Planning a national or divisional sales meeting in the near future?  As a manager, there’s no doubt, you’ll invest a lot of your time developing an agenda that provides your team with the foundation and motivation to deliver sales results, but what happens when they get back to their territories?  What’s the impact of that meeting 1, 3 or 6 months later in terms of performance and sales?  Take a look at the following statistics provided by the Business Performance Group.

In any given skill or process training initiative the following is a breakdown of participants and their use of the knowledge once they leave the session

• 15% - don't use at all
• 70% - try to some extent but then will give-up, with zero or little impact to results
• 15% - try it, it works well and impacts results

So, in a 20 person channel or divisional meeting held this fall:

• 3 wholesalers won’t use the skills at all
• 14 wholesalers will try to some extent, but then will give-up before results are impacted
• 3 wholesalers will try it, use it consistently and impact results

What if the 3 wholesalers that try the skill, have success, use it consistently, and increase their monthly sales $500,000 by June? That’s a $9,000,000 boost to sales for the company in 2010.  The opportunity lost with the other 17 wholesalers in this scenario is up to $51,000,000 in sales potential. 

The number #1 reason training efforts fail is lack of follow-up.

What’s your follow-up strategy for your sales meetings? 

For more information on creating an effective follow-up strategy for your sales meetings contact Kim Ashcraft at 704-338-3289.