Paul DiModica

Most companies spend little or no money on sales training and even less money on sales strategy development. Most growth-directed firms talk about having a planned sales training program but this is more of a verbal commitment than an action commitment.

Yet there is a direct linkage between sales team knowledge and corporate revenue growth.

One way management teams can maximize their investments in sales training and sales strategy development (outsourced or insourced) is to link sales team training to sales account manager competency models that management can qualify and measure.

But the development of a sales team competency model has strategic and operational impediments that must be managed to make it successful.

Sales Training Competency Model Example

Sales Team Success Requirements

10 Sales Competency Setup Considerations

1. Salespeople often think sales is an art, not a science, and don't like to be measured.
   
   
2. Your sales competency model must include both soft and hard skills training to make it effective.
   
   
3. Sales management teams must focus on the competency requirements to make it work and it must be a hands-on approach.
   
   
4. You must be able to quantitatively measure the competencies (cold calls, appointments, sales scorecards, etc.).
   
   
5. Competency sales training programs must be continuous training and educational events, not a one-time event or else the program will fail.
   
   
6. The steps of your competency program must be very specific and delineated to make sure it can be delivered and measured.
   
   
7. Your sales team must agree that the competencies you are measuring truly help them sell more. (They don't have to like doing it, just agree that they are required action steps to sell more.)
   
   
8. When implementing your sales competencies audits, the certification should be both written and experientially measured to get an accurate reading of the sales candidate's capabilities.
   
   
9. All sales competency certification candidates should have the ability to retest to confirm skills growth.
   
   
10. Sales competency assessments should never be used solely as a management scorecard tool to make employment decisions about sales associates.

To increase your company revenues and sales training success, build and deliver sales competency models.

"A salesperson who covers his chair instead of his territory will always be a poor performer." Anonymous

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