Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Best sales training practices: an inside sales tour through Bloom’s Taxonomy

  

  

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Second in a 3 part series on sales training theory. You might also want to read the other two, 5 Ways to Ensure your Sales Training Program Won’t Succeed, and 5 questions to ask before considering sales training as a solution to substandard performance.

A question I'm commonly asked is "what's your training methodology?" All training companies have their own, and they're copyrighted, mine included. I was having a discussion with a potential client about adult learning issues, and it got deep into the basics of what makes training work. I'm a big believer in something called "Bloom's Taxonomy," and it's driven the way I train ever since I got my Master's in Education, where I was first introduced to Bloom. I'm going to share some of Benjamin Bloom's methodology with you, because it makes more sense than 90% of what I read today about best training practices.

Benjamin Bloom was an educator at the University of Chicago who cobbled together a team of researchers in the 1950s in an attempt to determine how adults learn most effectively. The resulting body of work comprised three domains of learning, the affective, cognitive, and psycho-motor, and was entitled Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Book 1: Cognitive Doman is the one that's especially important for effective transference of knowledge. In it, Bloom posited that there are six sequential steps a learner must take in order to have learned a concept. I'll tell you what they are, then give an example of how they're used with a training example right out of inside sales. The steps are:

Knowledge:  Rules ... can you recall it?
Comprehension:   Can you explain it?
Application:  Can you show that you use it?
Analysis:   Can you compare it with what you've already been using?
Synthesis:  Can you use it in the process of inventing something better?
Evaluation: Can you judge it against a standard?

We train people not to begin a cold call with the question "How are you today?", so I'll explain how I apply Bloom's Taxonomy to that training concept. Let's look at the model again, this time by using the example.

1) Knowledge:  Here's a rule... Never begin a cold call by asking "How are you today?"

2) Comprehension:   This hackneyed question has been used by business-to-consumer telemarketers for years ad infinitum, and now just about everyone hates hearing it. It builds negative rapport, and prospects are savvy enough to know that you don't really care how they are today. They know they're going to hear a sales pitch, and much of the time will just hang up on you. At this point, we give the rep a better way to start the conversation. It differs for every client.

3) Application:  Now we give each rep an opportunity to use the new opening in class through role-play. But that doesn't mean that he or she will actually use it on the phone. And that's why we do real-time coaching during actual phone calls. Old habits are hard to break, and just because a rep does it successfully in class, doesn't mean he or she will use it on the job, unless we're there to hear it being used on real phone calls. Then we know that it's applied.

4) Analysis:  Each rep will analyze how much better the new "opening" works compared to what was used before. They see better results immediately, because they've compared it with what they did before. In just about every case, it's an improvement.

5) Synthesis: Sometimes a rep will want to subtly tweak the new opening to work better for him or her, usually just by changing a word or two. If I think it's effective, I'll go with it, because the rep has invented a way of using the new opening that works well for him or her. Every rep communicates differently, and individual changes are just fine provided they work within the conceptual framework of the practice.

6) Evaluation: Using the new subtly changed opening, the rep can now judge --- in real time --- whether his or her new opening works as well as the one we delivered in the class. Great reps tend to be self-judgmental, and may use their new opening, or go back to ours. But this evaluation process allows the rep to work within a framework of success, and build upon a superior foundation.

Bloom's cognitive strategy works in every learning environment, and it's a great model for encouraging reps to be intelligently inventive with new concepts. Another of Bloom's domains, the affective domain of learning, concerns attitude, which is all about getting inside sales reps to enthusiastically embrace new learning concepts so they'll actually want to perform them and integrate them into their daily lives. The cognitive strategy that Bloom discusses goes a long way to creating positive affective behavior, and is best reinforced by an ongoing coaching program that stresses positive reinforcement.

So there are some best sales training practices for you to consider. Many sales executives and managers are training their teams themselves these days due to stringent training budgets. If you're one of them, I encourage you to inculcate Bloom's Taxonomy into your Best Management playbook.