How to Measure the effectiveness of Sales Training Programs

Welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed, the premier podcast for innovative growth strategies, hosted by two seasoned experts. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group, a master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience. Evan is not just a consultant, he's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services The Sandler Way.

Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency, an expert in growth marketing. With 20 years under his belt, Craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, Evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices, and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the sales and marketing playbook unleashed.

And welcome to the sales and marketing playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews, and there's my partner in crime. See, I still learn after a little bit later, right? And there's my it only took a couple years.

Just a couple years. But it's that way, not that way. I got it. I might as well be in England and go in the wrong direction on the road.

But anyway, um, so the playbook, we are the playbook. And one of the reasons why we call ourselves the playbook is because we want to come to you guys directly with sales and marketing topics that's going to help you grow your business. And to that name of the playbook, we are I'm excited about this episode today because primarily what's going to happen here is my guy Evan, that way, is going to unload to you guys some stuff that's going to be very pivotal for you to understand why your sales training is important in your business.

Um, and but before we get started, um, Evan, please, by all means, tell everybody who you are and what you do, sir. Sure. So I am Evan Poland, president of Poland Performance Group. Poland Performance Group is a sales training, sales coaching organization focused primarily on helping everyone from small solo up to mid-sized businesses, mid-sized firms who are looking to increase their sales, generate more business.

Typically, the kinds of things that I'm helping my clients with is after all these marketing leads come in, how do we more effectively qualify or disqualify those leads? How do we shorten that time from first contact to closing the deal? And then developing a plan and a strategy around okay, if I have a particular goal, how am I going to accomplish that sales goal? How many new clients do I need?

How am I going to get in front of those clients? And then do I have the best strategies? And as we go through today's session, which is really going to focus on sales training and sales coaching, what's effective, what's not effective, we'll go into much greater detail in terms of what I do. And primarily who I'm helping are folks who are selling services.

So everyone from lawyers, accountants, consultants, people who never, in their worst nightmare, would consider themselves salespeople. But if they want to make partner, have their own firm, they need to learn how to develop a book of business. On the more traditional sales side, I am working with financial advisors, software companies, executive recruiting firms, primarily organizations who are selling a service versus a product. Now I want to bring my partner Craig back onto the stage.

And Craig, in addition to being the host of an award-winning sales and marketing podcast, um, what do you do in your day job? So I'm a partner at Beholder Agency. We are a growth marketing agency. And one of the things that we do is that we work with small to medium-sized businesses in terms of helping them in their overall marketing processes.

Usually the people who could reach out to us are frustrated because, hey, I'm not getting anything from my website. Hey, people don't understand what I do. Or they ask that famous question of when people say, What do you do? They go, uh, we we do we do stuff, right?

Very general. What we try to do is we try to target people in, get them located or get them recognized and awareness and visibility on the internet so that way they can start to grow their business year after year. Uh, and part of the reason why my guy Evan is so important, and I'm gonna bring him back to the stage, is because we use his process, as he just mentioned, we use his process in our marketing process. So the reason why this podcast works so well together is because when marketing and sales, notice I put marketing first that time.

When marketing and sales get together, uh, there's a really great way to grow your business year after year. And that's why I've taken his training. We're suggesting that you guys take his training. Why?

Because if you work with us, you're using his sales system anyway. So today's topic, today's show is going to be featured on how to measure the effectiveness, effectiveness of a sales training program. Evan and I both have the same problem in which people don't try to say, well, how do I know the marketing's working? How do I know the sales training is working?

So part of what we want to do today is start with the sales perspective in terms of the sales training program. Evan, what's your take in terms of the effectiveness of sales training? Why don't we start with that? So I think one of the words that you just used is really important, and that's effectiveness.

Unfortunately, what I find with a lot of individuals, with a lot of companies, with sales training, they just want to check the box and say that they provided their team with something. And if you bring in or decide to invest in sales training, but don't clearly really define, okay, what challenges are we running into? What problems are we trying to solve? What tangible skills do we want our folks to walk away with?

