Your Sales Reps Aren’t Robots, So Don’t Treat Them Like They Are!

I’m taking a wild guess here, but I don’t think your sales force is made up of 500 homogenous robots.

If I’m wrong, we need to set up a call. Assuming I’m right, though, the standard national sales meeting experience is probably leaving your sales force unsatisfied. Flying in all of your sales reps from across the country, or globe, isn’t cheap; why waste the time and money by throwing everyone into a cavernous meeting hall for three days of generic presentations?

We recently spoke to four CEB Sales members about their national sales meetings and asked a pretty broad question: what innovative practices are you using to deliver information to reps in an engaging way? The answers we heard were surprisingly similar, and two major themes stood out:

Instead of relying on large, lecture-based training presentations, organizations are transitioning to smaller, interactive learning sessions. By offering numerous small group sessions, sales reps are more likely to find training that applies to their specific development areas and will, therefore, remain more engaged throughout the meeting.
Organizations are also creating opportunities for salespeople to connect with product experts and other internal partners. Facilitating these connections allows product creators and experts to efficiently answer sales reps’ questions, build relationships between groups that don’t typically interact, and expose sales reps to new ideas about the products they sell.

CEB Sales members, to learn more about the specific tactics used by the four profiled companies, read the full research brief, Innovations at National Sales Meetings. If you’re interested in designing a theme for your national sales meeting, check out how four other organizations did it here: Selecting Themes for National Sales Meetings.  For information on sales training in general, visit our Sales Training Decision Support Center.