How current is your training material? When was the last time you (or someone else) reviewed the material for relevancy? How does your organization identify the best delivery methods for training? These questions should be easy to answer. Unfortunately, in many organizations, training is treated like a one-time event, and content from the early 2000s is still being taught. While many managers advocate that training material is timeless and every person should go back to the basics for skill and knowledge refinement, they cannot argue with the rapidly evolving marketplace and the ever-increasing competition demands. Managers face this reality daily, and many have seen firsthand how the customers on the “other side of the desk” are better equipped, better supported, and just plain knowledgeable and articulate about products, services, and solutions.
Always Improve
Continuous improvement of training begins with a keen understanding of this often tenuous buyer-seller relationship. Understanding this relationship helps drive training recommendations. The more aware and in-tune with the intricacies of the trainer’s buyer-seller relationship, the more positive the impact. Think about it: many customers spend time learning procurement and buying processes, while training typically focuses on helping team members leverage product knowledge. These are two different things. One processes. One is knowledge. For example, buyers focus on process, and people are taught about features and benefits. As a result, people often cannot keep up with the pace and demands of a rigorous and well-oiled buying machine found in most organizations today.
The answer to this dilemma is the fully developed, enabled, and executed process. People must know and live by a process synchronizing with the buyer’s buying processes. To accomplish this, people must be knowledgeable enough to personalize the process to the unique nature of the buying organization. As a result, trainers must know as much, if not more, about the process as the team members. While many team members have been trained on a standard process or have figured it out independently, trainers often fall short of helping them prioritize, organize, and implement the appropriate activities to improve process execution.
What is a Continuous Improvement Approach?
Improving process execution requires a continuous improvement approach. Why? Because trainers must identify, prioritize, and implement training solutions. By implementing a solution, trainers are thinking more strategically and long-term about the needs of the team members. As a result, trainers often acquire a much-needed system’s view of selling. This system’s view typically considers inputs, outputs, skills, and knowledge required to sell. At the same time, trainers are typically thinking more long-term about the development needs of team members. By focusing on development, trainers understand there are no “silver bullets” and no panacea to making teams more effective. Due to this view, trainers can help teams align with the buying organization, focus on ratcheting up performance, and address immediate problems while keeping an eye on the longer term. Trainers who approach the team understand that each training action can help forge more solid relationships between the selling and buying organizations.
A continuous improvement cycle is recurring by its nature. Trainers who follow this approach focus on improving team efficiencies and managing team development processes more effectively. To do this, they focus on making an immediate impact and rapidly improving upon subsequent improvements to the system to take advantage of successes while minimizing ineffective tools, techniques, and approaches.
The 5-Phase Continuous Improvement Model
The model’s five phases are:
- identity: determine the desired outcome(s) required to achieve the overall strategy
- examine: determine gaps in achieving the desired outcomes
- enable: develop specific recommendations and solutions for success
- execute: create a comprehensive plan and get buy-in from stakeholders
- evaluate: collect feedback and measure against the expected outcomes.
| Step 1 – Identify
Comprehend the team’s key strategies and performance metrics for attaining desired business outcomes. |
Step 2 – Examine
Determine options to achieve the desired outcome(s) |
Step 3 – Enable
Develop specific solutions and plans for success |
Step 4 – Engage
Initiate and implement the agreed-upon solution and plan |
Step 5 – Evaluate
Collect feedback and measurement against the expected outcome(s) |
| Based on aligning your crucial customer’s needs and your organization’s strategies and core business functions, what skills and competencies are needed in the organization?
How does your organization currently define “training” content? Does it address all necessary aspects of selling skills, product knowledge, industry knowledge, and technical training? Define the team’s “future state” about the training mix identified—these skills each team member must have (in the next one to three years, for example) to meet business goals. |
Assess the current abilities of the team (from entry-level workers to senior executives), about the requirements of the future state to define what gaps exist and do not exist. How many team members will be exiting the organization in the next 1 to 2 years? How much of the current ability level will leave those people?
Identify the current gap between existing content areas tailored to the training gap and missing content areas. Are there unique training needs by role, function, industry, or geography? Determine the priority of skills and competencies needed—what are the most important ones the team must have to succeed? Consider these questions: Are the gaps more pronounced in specific employee groups? Are there gaps in specific lines of business? Are the gaps geographically based? |
Decide whether to hire skilled talent, build it internally, or manage the gaps through outsourcing.
Set baseline measures by documenting sales team member skill assessments as they stand now. Identify targets for closing the gap between current skill sets and those needed to support the future goals of the team and overall organization. Did you address how quickly you need to develop these skills, the availability of required resources and time, and how you will measure the effectiveness of the development initiative? Set internal communication and change management goals that will accompany the comprehensive action plan to address the team’s skills gap. Develop a separate communication and change management strategy for managers. Include managers in every step of the implementation and measurement strategy. |
Create a learning plan led by the organization’s learning function to address skills gaps, manage resource deployment, and measure outcomes.
Select appropriate delivery modes for learning opportunities – instructor-led classroom, online instruction, informal learning, or a combination. In addition to traditional training methods (e.g., classroom or online instruction), the learning plan should include learning opportunities such as coaching, mentoring, job rotation, external programs and courses, tuition reimbursement, personal development reimbursement, and so forth. Create a meaningful development map to team leaders (these competencies may be mapped to job functions within the team, specialty area, or job role). Is the map robust enough to be used for both individual development and as an indicator of organizational development? |
Measure team members’ progress on the learning plans against individual and organizational goals. Measure progress before and after learning takes place. Did you measure the impact on both individual and organizational performance? What gaps did not improve? Why?
Link the learning results back to organizational strategies and goals. What impact on business performance was made, both short-term and long-term? Did you consider both financial and non-financial benefits? Report results to all stakeholders in the organization. Test for senior leadership’s awareness of progress in building needed skills. Create or improve processes and methods for identifying internal talent, recruiting new talent, and retaining employees with the critical skill sets that the team and organization need. |
As organizations think of development needs within a phased, cyclical process, they are better equipped to adopt an overall holistic approach to force recruiting, retention, and engagement, including talent management and leadership development—building a path toward improved team performance.
Following this approach can help your organization understand the alignment of areas of force expertise about long-term goals. By determining the critical questions outlined in each step of the development analysis tool, you can see how each phase builds upon the previous and how specific skills and knowledge are developed. It will help you set the stage within your organization to effect the paradigm shift from “training” to “development and performance.” It will guide your efforts to make the business case for this shift and tie it to desired business outcomes. By adopting this approach, you can ensure that your organization is knowledgeable, engaged, and equipped to work with even the most demanding buyers to ensure your company’s future growth and profitability.
