What you should consider before you offer a training class to your Sales Team

In many cases Teams like the Sales Operations Team, Product Management Team, Product Marketing Team, Order Management Team etc. would like to train the Sales Team on various processes and tools. This can be a costly engagement from a Sales Team point of view (e.g. just think how many Sales Reps you want to train and how much time that will take and the impact on the Sales Quota ... while the Sales Reps are trained they can't make any Sales Quota and this makes it harder for the Sales Management Team to agree to these training sessions). In order to make it easier for Sales Executives to actively support this training I suggest to look at the following.

• Have data available that shows that a training is appropriate 
• This should show some information on how the Sales Reps spend their time. You could get this Information from a Sales Productivity Survey or by working with representative Sales Teams directly. A Key point here is to see what is industry average (you probably need a consulting company to help on this) and how much time your Sales Team spends on this task. If you have several Sales Teams in different parts of the world you should break this up by regions. Below I show some examples
• Customer Facing Time
• Travel to customer site
• Sales Meetings
• Prepare Sales Meetings
• Networking meetings / Relationship building
• Non-Customer Facing Time (could be sales related or non-sales related)
• Special Pricing requests
• Deal Approval Process
• Product Configuration and quoting
• Customer Research
• Account Planning
• Internal meetings and email (e.g. for non-sales related activities)
• Training
• Internal Reporting
• Know exactly what you want to improve, why you want to improve it and what the expected outcome is
• See the list above and determine what you can achieve by when and who needs to support this training effort
• Determine who needs to attend the training
• Should the whole Sales Team (e.g. Field Sales, internal Sales Rep) attend this training?
• Should you potentially create a questionnaire with different topic areas to determine who needs to attend a training and who doesn't? Example: You can ask 5 questions in the Order Management Area and if a Sales Team Member answers 4 questions or more correct then they don't need to participate in the training. Note: If you use a questionnaire ensure the questionnaire is as short as possible to ensure you are not wasting everyone's time. Also think about how you want to enforce the completion of this questionnaire. Suggestion is to have the questionnaire no longer than 30min.  In any case before you use this questionnaire you need to discuss this proposal with the Sales Executive Team. A questionnaire might help convince the Sales Management Team to do a training when you can show that it won't waste time.
• Determine how you will measure the success of this training
• Should be done before you present to the Sales Management Team
• Ensure that all instructors are available and handle the training as a priority
• Ensure you have Executive Sponsorship for your suggested Training
• Not everyone in the Sales Team will be eager to do this training and hence you should ensure you have the Why, What, When, Where, Who and How questions well thought through before you have this discussion
• Measure the results and share with the Sales Management Team and the Sales Executive Team