Employee turnover isn’t always the result of uncommitted employees. Often, it’s the result of poor training. Employees who aren’t thoroughly trained feel ill-equipped to face challenges and often look for reasons to quit. Some become apathetic toward their job until they’re fired.
Training is crucial, but not all training is equal and not all training produces results. For instance, U.S. companies spend $70 billion each year on training, but few companies see ROI from that training. Why?
Training is more than showing people the ropes
Employees need to be trained on a technical level, but a training system consisting only of technical instruction won’t support your workforce. Relying on a technical training system is like teaching someone how to play a card game - they’ll understand how to play, but may never win because they haven’t been taught strategy. If they don’t win at least some of the time, they’ll eventually lose interest in the game.
The same is true for your sales team. When your sales team doesn’t have winning strategies and can’t seem to land many sales, they’ll develop a distaste for their job and look for reasons to quit.
Your sales team needs solid strategies
A significant portion of your training should be focused on strategy. If you’re not training your team members in effective strategies, you’re not training them to do their job.
Have you ever wondered why some companies have a “star” sales rep while the other reps struggle? It’s usually because the star rep has strategies the other sales reps don’t. Since many sales reps compete for commission, they’re unlikely to train each other. However, since they’re all working for you, it’s imperative to provide ongoing, thorough training for all sales reps. You don’t want anyone lagging behind.
If you have sales reps lagging behind, it’s your duty to bring them up to speed with your successful reps. Talk to your successful reps to find out what they’re doing right, but don’t stop there. Your reps can only give you a partial picture of what’s really going on.
Your reps might be misperceiving the efficacy of their strategies
Do you know which sales strategies work, and which ones don’t? Are you absolutely sure? Would you bet your business on it?
Although we like to think of ourselves as observant, sometimes reality escapes us. Identifying successful strategies isn’t as easy as it seems.
Copywriter John Carlton tells a story in his workshops that illustrates this point. Carlton was writing copy in the golf industry and consulted with a professional golfer to find out the secret to his powerful swing. The golfer told him what he did with his swing to achieve his results. The golfer had trained many students to use his method, but they weren’t achieving much success.
One day, Carlton analyzed a video of the golfer and noticed he was actually doing the opposite of what he was teaching. He told the golfer, who began teaching the opposite strategy and suddenly his students achieved better accuracy and more distance right off the tee.
If a professional golfer couldn’t see that he was doing the opposite of what he thought he was doing, how can you be sure you know which strategies are working?
Artificial Intelligence brings strategy to sales training systems
AI technology is permanently changing the landscape of salesforce training. AI systems are being used to transcribe sales calls and analyze them using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify techniques that do and don’t work. For example, the technology identifies words, styles, and voice tonalities that are more likely to close a sale. These AI-derived insights are used to train new sales people to prepare them for future calls.
Just like John Carlton analyzed a video to identify a golfer’s swing strategy, you can use AI to identify winning sales strategies that aren’t immediately apparent to your sales team.
AI technology comes to the rescue
Several companies have been working hard to develop AI technology to analyze sales calls to improve customer relations and sales:
- Niccolo. AI pioneer Substrata created an AI sales assistant called Niccolo to gather intelligence from emails, analyze client interactions, and help push complex deals forward while maintaining your company’s unique style. Niccolo will be commercially available in 2020.
- Chorus. Chorus.ai says it’s a platform built “to capture all customer-facing conversations to seamlessly search, share, and analyze these critical moments.”
- Gong. This AI platform allows businesses to search every phone call, meeting, and email to gain insight into what strategies lead to the most success.
Employee turnover is expensive
Curbing employee turnover may seem impossible, but with AI technology, anything is possible. Many experts agree that training is the foundation for success in any industry. Your employees want to do a good job, get results, and make you proud. It’s your job to provide them with the training that makes that possible.
