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Training Needs Analysis
A Financial Services company has a total sales force of forty including five Sales Managers and a Sales Director. They are backed up by a Project group of thirty PM's and professionals for pre- and post- sales support.
The problem they had was that the salespeople appeared to be very effective at account development but new business presented something of a problem 'when the phone stopped ringing'.
The Sales Director was concerned that if they bled the base dry without any new business flowing in that they would inevitably go through a long dry spell. So, what could he do about getting more new business? On the face of it, the salesforce was well motivated and being compensated more than satisfactorily, so it was not just a matter of improving the Sales Compensation Plan.
What was required was a detailed analysis of capability amongst the salesforce to determine why new business was something of a problem.
The Sales Director had had considerable experience of psychometric tests to determine where people fitted in but he felt that the problem was much deeper than that; did they know how to manage the prospect pipeline?
He decided to use Knowledge Assessment to establish the knowledge base of the salespeople in the first instance. The results that came back were, frankly, very disappointing. Only 35% of the people achieved the expected standard and, furthermore, there was a clear indication that some important competencies in selling were missing such as Objection Handling, Qualification and Closing Technique.
A total of fifteen people needed urgent training in all of these three disciplines. Hitherto, the company would have sent such people on a 'Sales Training Course' but the Sales Director realised that if these competencies could be enhanced specifically, productivity would be greatly enhanced. He therefore decided to hold a series of in-house training /coaching modules to help the people improve.
Six months later, with careful activity monitoring and ruthless Sales Forecasting imposed on the salesforce, the balance of new :extension business has been redressed and the ratios are now in excellent condition. Not only that, he saved 47% of his training budget by not sending the people on a 'Sales Training Course'
Now the Project group will be assessed to ensure that they are in line with the new-look salesforce, particularly for checking the quality of prospect situations and planning / installing workable solutions.
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