At the end of the day, you're going to get a feeling, oh, that seemed good. Our people seem motivated, they seem happy. You can't measure those things in terms of dollars and cents, in terms of number of new clients brought in. So one of the things somebody should really think about before investing in sales training is what are our objectives?

What are some of the challenges that we're running into? Where can we get better? And then whatever kind of sales training, whatever kind of sales coaching we're selecting, is that going to address those challenges? Is that going to specifically help us with those issues?

And if the answer is no, you should probably search for additional training. Because guess what? If your folks are great at closing business, but all they're doing is relying on the inbound leads and they're not very good at asking for referrals, they're not very good at networking, they're not very good at developing strategic partnerships. Yep.

Well, guess what? If the sales training is just focused on closing the deals, that's not going to address the issue of we need to get in front of more opportunities. So you really need to be specific. The other thing I hear a lot from companies, especially with companies from limited resources, in terms of reasons they don't invest in sales training.

Oftentimes they're thinking, well, geez, one or two of my people, they're on the borderline. I'm not sure if I want to invest in them. I'm not sure if they're going to stick around. My question to those companies, to those firms, is what if you invest in them and they stay?

How much is it costing you to keep people who aren't really good? And even if you invest in them and it doesn't work out, they're probably going to get a little bit better. And you will probably learn a lot more quickly whether or not they're going to be able to stick around for the long term than if you ignore the problem, not decide not to invest in it. Um, and then you know, yeah, you have somebody who's not productive staying around for a lot longer.

And I want to add to that, and this is important for the listeners to understand. Even though Evan's speaking about individuals, where we collaborate very well is technically you're investing in a system because even if that particular individual is good or not good, you break you're gonna probably bring somebody else in, right? So the system that you guys are implementing, which is Evan and I have absolutely gone back and forth where we had a client who wasn't ready for the sales training, but they needed marketing.

And then we had clients who had the marketing but wasn't ready for the sales training, and vice versa. So the important thing to understand and the point he just made there is that you're investing into a system. So you should not, if you're considering to invest, you need to invest in sales training. I am a witness to that.

Had one of my best years last year in the process of actually, and I've known Evan for years, finally implemented the things he told me. I know, Evan. I know. I know some people are slower learners than others.

I got you, Evan. I know I knew it was coming. I was trying to preempt it before it happened. So you need to invest in the sales training so that way you have a system into place.

As I mentioned before, when you come into us, we're implementing that sales training. And one of the things I want to kind of jump into here real quick before Evan continues is we've developed a cookbook, revenue cookbook that's paramount for people to have. And it keeps people simple because we're about the playbook, about keeping things simple, but having good visual goals in terms of how you are outreaching, how you're accomplishing the goals, how are you closing those businesses, and it's all laid out in a beautiful spreadsheet.

We'll put it in the description as we go forward here. So move you want to say something? Yeah, I I think the other thing that's important, both on the marketing size as well as well as on the sales and business development side, is the owner of the organization, the managing partner of the firm needs to be involved right from the beginning. If the owner, if the managing partner's not involved, they're not going to understand the process.

And if they don't buy in, I used to run into this early in my career. A company would send somebody, send a group of people to me for the training. I wouldn't insist on that managing partner, on that owner being involved. I would train them on a process.

They'd get back to the company, they get back to the firm, and the owner would go, no, no, no, no. Don't this is the way I do it. Don't do it this way. Right.

So the folks going to the training would know that the company, the firm was investing in the training, they were spending their time, and then the owner was immediately undoing everything. Yes. You talked about the cookbook. Everybody's individual cookbook should go up into what the company's goals are, what the firm's goals are.

So again, if the owner's not involved, if the owner's not setting and saying, I want $5 million in revenue, I want $25 million in revenue, you and I can put together cookbooks, we can put together a marketing plan, a sales plan. If that's not feeding into what the vision of the organization is, it's going to fall apart and it's not going to work. So that's why it's so important for sales and marketing to be on the same page, but also for leadership to be involved and leadership to buy in.

Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for sabotage and things won't work. Okay. So now as we move forward here, I'm going to give everybody a warning. Okay.

