Management Training: Should It Be Offered To Sales Personnel?
Ongoing training is vital if companies are to keep up with the latest innovations in production methods, management and operations as well as keeping up with advancing technology. A company's personnel are it's backbone and base and it is of utmost importance that their training is kept up to date. Sales personnel, being the company's front end, are equally, if not more, important to an organisation.
It is recommended that employees undergo management training to prepare them for roles as leaders, allowing them to change their career path or facilitate promotion to higher positions in the company. Often those participating in such courses come from production and office roles. While sales managers also take part in such training programs, it is less common in many companies.
However, such training programs frequently do not include sales personnel. It is not that sales personnel do not get any training from their employers. They do get training sessions and courses on customer relations, interpersonal relationships, selling with integrity, sales management and other such allied subjects considered useful to their sales careers.
Sales are ential for an organization's existence and sales force are its backbone. An organization can therefore be unwilling to send this vital resource away on a lengthy training period, especially if there is no adequate backup. It is hard to find suitable personnel to act in place of those sales persons who know their customers in their geographical areas by their visits, meetings and interactions. By this way, the plus points of a capable sales person sometimes become a stumbling block to his taking part in management training.
It is important that the structure of sales personnel training programs be tailored differently for each type of employee. Employees may be more comfortable if encouraged to access training modules section by section, at their own pace. Also, they should be encouraged to discuss their experiences and ideas with other similar trainees. Another useful tool is to have senior managers be available, if needed, as a coach or mentor. These policies should make for a more user-friendly, relaxed, and therefore, more efficient process.
Modern technology also lends a helping hand in the form of interactive web-based lessons and training modules as well as distance learning. Training sessions can be provided to the sales force on these platforms. Chapters of a management book can even be sent to them via email or they can be provided access to an online library to access management book of their choice.
Sales personnel know the customers intimately, know the products and are good at interpersonal relationships. They are also used to the way of thinking on their feet and acting quickly. Such strengths are too valuable to be kept isolated in sales functions alone. Many organizations need to recognize this fact and promote more of their sales people to managerial functions.
Management Training is given to employees to keep abreast of changes in their functional areas, to groom them for leadership or for promotions. Management Books such as Selling with Intergrity also come handy in imparting the needed knowledge. However, the proportion of sales personnel in such training is low in many organizations. They are reluctant to spare the personnel to a lengthy training period, as finding suitable backup personnel for these frontline jobs is difficult. To avoid this problem, training can be given in modular format or senior managers can coach sales personnel as their mentors. New technologies such as web-based training and distance learning can also be useful.
Published June 29th, 2007
Filed in Business, Management
