Earlier this week, I had a
conversation with the CEO of one of the 40 largest U.S. air charter companies.
We were discussing whether or not his company would benefit from a review of
the end-to-end sales process: basically every step from “Hello” to “How Did You
Enjoy The Flight.”
He didn’t think there would be
much benefit because 95% of his business was from repeat customers. The CEO was confident that his sales staff
had those processes and procedures down pat.
I pointed out that 5% of his
business is from new customers and prospects. Looked at from a different angle,
that means 100% of the new customer calls and quotes are following an
exception, or non-standard process. The sales folks individually are not getting much practice at handling new customers.
That’s why every new customer call is an exception.
Let’s relate this to recurrent
pilot training. When your pilots are on the simulators, would you expect them
to spend 95% of the training time practicing normal operations? Or would you
expect them to spend most of the simulator time training and practicing for
exceptions?
Once you decide to do refresher sales
training, what do you need to teach? One option is to do a review of the
end-to-end process for whatever exception applies to your company. Another
approach is to retrain just the parts that are different from the standard
process.
I prefer a third method. I would
start by role playing a new customer with each sales person, and having the
sales person take me through the end-to-end process. After doing so with each
member of the sales team, we’d know two things: 1) where does any individual
need personal coaching; and 2) what are the areas in common where the team
needs some refresher training?
Is it worthwhile spending time
and money on refresher sales training? Answer these few questions: a) what is
the average lifetime value of a new customer; b) how many new customer quotes
did not turn into trips in
the past six months; c) what’s the opportunity cost from those lost sales?
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