Increase sales through Lunch & Learn sessions. Here’s how…
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Fri, Sep 05, 2008 @ 05:18 PM
Many companies are fairly constrained right now in terms if getting budget for inside sales training. This is bad for both managers and reps, but I've got a way for you to put together a free, quick and efficient training program while your company is in the process of figuring out how to get budget for training. It's called Lunch & Learn, and you've probably heard of it, but maybe gotten away from it. If you're a manager, consider adopting this program for your team. If you're a rep without a manager right now (yes, it happens), why not "roll your own" as a great way to cross-pollinate great sales ideas with your colleagues? Here's a super-effective way to do it right:
1) Bring in lunch for the team on Tuesday. On Monday, reps will be making initial weekly calls, following up last week's action items, etc., so it's not a great day for an L&L session.
2) Pick a topic from our blog, and task every rep to read it before Tuesday's lunch. They can read it on Monday night at home, if they wish, and each topic takes no longer than one minute to read.
3) At Tuesday lunch, ask the reps how they feel about the sales concept picked in #2 above, what potential challenges there might be in adopting it, how it would benefit their sales processes, and even particular accounts that would be helped by using it.
4) Come to a general agreement that this "topic of the week" will be used in as many sales calls as possible for the rest of the week. Success stories and challenges will be discussed at the Lunch & Learn on Friday, so it's all going to be reinforced!
5) Have a follow up L&L session on Friday, so the reps will have had three days to use the techniques. Discuss how the techniques worked, share success stories, and share best practices on how others met the challenges of implementing the "technique of the week." Reinforcement of sales principles is the key to making sure people use them, so you'll want to have this follow-up session.
I guarantee that if you do this, even for two weeks out of the month, you will increase sales and team communication will improve, too. It's a great motivator as well, because reps love to talk about successes with their colleagues, but don't have a forum often enough. My telesales training sales courses cover all of the telesales tips you'll find in my blog, but Lunch & Learn is a great way to start using superior telesales skills to start improving right now. Check out the topics in my blog, and pick one today. And add L&L sessions to your Best Practices playbook.