Six Situations Where It Makes Sense to Outsource Sales Training
Choosing to outsource sales training can feel like a big decision if you’ve never done it before, but sometimes outside help is exactly what your sales team needs.
Outsourcing training may not be the right choice for everyone, but here are six situations where I feel you can benefit most from a bit of outside help.
1. You’re not happy with your current team’s performance.
When your existing sales team isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you have two choices: find new sales people (who will need training to ensure they accomplish what your original team could not) or train the ones you have so they can improve.
2. Your lead sales person has no formal sales training.
Most salespeople were never trained how to sell. And most sales managers were promoted because they were the best sales people, without any specific managerial training. Put these two ingredients together and it’s rare to find a sales manager who excels at teaching others how to achieve what they have accomplished themselves.
3. You can’t afford the cost, either in dollars or time, to handle training internally.
Maintaining an internal training department is expensive, and asking team members–who are not dedicated to training–to take on the additional responsibility often means taking them away from other pressing needs within your company.
4. You want new salespeople to reach full productivity quickly.
Getting a new salesperson up-to-speed with traditional in-house options, on average, can take as long as 1-year. Outsourcing sales training can significantly decrease the amount of time it takes “newbies” to reach their peak productivity.
5. It’s been a while since your last sales team training session.
Knowledge retention drops off steeply as soon as training has ended. For example, after only three months removed from training, teams have forgotten 84% of what they learned. That means ongoing training and occasional refreshers are a must if you want to keep your team performing at their maximum potential.
6. You’ve had trouble keeping good sales people in the past and want to reduce sales turnover in the long-term.
Employee turnover is expensive. If you’ve been having trouble keeping your salespeople happy, investing in training can help prove that you value them while giving them the tools they need to be successful (and therefore happy!) at their jobs.
Again, outsourcing sales training isn’t the right choice for everyone—but when it’s the right choice, it can make a dramatic difference in employee happiness, productivity, and the company’s bottom line.