Management Training: Should It Be Offered To Sales Personnel?

In order to keep pace with the ever-changing fields of production, management, operations and technology, companies must continually update their employees’ training. Personnel who handle these areas are essential, and function as the back-end of a company. Sales personnel, however, are at least as important, as they make up the front-end of the organization.

Although some of the sales managers take part in management training, in several organizations that does not take place. Usually most of the employees who participate in management training work in production and office. Employees are prepared for additional promotions or a career change in management training. Thus it is suggested that they participate in management training.

However, sales personnel very often do not find a place in such training programs. That is not to say that organizations do not provide training at all to their sales force. They do, through training sessions on sales management, customer relations, selling with intergrity, interpersonal relationships and other related subjects attuned to their sales careers.

Sales personnel are the people who earn money for the organization hence they are differently treated from others. The very existence of the organization is dependent upon the sales it makes hence organizations are not readily forthcoming to send its sales team to an extended period of training if adequate backup does not exists. Normally sales personnel are always out on the field directly meeting and interacting with the customers in their respective territory so it is difficult to create a backup team for them. So the very strengths of a successful sales person turn out to the real blockades for his participation in management training

There are ways for an organization to circumvent this problem. It can structure the training program in modules and help the sales personnel to access the modules in discrete timeframes rather than at a single long stretch. Senior managers can volunteer to act as their coach or mentor so that training is imparted to sales personnel on a flexible timetable. Sales personnel can be encouraged to interact with employees from other functions who are taking the same training programs, which also helps sales personnel bond with the ethos and culture of the organization.

New technologies are also of great assistance. Online web-based training modules and other forms of distance learning have revolutionised management training. A company’s sales force can be cheaply and easily educated using these methods. They can be emailed reading material for the management course and be given access to online libraries allowing them to choose from a selection of reading material.

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.

Employees of any organization are encouraged to take part in management training in order to groom them for leadership roles, for a switch in their career path or for further promotions. Sales personnel who cannot attend these trainings due to lack of time, can update themselves by reading books. ‘Selling with Intergrity‘ is a management book which describes various useful topics such as customer relations, sales management, interpersonal relationships and ethical selling. New technologies such as online web-based training, distributing the reading material through email, giving access to online libraries are also of great assistance in overcoming some of the problems involved in giving training.

- George Purdy


Related Articles

Comments

Leave a Reply