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Sales Training: Cancel 2012 Sales Kickoff Meeting - Too much risk

Posted by Matt Sharrers on Sun, Sep 25, 2011
  
  
  
  

sales training meetingThe annual sales kickoff is often seen as a venue to conduct sales training. Our firm has participated in over 200 of these in the past 5 years. Our research shows it will cost you a minimum of 2% towards your 2012 revenue goal. You should cancel it because there is not enough ROI.

Cost Breakdown

  • Sales reps have 2000 hours /year (50 weeks x 40 hours/week)
  • Sales Kickoff is a week . (1 day to travel in, 2.5-3 days of meeting, 1 day to travel home)
  • You have now burned one of those available weeks on SKO or 2% (40 hours is 2% of 2000)
  • Assume 1MM quota for easy math.
  • 2% or 20K in topline revenue
  • Assume a sales force of 250 people
  • 250 x $20,000= 5MM in topline revenue.
  • $500,000 for sales force (2Kper head to attend---$500 plane ticket, $1500 food, hotel, transportation for 4 days)
  • Speakers, AV, Conference rooms (50K)
  • For a group of 250 people, you have sacrificed 5MM in topline and at least 500K in bottom line.

This is too much risk. Now you may be saying:

  • “Hold on;  we have big news and this is our venue”
  •  “We need to get the group together to give out quotas and comp plans”
  • “We always get the group together once per year; this would be a morale drain”
  • “We do training at this event”

If you want to eliminate the risk and guarantee an ROI, focus the meeting on 1 thing: 2012 Sales Strategy.  To do this, here are five best practices and the timeline to do them  to help you prepare:

#1 – Identify - where is your sales force on the Sales Management Maturity Model.  Where is your industry, competitors, products and sales force? (Oct 1- Nov 1) Identify

#2 – Align - Ensure the sales strategy and corporate strategy are connected. Connect these two in a meaningful way with each of the key functional groups and have them attend the kickoff. Lean on them to present their area of expertise in bringing the strategy to fruition. (Nov 1-Dec 1)

#3 – Publish - declare the investments you will be making to the sales force. There are two types:

  • People—announce how you will be investing in them. How will their sales training be improved? How will their career path advance in 2012? (Dec 1- Jan 1 via email, text, internal communication—announce some teasers; make it a big deal)

#4 - Cancel keynote speakers - the only outside attendees you should have should be linked to your sales strategy and 2012 sales improvement efforts. A new speaker for 90 minutes that the team has never met and will never see again has no ROI. These are tactics of the past that have proven to never move the number.

#5 - Celebrate Failure - talk about 2011’s failures. Where did you miss and why? We often see leaders shy away from this public transparency. The sales force knows what you didn’t get done; open up and share what you learned. This level of vulnerability will endear them to your strategy.

Call To Action

You cannot afford to host a meeting without an ROI. If you go ahead, follow the plan above and it will be a hit; I have seen many that have. If you are on the fence, cancel it and reinvest these sales training dollars and employee hours where an ROI is guaranteed.

 

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Comments

Great thoughts, Matt. Couldn't agree more. I've rarely seen training as conferences really be "training." Usually it's a content dump. No interaction, often not new content or content proven to make a difference, no real learning occurs, there's no skill practice, no coaching and feedback loop, and no transfer strategy to bridge it back to the real world. And therefore, of course, no ROI.  
 
Were you going to say something else in #1? There an "Identify" dangling at the end.  
 
It would be interesting to hear more from you guys about what you think DOES make effective training - when and how it should be done.
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:01 PM by Mike Kunkle
Thanks for the comment Mike. Training is part of the weekly cadence, not event based. As for the delivery, it must be customized, led by the sales management team, reinforced after the meeting and measured. Whether at a SKO or otherwise, small bite size pieces of the sales process, complete with job aids and a follow up plan is the best practice.The critical follow up is the sales management team's observation in the field through "on purpose" coaching focused on the specific skill that was the topic of the training.
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:14 PM by Matt Sharrers
I have met very few managers with the skills required to inspire their troops or the time to develop the content. This iis why outside speakers are used. 
 
The ROI (rational) model assumes that if you give reps an extra week of time they will produce more. The evidence doesn't support this.
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:25 PM by Paul Lanigan
Paul, 
 
Thanks for the comment. Therein lies the problem. Event based speeches, specific to moving sales productivity, do not work. The effort on making the sales managers become sales coaches and equipping them to develop and inspire thier people daily is where the ROI is realized.
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:28 PM by Matt Sharrers
Matt, that's certainly an advanced methodology that can yield great results for incumbent reps. It assumes, however, that sales management is fully capable of training (it's a pretty specific skill set that is different than "managing" in my opinion) and behavioral coaching (also a very specific set of competencies). In most of the companies I've walked into from the outside, I haven't found that to be completely true (that = managers truly have these skill sets). If senior sales management is ready to address that gap, perfect. In most cases, though, a partnership between training and sales management can also yield some great results, as long as they don't fall into the sheep-dip, event-based methods as a primary delivery vehicle.  
 
I'm curious now... do you suggest this same "training methodology" for new reps, as well as incumbents?
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:56 PM by Mike Kunkle
Mike, 
 
You are right...many companies do have a gap. And we have seen this gap fixed through both content and the HR/Training team becoming part of the sales managers development to coaching excellence. When it comes to training new reps, they should follow a customized onboarding plan that is broken up into Job Execution and Knowledge Acquisition. The key, once again, is the sales manager is the person responsible for ensuring the first 6 months (average ramp time) is a weekly/daily progression. Sending somebody to "new hire training" for 3 or 4 days is not enough. This can be an augmentation to what the local boss does, not a replacement
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 2:13 PM by Matt Sharrers
Thanks Matt, I appreciate the clarifications today and I like your approach. It seems we're in alignment. No surprise, based on everything else I've seen from SBI.  
 
I've never advocated "3-4 day new-hire training events" unless they were a part of a larger, purposeful, well-orchestrated plan with shared responsibilities between Training and the frontline leadership team. And there is way too much training going on where the frontline leaders don;t know what is being trained, or don't support it (often because what is suggested doesn't produce real-world results), and certainly don't reinforce or coach to it. But close the content gap, and arm frontline sales leaders with the right skills, and the partnership can produce solid ROI and results.
Posted @ Sunday, September 25, 2011 4:47 PM by Mike Kunkle
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Posted @ Wednesday, December 07, 2011 6:39 AM by April King
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