Sales Academies

Many organisations are now placing greater value on a well trained sales force and there is a trend towards delivering training via a Sales Academy.  Sales Academies range from bricks and mortar in-house face-to-face training courses, via externally held  blended learning, to distance and e-learning.  What they all have in common is a belief that offering high quality training to sales staff will reap rewards through improved sales, better customer relationships and greater staff motivation and retention. 

Sales Academies are often designed to fit with company-wide competency frameworks and National Occupational Standards in Sales (NOS) are often used to help benchmark these frameworks, job descriptions and the sales training itself.  NOS have been developed by the UK government over many years and are public documents available to all for free at http://www.ukstandards.co.uk/nos-search/Pages/SearchResults.aspx?k=Sales

Many Sales Academy developers take the following steps:

1.    Conduct a skills gap analysis against the NOS-based job descriptions

2.    Draw up a skills development plan referenced to NOS

3.    Identify or develop training courses to fill the skills gaps.

Fortunately almost all nationally recognised vocational qualifications are now built from units on the Qualification Credit Framework (QCF) that relate to NOS units. They are also in the public domain, see the Ofqual database at  http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit

Developing training plans based on QCF units offers a number of benefits:

·         The units are already written for you, and are freely available

·         Colleges and trainers will understand your requirements and they may already be offering training based on the unit

·         You have the option to offer your staff nationally recognised qualifications

·         You have the possibility of attracting government funding in the future, although there is not much around at the moment.  

·         You are aligning your training with national standards.

Whatever stage your Sales Academy planning is at, we can help you move it to the next stage.

Contact us at education@ismm.co.uk  Tel 01582 843260