Whether a business is selling a product or a service, the company and the employees both benefit from training sessions. The key to successful training is to fully engage participants in the process. If people are bored and the session is uninspiring, everyone will come away from the meeting without having learned anything useful. The gathering should be purposeful and the employees made to feel valued. Obviously, salespeople must first know the fine points of how to sell, and then they must be acutely aware of the products or services their company offers. Customers become dissatisfied when employees cannot answer plain questions or relay simple information about the company or the product.

One interesting ice breaker for a sales meeting is to have employees draw articles from a box filled with different numbers of like items as they enter. All like-item people will sit together at a table and answer prepared questions about themselves as a way to build effective relationships. After about 10 or 15 minutes, have someone from each table share areas in which participants have found commonalities.

After the ice-breaker, a good presentation, whether through PowerPoint, interactive activities, or a speaker can set the stage for actions designed to help employees improve sales skills. For an interactive lesson, give attendees the opportunity to move, speak, contemplate, or imagine scenarios where the product or service is used by them. Follow up with questions and allow them to give possible solutions to problem scenarios.

A mentoring program, where the employer allows the employee to learn from someone in the company with more experience or someone who has had outstanding performance reviews, is a good way to expand on skills learned in the training session. Willingness to share successful sales experience can be a continuation of the comraderies experienced at the sales meeting. This type of on-the-job-training builds confidence and competence, warranting retention and loyalty of the employee.

The Internet provides opportunities for employee training through various resources. Online providers bring a wealth of information to the workplace, and participation in sessions can be prepared as a group or individually. Assign times for individual employees to access the Internet during work hours. You may want to put in place some type of assessment that can be developed by the company or can be employee-based. Either way, there should be some oversight that gives the employer evidence the assignment has been completed. If the assessment is chosen carefully, it may be an excellent opportunity for the employer to show faith in the employee and for the employee to demonstrate trustworthiness.

Employers can help employees feel as if they are a part of the company by giving them the opportunity to help guide the process. Perhaps putting up a board in the break area or having a heading online entitled employee engagement ideas will serve that purpose. Employees can assist management in their own training by coming up with unique ideas to help make training sessions more effective. Not only will this type of outreach give employees a sense of involvement in the company, but it will give employers some idea of the capabilities of their staff.

Employees will generally rise to the level of employer expectations. They should feel they can meet the goals set by the administration without undue stress. Applying what they learn in training sessions to the workplace should be a paramount goal of the engagement process. To retain good workers, employers should be concerned with their employee’s on-the-job stress level and work with them toward a resolution.

All the sales training in the world will not be effective if the employee cannot function because of personal or work situations beyond his control. The most effective sales training is one where the employee is treated as a responsible adult and valued as a person first and an employee second.

JP George has experience in topics relating to leadership, talent management, and organizational business.