Sales Training Costs

The cost of Sales Training is NOT what is on the balance sheet.  There are many HIDDEN COSTS and many Opportunity costs.  Let’s look at a few:

1)    What is the cost of all of the people who contribute to sales training materials?

a.       Product Managers?

b.      Marketing?

c.       Senior Sales People

d.      Sales Managers

e.       Engineering?

f.       The Training Department

g.      HR?

2)    Training is provided to help sales understand the company and the products which you are taking to the market.  How often does the training need to be repeated?

a.       The truth of the matter is that most training has a half life of 6-8 weeks.  WHY?  Most of your sales training is not reinforced.  Sales people sell what they know, what they are confident in selling, and what they just sold.

b.      If you are lucky enough to have a salesperson take that information and go use it and sell something, you have got a new convert.  However, the first two will not make the transition and will continue to sell what they have before the training.

c.       The best way for Corporate Training to be reinforced is with the first line sales manager.  Here, proper techniques and encouragement will increase your pipeline

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3)    One of the hidden costs of training is the turnover of your sales force. 

a.       After the recruiting and hiring expense occurs, you are hoping your new rep will succeed.  However, the sink or swim approach is not the best way to get a high ROI on your expenses so far.  If the sales management team can assess skills and knowledge, it might be very possible to help a good rep become better, and an average rep into a higher performer.