How will I know the sales training has been successful?

Everyone has their own definition of success, which may be in terms of measurable results or more abstract criteria. Sales training, by nature, can be evaluated in a fairly simple way and results can be measured easily in order to calculate the business impact and return on investment.

We use five levels of sales training evaluation after the completion of a session:

1. Did the participants like it?

2. Did the participants learn from it?

3. Did the participants change their behaviour as a result of it?

4. Did the participant’s change in behaviour result in business impact?

5. Did the business impact result in a return on investment?

The process of evaluating sales training is important both for the training provider and for the client. We evaluate all our training sessions in order to track our success rates and identify areas for improvement and we share all results from evaluation with our clients as they are measured. In this way, our clients know that their training has been successful without having to carry out any evaluation of their own.

1. Did the participants like it?

 We assess this criterion by asking participants to complete a survey immediately following the training session. Providing training that is enjoyable as well as useful is one of our major aims and we use feedback from these surveys to improve on future sessions.

2. Did the participants learn from it?

Increased knowledge is measured by a recall test in the week following training. Poor results in this test do not necessarily indicate that the training failed but that a review of the material may be helpful.

3. Did the participants change their behaviour as a result of it?

Behaviour changes are measured by observing members of staff in sales transactions and mystery calls within the 4-week period following the training. Their behaviour and performance is compared to observations made prior to training in order to determine if changes have occurred. 

4. Did the participant’s change in behaviour result in a business impact?

We measure business results on a weekly basis to identify improvements. This may be an increase in call or appointment conversions, or other figures, depending on the individual company.

5. Did the business impact result in a return on investment?

To calculate return on investment, incremental sales (that is those that can be attributed to training) are measured against sales that did not occur as a result of the training and an ROI calculation is performed on the resulting figures.

Ideally, successful sales training should result in a definitive “yes” for each of these questions. We aim to provide the best training experience possible and this requires delivering a training session that is informative and enjoyable as well as delivering business results.