass so you can attend a Sandler training event free!

Dave on LinkedIn David on Twitter: @Dave_Mattson www.Sandler.com Dave’s company on Twitter: @SandlerTraining Dave’s book: Success Cadence Get your FREE CHAPTER of Dave’s book BOOK: The Sandler Rules Dave’s all-time favorite movie: The Godfather Modern Marketing Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges

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