Invest in Training -- Especially for Salespeople

(This blog series -- Save Money, Spend Smarter, and Get More Done -- is sponsored by HP Officejet Pro. Did you know that inkjet printers can create professional color documents at about half the cost per page of laser printers?)

When money gest tight at a small business, training and team building are often the first things to be cut. Small business owners tell me that training can seem like an unnecessary expense, wasting scarce dollars in the vague hope of a payoff months, or even years, down the road.

And team building gets treated like a luxury leftover from better times, nothing more than a way to burn some extra cash as a reward for a job well done. Many small businesses reason that nobody has time to deal with training and teambuilding, and the newly trained employees might leave soon anyway.

Big mistake.

When times are tough, training becomes MORE essential, not less. Especially for your sales team.

You're Asking a Lot from Your Team

Look at it this way: You're asking your salespeople to deliver results in a tough economy, facing customers and prospects looking to save money -- not spend it -- at your company. Meanwhile, increasingly desperate competitors will do almost anything to steal your existing business.

You need your sales team to be at the top of their game, and that isn't going to happen all by itself.

Of course, sales training isn't a panacea. (AllBusiness sales blogger Jonathan Farrington loves to rail against all the ways it's misused and doesn't work.) But training tailored to the needs and expertise of each individual salesperson, done thoughtfully, consistently, and with clear goals and benchmarks, can make a big difference in sales performance.

Effective sales training isn't easy, and it's not cheap, either (costs can range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars per salesperson, even more for individual training). But when it works it can deliver a remarkable return on investment. After all, can you really afford to have an underperforming sales team?

Motivation Matters

Dealing with the mechanics of selling is only the first step. You also need to make sure your salesfolk are as committed and motivated as possible.

You'd think that fear of losing their jobs would do the trick, but that's not always the case. Sometimes, when faced with bad news, even crack salespeople can start to withdraw and disengage. That just makes things worse, starting a vicious cycle that could destroy your entire business.

You can't let the situation deteriorate to that extent. Team-building exercises -- from cocktails or beer blasts to company picnics or volunteer activities -- can remind everyone how much they all depend on each other. And peer pressure can be a powerful motivator.

Like training, team building is something you should do right or not do at all. Too often, team-building exercises can seem fake or forced, and end up backfiring. Whether or not you have the budget for extreme team building, the key is to make sure you have a clear outcome in mind.

Experts also suggest focusing activities on smaller groups over a longer period of time, and they warn that successful team-building can't be a one-and-done process. Multiple smaller events over the course of the year can help maintain the momentum.

You Gotta at Least Try

Finally, even if you really can't afford team-building exercises, you can't ignore the concept. There are plenty of things you can do to encourage teamwork every day in the course of running your business. So there's no excuse for avoiding the issue.

Look, I understand that companies have to prioritize. But pushing training and team building to the bottom of the list could mean that nobody in your company will be able to contribute to its success -- or worse, that nobody will want to bother.

(If you have advice on how small businesses can save money, invest the savings, and increase efficiency, please share it below in the comments section.)