Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2012, during the economic crisis in Spain. Its remarks on how hard it is to sell in a crisis reflect that moment.
An employee joins the company with a certain profile, defined at the time, and goes on to do their daily work with proven competence. Some years have passed since then, and their training is starting to show gaps in certain areas, either because of the natural development of the business they work in or because the business has shifted in other directions.
Take a sales account manager as an example. When we hired them, we probably chose someone with a degree in Business Administration or Management, Law or, failing that, a diploma in Business Studies, the most common qualifications, without dismissing many other possibilities.
If, say, ten years have passed since they joined, their knowledge of products and sales may have fallen behind, even though it was perfectly valid at earlier points in their career. One example that illustrates this: the new financial products that have come onto the market almost weekly. In insurance, the regulations, products, obligations, guarantees and features of each product change over the years, so we have to stay alert and keep training constantly. The same would happen in medicine.
Selling in boom times is easy: everyone buys and nobody haggles. Selling in a crisis, however, is complicated, difficult and even impossible. Yet new studies and new sales techniques keep coming out. It’s still worth being trained in selling, looking for those openings that make a sale easier.
Timely information and solid product knowledge mean having an employee who is up to date and performing at full capacity in their job, on top of the experience gained over their working life.
Training as motivation
Large and medium-sized companies come with certain inherent human resources problems. They can be grouped into three broad blocks: training required by law, training that complements the professional profile, and motivational training, prompted by the demotivation that day-to-day working life can cause among staff.
For those circumstantial factors, the company can motivate through training that addresses the real reasons behind employees’ demotivation and complaints. This works as training in itself and makes the employee feel more important within the company.
The benefit is stopping for a day, away from the company’s daily routine, to reflect on the present and immediate future of each job and of the company, with the aim of renewing the staff’s energy and interest.
Training required by law
New rules and regulations keep appearing in the workplace, occupational risk prevention (health and safety at work) being one example. Sometimes the regulations require the company’s entire workforce to be trained in a specific subject.
It’s the training department’s job to train the whole workforce in the way that is most useful both for meeting the regulation and for the company.
In finance, examples include anti-money laundering rules, data protection rules or rules on certain financial products.
Featured image: The Official CTBTO Photostream, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
