How to Use ‘Game Film’ to Measure Your Sales Training

Jeff Shore Sales Blog

Enjoy this Guest Blog Post by Donna Richardson, President of Impact Marketing
Impact Marketing is a Sponsor of The Jeff Shore Sales Leadership Summit

Whether you are losing weight or training sales associates to sell a particular way, you want to be able to monitor progress and see results. By taking a baseline snapshot up front followed by recurring measurements along the way, you have a good idea as to how much progress is being made over time.

Start out slow and steady and don’t expect too much in the beginning. Even a little progress at a time is an achievement. By asking too much in the beginning, your sales associates might feel frustrated and be more inclined to give up right away.

Positive encouragement is the best way to reinforce affirmative behavior and ensure that progress is being made. Most salespeople want to please and want to excel, and a little bit of encouragement goes a long way.

When training sales associates, one of the best measurement tools is Video Mystery Shopping. Some sales associates are intimidated by the process, but when used properly, it is the best available training tool on the market.

It is important to emphasize to sales associates that the shops will be used for training purposes only; not to embarrass them or catch them doing something wrong. Think of it as an investment in your sales associates to help them learn more and earn more. This approach can shed a positive light on shops.

Video Mystery Shopping also provides a way to monitor the effectiveness of your ongoing training programs. Yes, you can sometimes judge by sales, but in a good market, this is not always the most accurate indicator.

During the lean years in the building industry, many companies stopped shopping their sales teams. When builders started training and shopping again, the shops were almost painful to watch because some sales associates became complacent without the built-in accountability.

Just the fact that the sales associate knows they could be shopped at any time keeps them on their toes and encourages them to put their best foot forward at all times.

Since the term “shops” can be a bit intimidating, many builders have coined the term “Game Film” to help take out the anxiety. Every sport uses “Game Films” to help their players become better athletes and to identify strengths and weaknesses.

They study these “Game Films” over and over to focus on key points that will make their execution better. This is no different in the business world.

Sports teams also use “Game Films” to see what the opposition is doing and to study their moves. This helps the team identify their competition’s areas of strength and weakness so they can develop a strategic game plan and effectively compete.

It gives the team an upper hand, and a possible advantage, on how to win the game. Again, this can also apply to the business world.

Based on our extensive “Game Film” library, here are 2 things that most new home sales representatives do well in a mystery shop and some thoughts on how to do even better:

1. Sales associates tend to establish good rapport with their prospects by the end of the presentation. Impact Opportunity: Sales associates should focus on establishing a good rapport from the very first few moments of the encounter. As Jeff Shore likes to say, the goal is to be “coffee-worthy” during the first few minutes of the sales conversation.

2. Sales associates are usually quite knowledgeable about their products. Impact Opportunity: Find out which product details the client wants to learn more about and tailor the conversation accordingly.  No one wants to listen to a dull, boring presentation about details they don’t care about.

And here are 2 things that sales associates usually forget to do:

1. Many sales associates forget to talk about who they work for.  

2. Many sales associates push their favorite plans, instead of finding out the likes/dislikes of the prospect.

How do you use “Game Films” in your organization? And what habits/patterns are you uncovering?


FREE TRAINING:
Get BRAND-NEW episodes of Jeff’s 5 Minute Sales Training sent to your inbox every Saturday!

Sign up below.

 

About the Author: Donna Richardson

Donna Richardson is the owner/director of Impact Marketing. Impact Marketing specializes in video mystery shopping for the home building industry. Donna is very hands on, and still does shops herself when she travels, so she has first hand experience with what is trending in the industry. Impact Marketing has been helping builders with their training needs since 1999.