Our focus this week has been on the benefits sales people and sales organizations gain by having a strong mentoring program that is a part of your on-boarding process.
Most of the material that you will find on the benefits of mentoring will focus on how the program is vital to the success of new sales people. However, the value of the program does not stop there. There are tremendous benefits for the mentor as well.
- Skill Improvement of the Mentor –when someone accepts the responsibility to mentor another and takes that responsibility seriously, they usually work harder to perform the skill sets successfully. They put in a little extra effort to be prepared and effective. Most people can look back on their time in school and remember some of their greatest teachers were often teaching something that was not their major area of focus in college. One of the reasons those teachers were excellent was because of the extra effort they had to put forth to get prepared to teach the class.
- Feeling Valued and Appreciated –when a proper mentoring culture exists in a sales team, the mentor feels a greater sense of connection and loyalty to the organization. They become connected to the mentee and get a sense of pride when they do well. Also, the top choice for most people in what they want most from their career is actually appreciation for a job well done. When a sales leader shows great appreciation to the mentor for helping onboard the new hire – and the new hire shows appreciation for the help – the mentor’s job satisfaction rises.
- Preparation for Promotion –many sales organizations make a common mistake in selecting candidates for promotion into sales leadership positions. They simply promote their best sales people into management. The results of doing that are “hit and miss” at best. Some great sales people are horrible sales leaders. If you want to have the highest success rate in your sales leadership team – prepare them first by having them learn the skill set of mentoring prior to having the full responsibilities of leadership. It will better equip them to be successful. Or it will make it apparent that a promotion might not be the best thing for them or the organization.
We will spend time next week on a step by step process to build a successful mentoring program in your team.
QUESTION:
How often to you give (or get) on the job training in your current position?
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