On my way to a vending machine break I was walking by a training session and had to let out a little chuckle. As I peered into a room of one hundred or so sales reps it didn’t take long to realize their minds were not on whatever it was the person in the front of the room had to say. The ones that appeared conscious were either typing a text page or chatting with their co-worker in the back of the room. I immediately thought to myself,  I wonder how many of these reps will call this person in a couple of weeks asking a question that she was addressing at that very moment.
 
Let’s face it, we are all guilty. If it does not apply to us at that very moment we don’t want to hear it. We are inundated with messages every day. Our minds can only absorb so much, so we take in what we need at that time and then we send off an email to someone when we need an answer to a question that comes up at a later date. Unfortunately in this case, that equates to one hundred emails for each piece of information they did not catch.
 
We all know sales departments are becoming more and more dispersed. Recent cost-cutting measures have opened the doors to virtual offices and often narrowed sales reps’ territories, while broadening the product line they represent. This means they need to know more about the products and often even learn about new industries.
 
When training of new sales reps occurs it is often a dump of information over a short period of time. New sales reps can easily become overwhelmed with product knowledge and sales insights long before they ever need it in the field.
 
Existing reps are often pulled out of the field to be brought up to speed on new products and taught new selling skills. Top performers are often resentful that they have to take precious time away form selling to participate in training. Some sales reps are more interested in getting sales insights from top reps than they are in new product information. In fact, you will often see what I will call the bee hive effect occur outside training rooms. The top performers are being swarmed by other reps that feel they can improve their sales if only they knew what that top rep knows. These nuggets of knowledge are often not shared in any formal setting.
 
Once outside of the training room, sales support teams continue to answer questions over and over again even though they were often addressed in training. Frustration builds on all levels because sales reps do not have immediate access to the information they need, when they need it, and all too often reps feel they don’t even know where to turn to get what they really need. Sales support teams are answering emails and phone calls from reps on issues that were already addressed.
 
How do organizations get sales reps the information they need when they need it with little disruption to the sales environment? The answer is simple, you must find a way to reach sales reps when they are seeking the information you offer. You must give them access to the experts in your organization that can address sales processes as well as those much desired insights from the field. You must reach them when they are in the middle of the selling process but you must do it without disrupting that process. Oh, and did I mention, it must be cost effective to the organization.

Sound impossible?
 
To address this issue, one term making its way across sales training circles is “just-in-time training”…
The Internet has made it easier to address the challenges of training today. With the Internet companies can give sales reps immediate access to the answers they need that help them sell. Not only can sales reps get the information that an organization needs them to have, the organization can now learn what is working and what is not working in the field, in real-time. Sales support teams can then update information instantly and improve selling skills of reps without ever asking them to leave the field.  The Internet combined with just-in-time training methods allow organizations to focus their attention on quality, speed, consistency and the relevance of the information needed in the field.
 
Next time you pull your team out of the field to give them the latest product information, sales insights and best practices your organization feels they need, I encourage you to ask yourself how many times you will repeat this information once your reps get back in the field. I also encourage you to think about how many important sales insights are being lost in emails or phone calls, or worse yet, never being shared at all. Imagine a day when your sales reps get the information they need most when they need it, without bombarding your email inbox. With new tools designed to train reps in real-time, this day does not have to be far off.  
 
KC DeKorte is Director of Marketing for Involve Technology. Involve Technology is helping sales teams share best practices and sales insights with sales knowledge automation software called StreetSmarts. KC can be reached at kcdekorte@involvetechnology.com. To learn more about StreetSmarts visit www.involvetechnology.com.