Not training your team? Shame on you

(Credit: fizkes/Adobe Stock)

What advice would you give to a business owner facing the following circumstances?

• Their business model has a disproportionate dependence on salespeople to generate revenue and retain current revenue.

• Salespeople receive a significant share of revenue as compensation, so the owner must also generate ROI for themselves from this big investment.

• To get that ROI, the owner depends on the salespeople to behave and compete effectively, efficiently, and consistently.

• The business owner does not provide training to teach and enforce these behaviors for their producers.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this business owner needs to start training their salespeople, does it?

Where is all the training?

I have the privilege of traveling around the country and speaking to various industry groups, where I have chances to hear and witness stories that fuel my optimism for our industry.

Other stories cause concern and make me realize we have a lot of work to do to reach our potential. One I hear often is about the lack of sales training in agencies.

Typical story

Shortly after a presentation, I received the following email from an attendee.

“Thank you for your presentation. It was very informative and brought a new way to look at doing business today. In a past career, I worked for a major corporation and got constant sales training. As an independent broker, I now have to go out and find the training on my own. That’s why I enjoyed your presentation so much.”

You may think finding training should be up to him since he’s “independent.” You would be wrong.

Like too many salespeople in our industry, he is in a position of huge responsibility within his company and, because his employer offers no training at all, he must figure out on his own how to do his job.

Not training salespeople is a catastrophic failure on the part of leadership!

Agency owners are jeopardizing their ROI and the future of their business. Worse, they are being irresponsible and unfair in asking salespeople to commit to the success of the business without a reciprocal commitment to the salesperson’s success.

Why don’t agencies train salespeople?

How can this ridiculous scenario constantly happen? For two basic reasons.

First, agency owners have convinced themselves that their salespeople want to be left alone and don’t want to be “told how to work.” If that’s true of your salespeople, you have done a poor job of hiring.

The best talent in any field needs, expects, and demands to be given the tools to be successful. This starts and continues with training on how to use those tools.

Related: How to develop a training program for new leaders and seasoned pros

The second, and probably biggest, reason is that very few agencies have any type of sales process around which to train. Not only is having a sales process and training around that process critical to ensure your ROI as an owner, but it’s also a fundamental responsibility you have before you ask someone to join your team.

Are you meeting your responsibility as a business owner?