From the President – Greg Adamson
What will your organization expect you to solve or fix?
If you own a home long enough, a myriad of things likely will creep up on you.
The Spring will no doubt find little creatures trying to creep into your house, requiring a call to an exterminator. When the temperatures this winter in Boston dipped to -15 degrees and your furnace malfunctioned, you undoubtedly called an HVAC specialist. The list goes on.
It seems like there is always something that needs to be addressed as a homeowner by someone who possesses expertise. We count on the specialists to possess expertise and fix what’s broken in our houses.
In our business lives, there is a similar dynamic taking place. There are specialists inside our business houses who fix what needs to be fixed.
Think of our legal, regulatory, manufacturing and research & development functions. Each of them has a function and an expertise.
Sales training (or learning & development) is no different. The question becomes, “What will people within my organization call me to solve or fix”?
The more areas of expertise you possess, the more value you offer the organization.
Possible Areas of Expertise
It may sound daunting, but think about what you already do and what you already know. You might offer more expertise than you realize.
- Product Training. The ability to perform product training without having tocall another specialist is a huge value to your company. You can host training and be sent to faraway destinations to help underperforming districts/regions.
- Onboarding. Knowing all the people and processes of your company to helpa new hire matriculate through their new company is important for you and them.
- Product Launch Training. Becoming a leader in the launch of a new product(even if it is a limited market release) makes a trainer indispensable to their company.
- National Sales Meeting. Depending on where you work, this event can be atug-of-war. Some companies view the event as a sales-driven event, while others consider it a marketing-driven event. In both of those cases, through no fault of your own, you can find yourself in the back row of a ballroom or breakout room reorganizing the candies in the glass dish. None of that is who you are. Know this – it can or has happened to each ofus. Let’s come back to this topic in another article, as it deserves further exploration.
- Testing (and re-testing). If you are in sales training long enough, you will experience a launch that is not going as well as expected. Look out for this one – check your Outlook invitations — there it is, a meeting invitation for you with the head of sales and/or marketing! They will have predetermined the reason for the less-than-stellar-launch is sales training and they want you to retest the sales force (and quickly) to determine their biggest deficiencies. Even though you may know the poor launch results could be for other reasons, eventually, we all end up writing and delivering a “level-setting quiz. ”The head of sales will announce on the Friday all-hands call, “We just want to level-set and see where we are, so we can deliver to you the tools that you need.”
Wrapping Up
You might be chuckling as you read about these specialties, because you thought you were the only one living through these challenges. Whether you are reading this in San Jose, Calif., Warsaw, Ind., Nashville, Tenn., or Morristown, N.J., each faces these opportunities throughout our careers.
Be sure to use your professional network of LTEN colleagues to discover how other companies are keeping their houses in order. Find out from other trainers and training leaders how they build their building! You might find yourself in charge of your own construction project.
Until next time.
Greg Adamson is president of the LTEN Board of Directors and executive director, sales training, for Olympus Americas. Email Greg at greg.adamson@olympus.com.
