Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

 The benefits of off-site sales training are clear.

1.  You don't get distracted.  It never fails; if you go to a training session that is held in the same building where you work, you will get distracted.  Either as a sales person or a sales manager, you won't be able to help yourself. 

•  During the break, you will go to your office and see the phone light blinking, and just like Pavlov's dogs, you've been trained to check the message. Inevitably, it will be someone leaving you an urgent and important message that you just MUST attend to now.
• Even when you are not on break, someone will poke their head into the meeting, point over to you and indicate that you have a phone call or that they need to speak with you urgently.

As a result of the interruption, you don't get back into the training session on time and you miss critical conversation or concepts. Not only does that happen, but you've also become distracted mentally, and even though you are now back in the session, you are not fully back 'into' the session.

2.  When you go to an off-site, during the breaks you spend time with your peers instead of going to your office or dealing with staff in the building. Over coffee and a plate of fruit, you get the chance to hear what others are doing that is working as well as hear about their challenges and failures.  These learnings are as important, and in some instances, more important than what is being said as part of the agenda.  This free form conversation carries back into the session and now becomes part of the agenda via questions and open discussion about what others are doing well and what they are facing.  Any well facilitated training program will have an agenda of important items to discuss but the facilitator must customize that content to meet the current needs of the participants.

3.  I am 30,000 feet above Kansas as I post this blog and I have internet connectivity.  That, in itself, is way cool.  I'm heading home from an off-site that I just participated in and facilitated. The 3rd benefit of having an off-site is that you can get the chance to learn Texas Hold'm.  

Post our training for the day, we had a wonderful dinner prepared by Allison and then we started our last learning for the day.  How to negotiate and influence people by subliminal suggestions, body language, asking questions and having fierce conversations about someone's actions and intents.  Certainly, practicing these skills while participating in a game like this has a direct correlation to improving skills in sales negotiation.

So, if you are going to have training sessions, make the investment of time, resources and money to maximize your return on the investment and get out of the office, focus on learning and have some fun.