Sales Training - Have your team teach themselves

Disaster recipes and schemes to do myself out of business are not what I have in mind. Just consider the idea and how it could be made to work.

If your sales people could be motivated to teach themselves and each other; if they could be persuaded to take such a task seriously, sales meetings could be a lot more fun.

If a sales manager were to simply assign a topic to one sales person each month, and insist he or she prepares a 30-minute session including exercises and presentation, for delivery in the sales meeting, the sales person concerned would have to do some preparation or risk ridicule from colleagues.

I have used a similar idea using audio tapes as the subject matter. It certainly worked for me, the sales people in the team that I was responsible for managing, and the organisation.

Here is a way to ensure it works for you. Have a sales coach spend an hour helping each sales person prepare for his or her sales meeting slot. This would provide focus for their preparation and ensure that they have some good material. The sales person delivering the session is highly likely to learn from the experience and there is a good chance that other in the team will too.

The sessions might even include some friendly rivalry to see who delivers the best session. The competition would be an excuse for some fun and serious prizes at the annual bash!