Management Training: Now More Accesible
In order to keep pace with the ever-changing fields of production, management, operations and technology, companies must continually update their employees' training. Personnel who handle these areas are essential, and function as the back-end of a company. Sales personnel, however, are at least as important, as they make up the front-end of the organization.
It is recommended that employees undergo management training to prepare them for roles as leaders, allowing them to change their career path or facilitate promotion to higher positions in the company. Often those participating in such courses come from production and office roles. While sales managers also take part in such training programs, it is less common in many companies.
These training programs are not usually open to sales personnel. However, other types of training are provided to an organization's sales personnel. These types of training are specifically geared towards sales careers, and include sessions on topics such as customer relations, sales management, interpersonal relationships and ethical selling.
Sales are ential for an organization's existence and sales force are its backbone. An organization can therefore be unwilling to send this vital resource away on a lengthy training period, especially if there is no adequate backup. It is hard to find suitable personnel to act in place of those sales persons who know their customers in their geographical areas by their visits, meetings and interactions. By this way, the plus points of a capable sales person sometimes become a stumbling block to his taking part in management training.
An organization can avoid this problem in a number of way. It can design sales training in modules so that personnel can access a module one at a time, instead of having to complete the entire program all at once. Sales trainees can be assigned to work with mentors from senior management so that training takes place on a more flexible if less formal timetable. Sales trainees should be urged to work with employees in other departments who are in the same program, to help trainees become part of the overall corporate culture.
Modern technology has created convenient methods such as interactive web-based lessons and training modules, online tutorials and distance learning. These platforms can be utilized to provide training to sales personnel. Chapters of a management book can be sent via email or the sales force can select and read any book of their choice from an online library.
Sales personnel know the customers intimately, know the products and are good at interpersonal relationships. They are also used to the way of thinking on their feet and acting quickly. Such strengths are too valuable to be kept isolated in sales functions alone. Many organizations need to recognize this fact and promote more of their sales people to managerial functions.
Management Training is given to employees to keep abreast of changes in their functional areas, to groom them for leadership or for promotions. Management Books such as Selling with Intergrity also come handy in imparting the needed knowledge. However, the proportion of sales personnel in such training is low in many organizations. They are reluctant to spare the personnel to a lengthy training period, as finding suitable backup personnel for these frontline jobs is difficult. To avoid this problem, training can be given in modular format or senior managers can coach sales personnel as their mentors. New technologies such as web-based training and distance learning can also be useful.
Published June 29th, 2007
Filed in Business, Management, Marketing
