Sales manager play key roles in sales rep development. In company small or medium in size, the managers are the trainers. In large companies where full-time training staff is a set up, the managers have input to shape new courses and a key role in seeing to it that reps obtain timely training. In addition, the sales manager can provide after-the-fact feedback to trainers about how much specific courses have improved the rep`s abilities and results.
Increasingly, sales managers are involved in training because they themselves are also being reeducated in order to stay in touch with customer or competitor changes. While sales training methods have changed with new techniques such as interactive video programmed learning and expert systems, there are “big picture” shifts in training overseen by managers.
Rep development programs are more diverse than ever. In an age of multiple specialzation and team selling, reps must take many more courses than in the past. At xerox, a world leader in training reps, sales personnel take much more training in system selling and total account management than was the case only a few years ago. The emphasis is on selling systems, not “stand-alone” boxes to customers. Bell Atlantic brings its very best 60 (of 250) reps into an intensive 13-week course (stretched over nine months) to discuss and study how leading-edge technology can be offered to customers in solutions for their problems.
Example of other new course priorities for sales forces, beyond system selling, key account sales, or high-tech solution selling, include teaching reps how to deal better with distributors, training reps to do total value-added selling, and training them as teams to update their sales methods after extensive competitor analyses.
Sales managers should be constantly thinking about what new skills their skills their reps need to become self-managed, confident performers. It is the job of the sales development is relevant to the changing pattern of competition and salesmanship required.
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manager,
reps,
sales