We're going to try and keep it not so technical as Professor Evan over here delivers his five core levels of sales training. Okay. So, Evan, why don't we start with number one, which is the reaction, which is what's the most overused metric. Let's start there.

So, and as we start, we're going to start with the least effective and move to the most effective. Okay. So, unfortunately, what a lot of organizations will do, they'll send someone to a two-hour, a half day, a one-day workshop. And then afterwards, serve everybody.

What did you think? Did you like it? How did it feel? There's a couple things.

There's no measurement with how did it feel? If somebody goes through training, it's really entertaining. They're not held accountable. They may absolutely love it because it was a lot of fun and it was a break from the mundane meeting with clients, answering the phone, sending out emails, sending out costs, so they may have liked it.

And the free lunch. Yeah, it's a free lunch. They get to meet you, meet a couple of people, be out of the office for a couple of hours. Probably not going to lead to effectiveness.

So do not do that. Save yourself the time, save your people the time, save the money. If you're just looking for a feel-good check-the box thing, find something as inexpensive as possible, have it take very little time because I promise you there's not going to be any effectiveness in terms of adding to your bottom line. Which is what this is all about.

Right. And quite frankly, it's not going to give your people any skills either. And so number two of the key points here. So the second kind of level is learning.

And that's not just okay, did this feel good? But can we outline what people learned? Can they articulate what the methodology was, what the process was? Was there role playing?

What were they taught the skills? And then given a chance to try to apply those skills, practice, practice those skills. And again, with something like that, you can kind of you know give people a pretest afterwards, give them a post-test afterwards, maybe ask them and do a little bit of role playing to make sure that they picked up on things. So that is more effective than the smiley face.

Hey, how did everybody feel? Um at the end of the program. Um, and you know, again, better knowing what people are walking away from uh is definitely going to be more effective. And so the point I want to make with that as well is you know me, I'm a data guy, right?

So a lot of times, from a from a owner perspective, a managing partner perspective, they will continue to ask these questions because I've I've done it myself, right? And what's important to understand in that is when it comes down to is it worth the investment the next session? This is part of the reason why we're doing this episode, is because at the end of the day, when they come back and go, Well, I people liked it, Evan, and you're going, but did you get any business? That's the key difference between Evan and myself and and others is that we want to know that you guys are getting business from it, not just that you're doing right.

Hey, hey, hey, and we're gonna get to that next. The other thing I would tell you with the learning piece of things is in an ideal world, you're doing ongoing reinforcement training over time. Because if you send people to a one-day or a two-day program, it's like drinking from a fire hose. They're only gonna retain a certain amount, so that additional reinforcement is really important in terms of best practices, so that those skills have some stickiness.

Um, because the other thing that you'll I sometimes find is people will intellectually understand the concepts. It doesn't mean that they're applying them day to day. Okay. So we're on to number three, sir.

Behavior, behavior change. So this is where we really want to, at least at a very minimum, start to see things. And that is when your people are getting training. When you're getting training, are you seeing any difference in what they're doing day-to-day?

Are they actually implementing day-to-day what they put into practice? Are they doing more outreach? Are they getting more meetings? Are they getting more appointments?

Do you see them doing a better job questioning in the pipeline? Do you see that the opportunities are actually qualified? And it wasn't just, hey, I had a great call, I had a great meeting, but that you actually clearly see did we discuss budget? Did we discuss this decision-making process?

Do we know clear next steps? So making that behavioral change can be really challenging because, in general, people get caught up kind of just being comfortable doing what they've always done. So getting them to make that change again typically takes time. Typically doesn't happen in a one-time event, but happens with ongoing training and sometimes some individual coaching as well to make sure that those concepts are getting modified based on the styles of each of your folks.

So, what's interesting here is one, if you can give me a brief example, right, of that moment when you can tell that they get it and the change in the behavior is happening. But I'm gonna, as you think about that, I'm gonna give you an example of what happened to us when we sent our people to Evan and and and Poland Performance Group to get the training that we needed and to catch them up to Spar for our business. Immediately after the after the training, actually, I think after one or two sessions, I get a call from Evan and go, Craig, he doesn't understand it.

