Bob Young is
managing director of Capital Home Loans
During a showing of a television programme Back to the Floor some years ago, the managing director of a large manufacturing company spent a few days with employees working on the factory floor.
While the managing director was finding out what life was like for someone working long shifts for a fraction of his salary, his co-workers were invited to attend a training programme.
The programme had initially been intended for managers, but a decision had been made to filter the training down through the company. The course itself was compelling. An excited trainer bouncing up and down to loud music exhorting the assembled workers to become more enthusiastic about their jobs.
The workers weren’t very impressed and post-course discussions left the managing director wondering why the workforce had not got the same benefits as his management team said they had. Another good training idea that did not deliver what it was supposed to.
And that is the problem with training. No one wants to waste time and money on it, but that is precisely what happens.
A poor substitute
Within our own industry, I have lost count of the number of financial sales people, with 15 to 20 years of on-the-road experience, who have endured overly-simplistic training courses simply because their employers have decreed that they should. The courses are often a complete waste of their time and their employers’ money.
It is my belief that very little training actually works and most is a poor substitute for on-the-job coaching from an experienced staff member.
Perhaps the first issue is with the trainers themselves. They have a tendency to operate in a theoretical vacuum and have rarely performed the job of the trainee. The result is that they tend to over-intellectualise very practical processes and rely too much on models and theoretical concepts that are lost on trainees.
The standard of trainers can itself be a problem. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the adage that people tend to fail their way into training. Too often the training departments of large companies are made up of people who have failed elsewhere in the business and regard training as something of a soft option.
It is not all the fault of trainers though. The planning of training by line managers is too often the problem. This is usually because managers don’t understand the crucial role they have within the process. They might instigate some discussion before the training and, maybe, even after it, but rarely is monitoring carried out over time to see whether learning objectives have been met.
Recognising the whole process
This last aspect highlights a central issue: training is a process, not an event.
The monitoring and hard work undertaken after and between programmes is as important as the training itself. The manager or supervisor must act as a coach for the individual throughout the year.
This can involve work within the office, training ‘live’ with a customer, or role-playing skill practice away from the live situation.
For a financial salesperson, role-playing skill practice is, perhaps, the most instructive as it gives an opportunity to practice the skill without losing the company any money. The trouble is that such exercises have over the years become something that most people loathe.
The failing of role plays – you will hear – is that they are embarrassing and aren’t real.
The problem with this though is that it only leaves you with practising in front of the customer. Think about this for a moment. Picture the scene, it is mid-week at the training session for Manchester United. The players are muttering to each other. The coaches are confused; no balls are being kicked. Then Wayne Rooney steps up to Ferguson and says that the team
doesn’t believe the skills practice is helping them. They would rather wait until Saturday and practice live against their opponents. A likely scenario? Of course not.
For every skill in the world it is a given that constant practice and feedback under supervision is the only way to hone skills. And yet in financial sales and management training there seems a reluctance to practice the skills in anything other than a live situation.
Developing the skills needed to keep a sales force on top form is important. Skills are rarely maintained at a constant level. Skill erosion is real and happens – without warning. All of you golfers, footballers, or tiddilly wink players will know only too well that success can slip away very quickly. You haven’t deliberately let your skills slide, but things change and slowly your habits will change unconsciously. You know you’re not doing as well as you wanted, but you don’t know why.
This is exactly the same in the financial services sales environment. We tend to blame the products, the market, the customers, everything but ourselves.
Many of us have by law to be able to prove, via qualifications and training, that we have the relevant competencies to do our jobs. But competence cannot be frozen in time. An
adequately-trained sales person can become inadequately trained within the space of six months in the light of product and regulatory changes.
This is why training has to be a process and not an event.
Training can contribute massively to the performance of an organisation, provided the right support is provided by managers who ensure the change sought actually occurs.
Without this support, the investment in money and time will remain a cost and not an investment.
