What motivated you to become a sales trainer?
Working with other people always motivates me. The different characters and seeing how you can emerge stronger from your own challenges. This ultimately motivated me to take on the role of sales trainer.
I already had a lot of experience in sales. As a trainer, it was more in the area of quality assurance. But more on that in one of the next questions.
What does your day-to-day work look like?
Communication, liaising between people, especially in project coaching. When it comes to fine-tuning a solution with several people and seeing how we can become even better in projects. How can we achieve even better results. Is there anything we haven't seen yet?
It's detective work and that excites me immensely and that's just part of it, alongside all the individual coaching and project coaching. The day is simply very colourful. Every day is a snowflake, unique, with new challenges, but also brings a lot of fun.
How did you prepare for the job?
In principle, my whole life has prepared me a little for this: With my apprenticeship and my studies. Firstly in the sales sense, the further training and then the stay abroad afterwards.
I ended up in Customer Support in Ireland. I had a great quality manager there who saw potential in me. She introduced me to the world of quality assurance: I was immediately enthusiastic! She took me by the hand and trained me. I then went on to become a Quality Lead.
Afterwards in Sweden, I was also responsible for quality assurance in communications.
All in all, I have enjoyed comprehensive practical training in sales, mentoring and coaching.
What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Mediating between the individual positions and people: Everyone thinks differently and everyone acts differently. Creating the bridge there so that we can work constructively on things and that we understand each other. Finding out where the problem is and what the problem is...that was the biggest challenge and it still is.
People remain different and have different strengths that have to be combined. But that's also the appeal of the whole job.
How do you deal with different learning styles and needs?
How did I deal with it? Sporty! You always have to re-engage with the situation and get involved with the other person. It's exactly the same as the dear colleagues in cold calling when they pick up the phone and receive their dialogue partner: How can I be convincing now, how do I approach the situation and what path do we take to reach a result in the end? That's basically the challenge I face every day.
At the end of the day, you could just tell people everything. You could also just put all the theoretical content in front of someone's nose, but then my job would also be superfluous. You could also print out a sheet of paper, hand it to people and say: Read this and do it!
At the end of the day, colleagues have to experience these moments of success for themselves. Because only then can the whole thing become firmly established in their minds and in their own approach. That's what it's all about: we have to work on the successes together, internalise them and then have that ‘aha!’ moment, because then it ‘clicks’ in our heads.
How do you organise your training sessions?
What I do first and foremost and what many colleagues find stupid: I ask a lot of questions first! How do you do that? How do we do it? What experiences have you had in the interview?
So we first create a basis for dialogue and then we build on that. In other words, I start by throwing in an idea: How would it be if we did it this way or that way? This is usually followed by some kind of objection or good information. That's how we work out the content or what we want to put together as a future roadmap.
What are you proud of? Were there any special experiences?
There were plenty of moments that I look back on fondly. It was always a complete success when what we had in mind bore fruit. These are always the best moments. Also when people say: ‘Hey Olli, I did it this way and it worked wonderfully.’ That's always the best thing for me. Then I know that the time, effort and patience I put in has paid off. It wasn't in vain.
At the end of the day, that's what it's all about for me: offering added value so that we can simply be successful together. After all, if the colleagues are successful, then the company will be successful too. It's as simple as that.
What makes a successful sales trainer?
An open ear, empathy, loving toughness, always having an idea somewhere and, above all, the will to do a bit of detective work again. As a trainer, you don't always have a solution at hand, but staying on the ball and finding answers to questions is also part of it.
You also need the energy of a Duracell bunny, as well as your own desire to keep developing, because as a trainer you always have to set a good example. You have to develop yourself further, you have to reflect on yourself and see where I can improve.
What are your plans for the second year?
In the first year, I had to familiarise myself a lot. Firstly, to familiarise myself with the structures, to see what we have, to see what we need.
Now that the curtain has lifted a little, I would like to incorporate new training content. For example, when it comes to familiarisation, this now has a much more practical character. There are also many areas in which we can still coach and train. I would now like to gradually expand on this content and implement it internally as learning videos.
In other words, I want to add lots of nice and useful little tools. They will hopefully be a good support for colleagues in their day-to-day work.
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