He doesn't understand it. And I said, What doesn't he understand? He he just understand the basics of it. I don't know if that guy is the right guy.

And I said, I appreciate that. Let me talk to him and find out what might be missing. Well, he didn't work out. I'll just put it to you that way.

And ultimately, the important thing about this particular step is the behavior change. You know, there's a phrase I've been throwing around here about the signs of a dying church. And one of the things that you hear them say in a church is we've always done it that way. And that is the moment in which in this new age of AI and marketing and sales and the whole business development, what the important thing to understand is you have to be flexible and you have to be able to make changes to get the outcome you want.

Um, and that's very important. You were gonna say something. Famous last words. This is the way that we've always done it.

Uh Craig, how frequently are you faxing things out to your clients these days? What's a fax? Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.

But yeah, but yeah, 10, 15 years ago, that that that's how we were communicating. And we you know, um my fax line was plugged in more frequently than my internet line was plugged in. Absolutely uh things change over time and you can't do things the way you've always done. Very much so.

And that just that just that's why this step is probably the most important. If you can't see those changes, you can't make you can't get improvement. So so so you you you asked about an example. So I just did a training program um for a number of attorneys.

We talked about going through your LinkedIn, looking at who your top-tier connections were, your middle-tier connections were, kind of the bottom connections, the people who you're not not quite sure how you got connected to on LinkedIn. We talked about leveraging contacts to generate more referrals and introductions. So I had several people come back to me, say, hey, Evan, I did the exercise you suggested. I downloaded my LinkedIn, I separated my contacts, I reached out to one of the people on my A list, and I talked to them about who they knew that might be good for me.

And I got three introductions that I never would have gotten if I hadn't gone through, done that exercise. And then doing the exercise is one thing. Then proactively going and reaching out, having a conversation, asking for referrals. That's putting it into action.

And several people from that program reported back to me, I did this, I got several referrals. That's what we want to start to see is that behavioral change that leads to results that's gonna ultimately drive new business. And I can almost imagine they go, that really wasn't that hard. Or the other thing that they usually get is I've been meaning to get back to you about XYZ.

Right? Yeah, and so that's a that's a great example of just the small details can make a major amount of difference. So as we move forward here, pipeline impact is level four of this. Tell me about it.

So this is what business owners and this is what managing partners love. What we want to ultimately see is if the firm or the company is investing the money, if people are investing the time, ultimately we want to see measurable impact, measurable results. Craig, going back to day-to-day to day, what you've talked about before, do we have more opportunities coming into the pipeline as a result of the actions that people are taking? Are deals going through more quickly?

So maybe what used to be a 45-day sales cycle is now closer to a 20-day sales cycle. Is the average size of our deals increasing? But what we want to see is what I don't care what kind of CRM you're using, I don't care how you're tracking your opportunities. Are we seeing more opportunities show up in that pipeline?

Are we seeing a greater percentage of those opportunities close into business? That's when we know that it's really working. And for those of you considering, do I invest in sales training? Do I invest in sales coaching?

It should be an investment. You should be getting a five, 10, 20, 100-time ROI on that investment. It should not be a cost. You should be able to go.

I invested this in my people. Yeah, deals were coming in these kinds of ways where they weren't coming in before. I know it paid for itself X number of times over. And that's really what where we want to see.

But ultimately, regardless of what you're doing, I know it's the same thing from a marketing perspective. We need to see this turning into deals and turning into opportunities. And and let me put the caveat on that, okay? Nothing In marketing for sure, and nothing in sales is overnight.

Okay. It's a process that you're putting into place, and over time the return is going to be there and it's going to be ridiculous. It's an over, it's not an overnight process. Let me just make sure that's very clear.

Right. So so, Craig, to illustrate this, and I know you and I have both gotten these kinds of phone calls before. Hey, I'm really desperate. I really need help.

I need 30 days. You know, I need to turn this around in 30 days. I need to turn this around in 45 days. I asked Craig the question, Craig, you know, first tell me a little bit about your process.

