Roberts, Wallace To Help (CONT’D FROM PAGE 36)
Board Converting NEWS INTERNET DIRECTORY
Everybody is restructuring their sales organization for the future. For example, we are seeing a lot of people mov- ing in the direction of inside sales, less outside sales. But don’t assume that just because somebody is really good in outside sales, they are going to be good in inside sales. It’s a whole different animal. What we need to do is put the right people in the right roles. It’s never been more critical than today because as we adapt, we just want to give our customers the best experience. BCN: Can you talk a bit about prescriptive training and its importance? Roberts: I learned the hard way. When I was at a prior com- pany, what they always did was they had a curriculum and we taught it to everybody. I was asked to train what they called experienced hires. In other words, people with in- dustry experience that they just hired, as opposed to kids right out of college. What I did was the easiest thing for me as a trainer: I trained them on everything. But what I learned was, that was a terrible experience, for them and me. The engagement was low. Knowledge transfer was low. They pretty much mentally signed out of the program early because they felt it was not applicable to them. So, I changed course. Going forward, I assessed indi- viduals and prescribed exactly what they needed. And I shared with them how they did on the assessment. For example, when I applied this model, I remember there was a veteran in the class, 25 years experience in the industry and he just joined the company and he scored 53 out of 100 on getting past the gatekeeper. That blew his mind. He was like, ‘I didn’t think I needed anything in that. Talk to me. What am I missing?’ And sure enough, he didn’t have some basic skills for today to get past gatekeepers and talk to decision-makers. Once he knew that and his man- ager knew that, it became something worth fixing. If you had asked him if he needed training in that, he would have said no. This is an eye-opener when you assess people first and then you prescribe. AICC has constantly listened to what their members are saying and that is the way they are assessing it. What they are hearing is, ‘How do I build relationships virtually? I’ve
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been a belly-to-belly salesperson, a face-to-face salesperson for 25 years.’ We know 60 percent of them are struggling. We know some of them have the mindset that it won’t work. So, if they al- ready believe it won’t work, they won’t pick up the phone to make the call. Part of what we do is we
Mark Allen Roberts
work on the mindset. But now we need to equip them with the skills, tools and really good qualifying questions to start those meaningful relationships.
Visit aiccbox.org for more information and to register.
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October 26, 2020
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