Sales Training in a Pandemic

This pandemic is teaching me that sometimes “constraints” can be turned into advantages.

Like everyone else in the training business, my client engagement calendar got vaporized starting the second week of March. One casualty was a full week of training that I had scheduled in Christchurch, New Zealand, for the end of last month. However, the client felt that the training was too important to put off entirely, so we worked out a plan to conduct the training virtually.

We both were confident that I could adapt the material to make it work in a virtual training environment, but we were not prepared for what we have seen so far.

We are now halfway through the material that I had planned to cover in face to face training, and every one of the sessions has gone better than almost any live training sessions I’ve delivered, when measured in one important way: how well are the participants picking up and demonstrating the skills taught?

My training has always been very hands-on, requiring the thoughtful completion of templates to identify and quantify the value that their products or services bring to their customers, and of course a lot of realistic role plays to translate that into effective sales conversations. In these sessions, I’m seeing more complete and deeply detailed work, and better execution during the role plays—certainly better than average.

One telling moment for me was when I checked with a team in one of the breakout rooms and noted that their work was not only spot on, but amazingly complete. I said as much, and one of them admitted that they had worked on the exercise before class started. “That’s cheating,” I said, “and I wish more of my students did that!”

Of course, so far the sample size has been too small to derive any definitive conclusions, but perhaps it’s worth considering what’s different and see if we can figure out what’s causing the improvement. Here are the main differences:

• Smaller chunks of training, so they could master one concept and-or related skill at a time. When clients have students and facilitator travel physically to a location, it makes sense to use as much of the time we have available together. That leads to day-long sessions, with a lot of material being presented. Now, we are limiting each session to two hours.
• Students got to “cheat” by getting with the material ahead of time. They get pre-reading and a condensed video of the lecture they are about to receive during the live virtual session.
• One week between sessions, in which they follow up on work they did in the session, send it to me for additional feedback, and get to practice the techniques with live clients in the interim.

What has stayed the same?

• I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that I can still get the same level of engagement and class participation as in a live session. There are times I ask a question and don’t get a response, but then I just pick one of the faces on the screen and direct the question to that person. That keep everyone’s attention.
• The breakout room feature on Zoom allows teams to break into smaller groups for workshops, and I can pop in and out to see how people are doing, just as in a traditional classroom environment.

It’s working well on both sides. Their boss tells me his sales team looks forward to the weekly sessions. On my part, I’m probably working harder on virtual sessions than live ones, because of the preparation time between sessions. But as compensation, I do get to bypass the glamor and excitement of air travel, and that’s a trade I will gladly make most of the time![1]

In the face of sudden change, our best tools are adaptability, resiliency, and imagination. Without them, we face extinction. With them, we can survive and even thrive—and emerge stronger than before.

[1] Even if I don’t get to visit New Zealand for the moment.