Developing your team is crucial to ensuring their longevity and long lasting success as they grow under your expert guidance. Even though most sales managers agree that coaching is the most important aspect of a leaders role, the reality is that the act itself receives far less time than it needs to be effective.

Individual growth requires continuous training and practice to drive results through routine and structure. Therefore training isn’t an option for a Sales Manager, it is an absolute necessity.

And simply providing the information isn’t enough. Each person needs to spend time learning and understanding each element of their role to ensure it is implemented effectively.

Training doesn’t need to be something that takes hours to implement and requires mountains of resources to administer. It can be made simple and manageable if done regularly and broken down into a way that makes the learning more interesting.

As you begin working on each training topic, break it down into simple 10-15 minute lessons that gives each rep a good concise update on this particular area. Make sure this content is helpful and interesting to ensure engagement with the team and put it into practice wherever you can in real life situations and role plays.

How do you create a training program that gets results?

1. Assess your current situation and identify where your team would get the most benefit from at the start.

2. Build the training based on teammates feedback and develop bite sized content that can be easily administered and absorbed

3. Deliver the information to the team by whichever means is best. Make it available anytime anywhere so they can access it when they need it the most.

4. Practice. Ensure the team role play and practice with each other

5. Assess performance. Continue to iterate on areas that aren’t delivering the results and involve the team to make sure it gives them exactly what they need.

We want our teams to become experts at what they do but without constant coaching and training, and specifically practice, how can we expect this to happen?

If you wanted to learn to play an instrument, you would need to practice over and over again to get to a point where you can finally play a piece of music. Becoming an expert at sales is no different.

If you want to nurture a team of A-Players, how can they be expected to achieve this status if they’re simply turning up everyday and doing the same things they’ve always done, over and over again. As the saying goes, ‘keep doing the same thing, and you will get the same results’.

What happens if you don’t put a structure around coaching and training in place?

According to Zenger Folkman 60% of sales reps will leave an organisation if their manager is a poor coach. According to Brainshark, a study by CSO Insights showed that 47% of managers spend under 30 minutes each week coaching their reps. The Sales Management Association states that companies that invest time and money into ensuring coaching takes place in their business see 17% higher revenue than those that don’t. You can’t argue with the numbers.

Being a present and focused manager who puts the needs of their team at the top of the to do list every week will mean success for the business, success for the individual and ultimately, your success as the sales leader in your organisation.