What's your sales cycle? Like, I've got a six-month sales cycle. Okay, well, well, we can't help you. You know, but yeah, at that point in time, we don't have the magic dust.

Um, so again, we need to make sure it does take time. We need to go back and look at your data as your numbers. Again, we'll be able to improve that over time. That's true.

So that's the other thing I would suggest, whether it's marketing that you're looking to invest in, sales training, sales coaching that you're waiting to you're looking to invest in, don't wait until it's too late because we're not miracle workers. It will not happen. And I know there's people out there who will promise that. Ethically, we won't do that.

It's easier for us not to damage our reputation and brand of the process and the success that you'll have for somebody who's looking for a quick success. The pain it is a painful process, like step three was, which is change. Change is always painful. But once you get through that process and it's always into place, it's literally a rinse and repeat over and over again and just reconfirming, as Evan brought up.

It's reconfirming the process as you add more people, as you change and add new products or systems. It's always just a re-refreshing of it. I go to Evan's trainings every year. I go to his his um his uh dream book session every year, and it reminds me, I sit back and I go, Oh, yeah, I forgot that step.

Let me do that again. Very, very important. Um, so we're at the final stage here, which is the revenue and ROI stage of level five. So ultimately, again, we want to be sure that we're tracking and measuring that return on investment.

How many more deals are coming in? What is the value of those deals? Are we getting more referrals? How many more referrals are we getting?

Are those closing into business? Are those closing into business faster? Are we growing our current accounts because we're doing a better job with cross-selling and upselling? But I know it's a little bit more challenging on the marketing side, but on the sales side, you should be able to measure if I'm making these changes, are more deals coming in?

Are they more of the right kinds of deals? Am I closing a higher percentage of them? And you should be able to track revenue based on what you're doing, based on the changes that you're making. And I want to go back to something that Craig referenced.

As we're doing this, we're building a sales culture, we're building a sales strategy for the organization. So if you have old people leave and new people come in, you should be able to insert them into the process. There should be a common sales process. Everybody should be selling the same way.

Again, they can use their own individual personalities. And when it comes to prospecting, there's 20, 25 different things they could be doing, but it should everybody should be qualifying in the same way, using the same language. So as an owner, as a managing partner, as a sales manager, it makes it much, much easier to track the progress to manage the team if everybody's using the sales process and you don't have eight different people doing things eight different ways. Absolutely.

And I know we're getting we're getting a little long here, but I like the notes that you sent me here in terms of realistic expectations of how long this should take. Uh, can you just kind of blow through that list for us? Sure. Within about 30 days, 30 to 45 days, you should start to see a change in behavior.

Within 60 to 90 days, in most industries, you should be able to see additional opportunities added to that pipeline, added to the number of opportunities you have. And typically, depending on your sales cycle, within three to nine months, you should see additional revenue hitting your bottom line. And I think I was gonna say the other thing I would share is if you've got a senior sales team, in general, I find that people who are already pretty far along and pretty successful, you actually see a greater ROI on them more quickly because they have to make less changes.

They will see more results with just a few tweaks, where those newer, younger folks need to build up their number of contacts, need to build things up, and it can take a little bit longer for that investment to pan out. So just think about that. And again, if you've got really senior people, if those folks are open to change, you may want to look at investing in them maybe even first because you'll see a very quick return on investment that will then fund everything else that you want to do.

And what I wanted to add on top of that is that the the thing that I think might have been in between the lines in terms of what everyone's referencing, which I know affects from a marketing perspective, is the relationship piece. Okay. So some of those senior people already have relationships in marketing. You're trying to build relationships with your audience, which will also help.

What we're a big proponent about talking about here is being sure that you're answering their questions. And I know a lot of the details in Evan's training is talking about what questions they answer asking and make sure you're answering it. Don't just give me fluff of all the great things you can do and all the features and benefits and make my eyes kind of go on reset. You know, it's very important that you're literally talking and answering their question because their answer is a click away from a marketing perspective.

