People often ask me about training and can you deliver the same course to everyone?

Well, the answer is yes, of course you can deliver the same course to everyone...whether it will be effective or not, now that's another issue all together.

For example, the basics of sales training are the same - open/closed questions, features and benefits, building rapport the list goes on. The issue is, not everyone that you deliver the training to is the same.

In a telesales team of ten, you're likely to have ten different personalities, ten different objectives, ten different approaches etc. The skill comes in when you are able to adapt the delivery of a training program to suit the needs of all of them.

You have to find different stories to explain different things - a football story might work with some but make no sense to others.

Although, as I said, the basics remain the same, it has to all makes sense to everyone.

You also have to be aware of your audience and how much interest they are likely to pay. A group of 'hardcore' salespeople will need to have constant involvement to hold their attention whereas a customer service team may be more likely to listen because they do it every day.

The other thing that is unlikely to work when delivering sales training is to just read from a power point presentation or workbook and then to kid yourself that they were paying attention and took in anything you said.

The bottom line is this, stick with the basics, adapt to suit your audience, make it interesting and enjoyable and make sure you follow up.

It's simple really, if the people you deliver to enjoy the session they are more likely to give you a glowing report to their manager thus you are more likely to be rebooked.

It's a wonder I'm not a hard drinking, hard smoking pile of stress after five years of consulting!

Let me explain, it will never cease to amaze me that people ignore the basics in business. For me the first question I always ask when looking at any sort of call centre or telesales operation is "What's your cost per seat?" it's a very simple question that actually has a huge impact on efficient operation.

In simple terms, if Fred cost you £100 to turn up and occupy a desk for the day and each sale is worth £25 to your business then Fred MUST make a least four sales a day, otherwise he costs you money and that's not sustainable.

You can obviously arrange that calculation depending on the business you're talking to but the formula remains the same - you have to make more than you spend!

Of course you have to give some leeway in the initial stages, for example if Fred is new he'll take some time to 'get up to speed' and you would obviously allow for that - but set a target, don't just leave him to get there is his own time.

Anyway, I shall step down from my soapbox now, the moral of the story being, if you look after the basics you have a solid base on which to build your business.

It's been an interesting day today. I have been asked by a client to design and deliver a telephone selling skills course. fairly simple you might say, considering what I do. The first problem to overcome was that they didn't want to call it a sales course because they don't consider themselves a sales company. So I had to gently get them to take a wider view of the way they conduct their business and what it means to them and their customers.

I politely asked them "Does everyone you speak to take your service?"

To which they answered "No, of course not"

So I reply "What do you do next?"

"We use features & benefits to persuade them" came the pride filled response.

"I hate to be the one to shatter your illusions, but that's selling"

The course is now being called "Selling the Service"

Funny how things can change when you take a different view...

By the way, many thanks to Tim Lyon from New Tricks for the sounding board this morning, we all need to hear that we know what we're talking about once in a while.