More training, or less? That is the question. Conventional wisdom says that the answer depends upon market conditions: in a good market you spend more money on training, and in a bad market you tighten the budget and spend less, or even none at all, until things pick up. While most builders would agree that this is a rational way to operate, it is a recipe for mediocre performance and poor return on investment. Here’s why.

Many companies consider training to be a luxury. Therefore, they treat it as a gift to be given to their teams when there’s enough money to justify the expense. The problem is, in a good market, the recipients of this gift don’t always see the necessity for it, and therefore they don’t put it to good use. Why? Well, in a good market, when customers are urgent to buy, salespeople can have success regardless of how well they do their job. They don’t have to execute the right behaviors or exercise any discipline to win a sale. Improvement is not a necessity. In their mind, training is only a nice thing to have, and not something that they perceive to be necessary for their success.

When the market takes a downturn, sales teams find themselves in a bind. Before, they could get by without training, but now they need it more than ever. The “build it and they will come” philosophy of the good years doesn’t work anymore. Buyers do not walk
into sales offices with an urgency to buy. Sales don’t just happen-they must be earned, and they cannot be earned if a sales team is not trained or equipped to win them.

When a salesperson faces a tough market without proper training, they feel the negative impact not only in their bank accounts, but also in their mind and emotions. Anxiety builds as they fail to reach their sales goals. Family relationships struggle because of the
financial strain. What does this mean? It means that now is the time when they are hungry for improvement. Now is the time when they are ready to apply new strategies and techniques for winning sales and bettering their situations.

Do you see the irony? When the market is good, and sales are easy to come by, companies provide training. But when the market is tough, and it becomes more important than ever to earn sales, training falls by the wayside. Successful builders are the ones who go
against convention, and realize that a tough market is a great time to train and build for the future. While everyone else is riding it out, cutting costs and downsizing, you can invest in your people and your processes, improve the way you treat your customers, and strengthen the foundation of your company. There are sales out there to be made, and they will be made by the salespeople who execute more of the right behaviors with their prospects than the competition will. That’s true in any market. So in any market, if your
salespeople are not maximizing every prospect who walks in the door, the answer is always “more training.”

In a tough market, you have a choice: follow the crowd, ride out the storm, and wait until everyone else does better, or rise from the pack and separate yourself from everyone else by adopting new strategies and techniques to create your own success. If you train
and coach your sales team to maximize every sales conversation and be successful in a tough market, then imagine the success they will achieve when better times are here. So forget conventional wisdom. Train your team now, and you will be miles ahead of the competition when they wake up and decide to get back in the game.

This article appeared  first in the Shore Select Sales Strategy Journal. Click here to subscribe.