The measurement may be a powerful activity because it benefits the individual and even the organization. At the individual level, sales professionals gain an objective view of their abilities and where they have an additional focus to create skills. At the organizational level, leaders enjoy an overall view that indicates where they have broad measures to shape a team. This mix of a broad and focused view of effectiveness is important to sustain selling skills.
However, many selling organizations struggle to measure the effectiveness of the training and outcomes. Why? it’s unclear which metrics are meaningful, data resides across many disparate systems, some metrics are unavailable and competing priorities disrupt consistency. Here’s the way to bring structure to the measurement problem with a three-part approach.
Measurements can be segmented into three key categories. The three categories are engagement, effect, and experience.
Engagement:
Engagement seeks to answer how learners are progressing through training. To answer this question, leaders must know what portion of the team is enrolled in training. Leaders need to understand learner progress because impactful learning is sustained learning. Engagement is an ever-present characteristic of effective training.
Experience:
The experience asks how memorable training is and how excited learners are to participate. The experience of learning matters, because it drives adoption. Metrics in this category can include net promoter score, course rating, confidence, qualitative sentiment, and commitment to change. If the learning experience is inconsistent or onerous, then there is little likelihood that participants will stick with it.
Effect:
Effect asks if training has improved business outcomes and skill adoption. Participants will be more committed to the process if they can see a clear line connecting the material in training to skills they believe will create success in their careers.
It is also important to remember that the measurement plan that works is one that can be easily implemented. Therefore, rather than seeking complicated ways to unearth missing data, companies should think about how they can use the information that is available to them. Most organizations will discover that they have at least a small collection of meaningful metrics that they can pull from their systems with ease.
