The business acumen challenge for new hires | Sales Training ...

Business acumen challenge for new hires

Many companies offer training programs for new sales reps that focus on products with some competitive information and sales skills added. ?Often, they are accompanied by various levels of testing ? spanning the rigorous scale from minimal to washing new hires out of the program.??

However, as Forester?reports, few sales reps have the benefit of robust new hire sales rep training programs that teach them how to sell.??

• The average number of days for new hire training in most organizations ranges from 5 to 15 days, so most sales reps learn how to sell while on the job.
• Most content presented is company-centric, not focusing on the buyer, so sales reps often don?t learn about business drivers and market forces affecting their customers in new hire training. This makes it difficult to get a great jump start when they try to sell into accounts in their assigned territories.

As we?ve said in prior posts, successful sales reps must have the right conversations with the right people at the right time. But not developing business acumen about customers in new hire sales training leaves new sales reps to obtain that information themselves ? an inefficient process as well as one that also leaves sales reps to develop their own understanding of the value of their solutions. When they do it on their own the results are usually partially incomplete or even incorrect.??

A few companies have taken the challenge and are starting new reps off ?right? by designing new hire sales training programs that move beyond product, sales skills, and competitive knowledge to incorporate business acumen (e.g., why customers buy, market drivers, potential players in the buying process). ?We think this is the future ? and hope more companies take this challenge.??

?2011 Sales Horizons,? LLC

Source: http://salestrainingconnection.com/2011/05/23/the-business-acumen-challenge-for-new-hires/

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