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Sales, Master With An Apprentice Will Not Work

2008/11/11 10:33:00 41876

If you are now asking any growth enterprise in China: How did your salesperson grow up?

No matter how he describes their training process, you will find that the way that the master takes the apprentice is the most common one. The so-called master apprentice is that after the company recruits new salesmen, the company sends a preliminary training to the job and designate a guide for daily work. The instructor is responsible for the training, guidance and even examination of the new employees during the probation period. This person is the so-called "master".

This way is relatively popular in domestic enterprises. It may be related to the establishment of sales teams by employers when they are in business.

This is well understood. In the early days of an enterprise, many bosses could not expect others, especially the problems of human beings. Only the boss could train himself to stay. Many employees grew up in the state of "catching up and holding". The backbone of today's team was mostly the masterpiece of the old board, but the enterprise grew and grew fast, and this way of teaching the apprentice was more and more manifests various malpractices.

一、“师傅”并不是真正的“师傅”

The author has served in a food enterprise, the company has more than 5000 sales staff, the annual turnover rate of staff is around 20%, that is to say, nearly 1000 people need training every year, this is a very alarming figure. In order to reduce costs, the company used the way of the local teacher and the apprentice. All the new employees were handed over to the master in the district after a simple training, but such a way did not solve the problem of missing people, but the loss of personnel was more and more serious.

The study found that the core issues are:

首先，缺乏系统性。多数的师傅都是销售人员的出身，并没有太多的训练技巧，这就象优秀的士兵，并不一定是一个良好的教官一样，士兵强调自身的作战能力，而教官强调如何“教会”士兵，这个“教”的过程是一个非常复杂的系统过程，必须经过严格的训练，所谓的好的销售人员就是好的师傅这本身就是作坊式的思想。

其次，周期长。由于师傅自身的素质限制，销售人员的成长基本上处在自由生长的状态，对于公司的产品、客户、销售技巧需要很长的时间才能逐渐摸索出来，而师傅在这个过程中，一方面不愿意教，另一方面没有时间交，这些都严重影响了销售人员的成长时间。我们曾经做过试验，将师傅带徒弟的方式与模压式销售训练系统比较，发现后者的周期可以缩短30%-50%。

第三，成活率低。销售人员的成活率很多情况下取决于“上手”的时间，过晚的上手将挫败销售人员的信心而造成人员流失，尽管人员“上手”的因素非常复杂，但是师傅自身素质无疑是最重要的因素。另外，师傅本身也是士兵，也有很重的任务要完成，在任务与带人之间，师傅更多的会选择前者，而不会选择后者。

二、作坊方式，难以大面积复制

Another disadvantage of master's apprentice is that it can not be formed in scale. Different masters are good at different things. They emphasize different skills, and many skills may only suit themselves.

In our research, we often find that salesmen of many enterprises are self-taught through market sharpening. Their so-called experience has a certain one-sided nature, and even has extreme individualized colors. Simply impart these experiences to the new salesmen directly, and can not quickly enhance the combat effectiveness of salesmen.

Therefore, enterprises must coordinate between personalization and standardization. In fact, most salesmen of some enterprises have some common characteristics, which are mostly the most basic skills part of salesmen. As long as these characteristics are effectively summarized and applied to new salesmen, enterprises can achieve some standardized manufacturing processes.

This is the essence of the molded training system.

Just like the training of new recruits, basic movements such as standing, marching, assassination, shooting must be standardized and consistent. On the basis of consistent basic movements, special training should be combined with individual characteristics.

三、容易形成帮派势力

师傅带徒弟的方式经常促使师傅将徒弟作为自身的私有财产，甚至是自身的缩影与附庸，中国传统的“一日为师终身为父”观念更加助长了帮派势力的形成，员工效忠的目标已经不是企业而是师傅的，这种状况一旦形成蔓延的趋势破坏性极大，曾经有一家企业的区域销售人员都是区域经理培养的，一次某个区域的销售员工在业绩上弄虚作假被发现，当时企业开除并严厉的处罚了这名销售人员，事情本来这样就可以结束了，但是由于这名销售人员是地区经理的徒弟，在处理时，地区经理百般阻挠，依仗自己对区域的控制与公司分庭抗礼，虽然在公司的高压下解决了问题，但是为以后埋下了隐患，三个月以后，该地区经理带领所有区域销售人员集体叛变，对公司造成了巨大损失。

Enterprises even went to court for this purpose, hoping that this form will be a deterrent to other salesmen.

But careful analysis shows that even if the court wins, the real failure is still the enterprise itself, because he did not really solve the problem of the ownership of employees, such things will happen sooner or later.

Therefore, the apprentice can only be a partial stage or a project, rather than all of them. The enterprise must not be a Mr. shake hand, but will push the apprentice entirely to the master.

四、有虐徒倾向

In practice, teachers often decide whether they are good or bad to their apprentices according to their own likes and dislikes.

Especially in terms of character traits, master prefers to choose the person he likes. If he feels bad, he may lose his interest in training his apprentice, which seriously affects the construction of the sales force and even loses the excellent salesperson.

After research, we find that excellent salesmen may be sold in different personalities. For example, we often think salesmen must be able to say, but we often find that many salesmen who are not very good salesmen sell well. For example, we think salesmen must be smart and discernible, but we find that many salesmen who are simple and even stupid are more likely to succeed.

The training of salesmen must not be judged by the likes and dislikes of one person, which will cause serious inbreeding and affect the comprehensive ability of the sales team.

Besides, apart from personal preference, the master also has a potential competitive relationship between the apprentice and the master. The so-called "church apprentice and starving master", under such a psychological impact, on the one hand, the master will not teach the true things to the apprentice, and the other side will master the apprentice as his puppet.

The apprentice cultivated the master and harvested the apprentice after the harvest.

In this way, the master can guarantee that no one can compete with him. The master in this area is always the oldest.

All these have seriously damaged the construction of the company's sales team.

Through the analysis of the above problems, we can at least get the following conclusions:

1, relying entirely on the way the master takes the apprentice is the representative of the workshop type, and it is also the irresponsible performance of the enterprise.

2, it is difficult for teachers to copy their apprentices, so it is difficult to meet the needs of comprehensive development of enterprises.

3, the training of talents is always a problem that enterprises should grasp, and enough energy and financial resources should be invested.

4, a molding sales training system should be established to pform the workshop training mode into an enterprise scale manufacturing mode.