Of course new products being introduced, new financing deals and the like require the Salesforce to be trained but training everyone repeatedly on basic sales skills year after year is an excuse. It is like the Sales Management team is passing the buck.
How about this as a model? Observe your Sales people regularly in live sales calls. Objectively assess their performance (using an assessment model such as http://www.esquaredm.com/) and then build individual training and coaching plans based on their sales performance.
Makes sense doesn't it? Training and developing your people based on their individual needs and focused on improving performance in the job they are paid to do.
To make this happen you have to have committed sales managers who are prepared to regularly assess their team's performance with real clients. That is what they should do isn't it? Anything else is a bit like a sport's coach picking the team and then not turning up to watch them perform on a Saturday afternoon.
So please don't just sheep dip your sales team (unless they all have ticks that need to be removed). Instead, regularly observe them doing their job, assess their performance and provide coaching and training that is based on their individual development needs.
