"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."Are you holding trainings, or are you holding meetings? What’s the difference anyway? Does it really matter? How can I best prepare for delivering a successful training?Trainings take planning, and a process is necessary to ensure the greatest opportunity for success. Without a process there lacks consistency, and without consistency we rely too heavily on luck. So how do I put together a successful training?

Training Session Plan

1. Define learning objectives: The first step in developing a training is identifying the needs of your audience. Core skills for a sales floor may include:

• Basic Sales Skills
• FTP [Find the Pain], Qualifying, Value, Sales methodology [Addiction Selling]
• Product
• Product functionality, Value add, features & benefits, competitive landscape
• Systems & Processes
• Pipeline management, sales tools and enablement, metric efficiency
• Mindset
• Setting goals, maintaining motivation, career growth and development

Conducting a needs assessment of the sales floor on a consistent and ongoing basis is a great way to engage and address the team. Involving reps at this level creates ownership and accountability for the development of the team.What concepts or skills are most important to be addressed? How will addressing these skills benefit the sales floor? How will success be measured?2. Organize materials and collateral: Once the topic is decided upon, draft an ordered outline to ensure the most important parts are covered.

• What objectives need to be addressed?
• Is an agenda appropriate?
• What resources or training collateral will improve engagement?

3. Presentation techniques: A varied experience is most likely to keep your reps engaged, and meet the broadest learning styles. Different techniques include:

• Lectures
• Best for introducing topics
• Keep these under 30 min while highlighting core points
• Summarize at beginning and the end
• Great for guest speakers with a Q&A
• Demonstrations
• Works well when needing to show steps in a technical processes, or style and technique changes
• Collateral may include a step by step, “Order of Operations” or a quick video tutorial
• Round Table
• Open up the training for active discussion
• Resources may include questions for debate
• Socratic method
• Role playing
• Engage reps in acting out scenarios in a simulated environment
• Provide peer and leader feedback

4. Include evaluation: Evaluation should be a two way street to gauge the effectiveness of the training.

• Are reps grasping the subject matter? Consider having check-ins throughout the training session to gauge competency
• Do reps value the content and style being presented?
• Was the training relevant?

5. Timing: Timing is everything. From when you present, to how long your session lasts, and the frequency of subsequent training needs, timing should be included in your training plan.Trying to decide what type of training is best for your organization’s needs? Check out this guest post I wrote for Hoopla.Want to take part in a training with me? Join me as I present with Always Hired, Cold Calling Bootcamp!Best,SL