The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [22]
Hot seats were key to implementing the CEO bunt because I constantly found that the sales team had not done some step in the process we had expertly laid out. For example, a key ingredient to an effective CEO bunt is to give that CEO a tool that he or she can pass to the person you really want to reach. Usually that’s a follow-up memo, yet I cannot tell you how many times hot seats revealed that the salesperson had not done this step.
I put the salespeople in the hot seat and asked them questions on every single part of this process until I was sure they absolutely had it down and would do it right the next time. I even did this with the owner of this company. Just from this one process, this team went from making four appointments a week to 30 appointments a week. But to be clear, it took five months of pigheaded determination and discipline to turn this company into the Ultimate Sales Machine.
Case Studies as a Training Method
As I just did with the office equipment story and as I do throughout this book, your training should use concrete examples and case studies in which the concept you are teaching made a big difference. People remember stories, especially when they are dramatic or humorous. There are two ways to include case studies in your standard training. One case study should show how someone did every thing wrong and how that made the situation worse. Another case study should show how someone did every thing right and how well it worked.
Exercise
Right now, for your area, think of a case study that illustrates a great point about how something should be handled. Write it down in as much detail as you can remember.
Test Before and After
For every concept or skill you teach, develop a test on that area for the staff. And if you really want to see your training stick, give staff the test before they take the training. That shows them how much they’re going to learn and, more important, makes the answers stick when they learn it. Then, after the training, they take the tests again and feel accomplished when they get all the answers correct.
The Spot Quiz
In the companies I’ve run, spot quizzes are an institution. The staff comes into the weekly meeting and I hand out a spot quiz like you used to get in school. The staff groans, laughs, and makes jokes, but little by little, whatever you cover, again and again, eventually sticks. What are the six steps to time management? The 12 steps to get an appointment? The seven steps to selling? The six questions they’ll ask every prospect? They know the answers. I have had them so programmed that if you quizzed some salespeople who haven’t worked for me in 10 years, they’d probably still be able to fire the answers right off.
Technology Training Can Be a Boon to Productivity
I remember reading that most software programs are used to about 10 percent of their potential. The other day I was watching a consultant who works for us download a file from his email. He opened the email, opened the PowerPoint document, and then went to “save as” in the menu and saved it in a folder. I reached over and, using the mouse, simply dragged the item into the folder. He couldn’t believe it was that easy. For years, he had been saving attachments as separate docs, not knowing you could simply drag them into the folder of choice.
Fortunately, this was not a technology consultant, but his company had never had any technology training at all. The skill level was embarrassing. I suggest that every company have some kind of ongoing and continuing technology training so that all employees know how to use the technology they have in the fastest, most efficient way possible. There are excellent tutorial software programs out there that teach you how to use technology effectively.
The best way to conduct technology