U.S. companies spend over $70 billion annually on training and an average of $1,459 per salesperson, which is almost 20% more than they spend on workers in all other departments and functions. Most of that sales training and learning material (nearly 80% in some cases) isn’t retained because it’s curriculum-based. And it’s consistently not yielding a high return on investment (ROI) because sales teams experience high turnover rates.
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The average annual sales team turnover rate is about 25%, which is much higher than other functions, and this costs organizations millions of dollars every year. But there is a better way to develop and measure the ROI of your sales training programs to ensure they’re successful and profitable— by considering their return on expectations (ROE).
When you measure a sales training program’s ROE, you’re measuring:
- Whether sales reps are fully understanding what’s being taught;
- How and if sales reps are implementing what they’re taught;
- Whether what sales reps are implementing is yielding sales numbers that supersede the time and costs you put into developing and implementing the sales training programs (yielding a higher ROI); and
- If the program is strategically sustainable for long-term sales goals and initiatives.
Here are some questions you should ask as you’re measuring your sales training program’s ROE.
1. Does It Have Executive Buy-In?
If your sales training doesn’t have executive buy-in and leaders across your organization aren’t supporting it, chances are extremely high that it will fail. Executives have a unique bird’s-eye view of an organization and its strategic objectives.
So, if they aren’t convinced that your program will yield a high ROI or bring any other type of organizational strategic benefit to the table, they will not provide you with the funding, resources, or bandwidth that you need. And this will lead to a sales training program that doesn’t match or reach organizational expectations or performance expectations.
2. Is It Tied to Organizational Objectives?
If your sales training program is to remain effective and yield a high ROI on a consistent basis, it must always be tied to larger organizational objectives. Is your organization trying to roll out a new product? Is it trying to reconnect with long-time customers or offer more high-quality products? Whatever it is, your sales training program will need to highlight and incorporate organizational objectives as they change to consistently be effective and supersede expectations.
3. What Are Its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
Before evaluating whether your sales training is yielding a high ROI, you must have clear metrics and KPIs established. Otherwise, how will you know if it’s meeting or surpassing expectations?
For example, how will you know whether you’re gathering an acceptable number of leads if you don’t know how many leads each employee should be trained to collect on average?
And how will you know if your training program’s lead-targeting tips and best practices are successful if you have no metric indicating if employees are, in fact, implementing such tips and practices as they gather leads and close sales?
Watch out for tomorrow’s post, which will include more questions you should ask as you’re measuring your sales training program’s ROE and ROI.