Their answer is a click away. If you can't give it to me, somebody else will. And with our time being limited, it's very important to understand that process in the place and the relationship you have. So once it comes to them from a marketing perspective and we send them to the sales piece, that you're continuing the relationship in the conversation from a sales perspective.

They had expectations for marketing, which is how they got here, and now your job is to take it to the finish line. So, and something else we've talked about before. That's also why it's so important to sales and marketing to be consistent, because if they're responding to a marketing message and then they're hearing something completely different from whoever in sales they're talking to, you're going to lose credibility very quickly. And they're going to move on to the next because they're going to be confused that the messaging's just not matching up.

And the same thing if you have eight different salespeople and it sounds like you're working for eight different companies based on how they're positioning your company, you're going to lose a lot of credibility, and uh that that's not going to be any good for the results that you want to get. And so as we start to wind down here, if we can kind of uh abbreviate this a bit, the best practices for tracking SO I'm sorry, sales training ROI. You have a listing there before, during, after.

I love that. Um, can you kind of summarize it for everyone? Yeah. So again, at the beginning, identify what you want to accomplish, what are the goals?

How can we measure whether or not we're accomplishing those goals? And then as you're going through, as you're going through the training, as your folks are going through the training, make sure that we are tracking, making, make sure that we're holding your people accountable so that you can see is activity changing? Is the number of opportunities they're getting in front of changing? Are they closing more business?

And that's really what we want to do. And again, when it comes to sales, it's pretty black and white in terms of whether or not it's working. Sorry. Okay.

So loved all of it. Love all of it. Now, again, if it's if it's if I warned you that this was going to be complicated, right? So there's one easy answer to get to this stuff again.

Reach out to somebody I know. I have a guy who knows these things. Reach out to them. Just get an idea, have questions, talk about it.

I promise you that your sales training will improve. Now, as we finish out here, the important note is that data, data, data, if you can't measure it, you can't control it, you can't improve it, you can't make it better. Improvement is making something better. So it's important to understand that the sales training, which is the I call it the second half of the process, which I know you love that, uh, is the second half of the process to the marketing piece.

And when they come together, we've talked about this in our first episode, ironically, is that there's an 80% increase in revenue easily by having us two in the same in the same table with you. Okay. And it's important that you work together just this week from the Craig website that Craig built, I had an inbound lead came come in as I talked to the prospect. I identified that they really needed marketing help more than sales help, that they really needed to have more leads.

They needed the phone to ring with more of the right kinds of customers. So I transitioned them back to Craig because that's his wheelhouse, not my wheelhouse. Now, once they start getting all of these leads, if they have a hard time converting, then Craig will pass them back to me so that then we can work on the sales process. But that's how the two kind of work together.

Um, yeah, you know, we need to get the phone to ring. We need to be in front of more opportunities with the right kind of messaging. And then we need to make sure that we are making the most of those opportunities once we get in front of them. Absolutely.

So I promised you guys at the start of the episode that this was going to be heavy. This is a really good subject. If you guys need any more information, you can always click, subscribe. And by the way, I'm getting a lot of emails from people who want to be on the show, which I'm really, really excited about, which means the information is landing.

And so ultimately, we're going to bring guests. We're going to be information. We want you guys to grow your business with the resources that we have and help you. Why?

Because we are, I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm the right angle, but we are the playbook. No, other side. Other side. Dang it.

I had it. We are the playbook. Okay. On my side, it's over here.

Over there, it's over here. Okay. I told you I'm still backwards. Anyway, I had it working in the beginning and not so much now.

But we're the playbook. We're here to give you guys the information, the concepts, the ideas. If you have any questions whatsoever, please by all means reach out to us and ask questions. We're here to help.

Evan, let everybody know where we are, sir. So you can find us. Uh, you subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can find us Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your favorite and not favorite podcasts.

So uh you can find us anywhere. Please like, please, please subscribe, follow along. Um, and we look forward to seeing everybody on our next episode. And that's Evan sliding into home base right there.

That's his baseball analogy. He loves baseball. Anyway, Craig Andrews, Evan Poland, that way. And uh, we will talk to you guys next time on the sales and marketing playbook.

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