Changing the Rules at JCI

Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) was on the right track regarding sales training–or so it thought. In 2004, the Milwaukee-based facility management and control company boasted two training programs for its new-hire solutions sales reps—one for those with little or no work or sales experience and another for more seasoned reps.
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::/br::That year, however, evaluations from the company’s training program for less experienced reps revealed that training wasn’t meeting student needs—far from it, in fact. “Consistent themes emerging from students,” says JCI program leader Juliet Pagliaro Herman, “were that the training was too basic and rudimentary and that more time should be spent on JCI product-specific information and less on basic selling skills.”
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::/br::Meanwhile, other students complained that their time wasn’t being used efficiently and that training was “artificially delaying” time to productivity because students weren’t allowed to sell until they had completed the training program. “Some were in sales jobs previously and were used to receiving a certain level of compensation,” says manager of learning and development Peter Long. “When they couldn’t sell for months under the old program, they couldn’t enhance their compensation through commissions, and many of them were dissatisfied with that.”
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::/br::Upon further analysis of student profiles, Long and Pagliaro Herman discovered that the training currently in place was designed for a group of new hires who simply didn’t exist: those with only one or two years of work experience and little, if any, sales experience. When they examined the backgrounds of those actually coming into the training class in 2004 further, in fact, they found that most trainees were far more seasoned, and possessed five years of median sales experience and more than 6.5 years of median work experience.
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::/br::In response, JCI’s learning and development group immediately brought the discrepancy to the attention of executive management—and the wheels of change began to turn. First, learning and development partnered with the company’s HR and recruiting teams to create a revised job description for solutions sales reps that would more accurately portray actual new-hire profiles. As a result of that work, the company decided to change the hiring profile for its solutions sales recruits to require an MBA, three to five years of work experience and one to three years of sales experience.
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::/br::Next, the learning and development function began devising a new training program to better meet the needs of incoming reps. The catch? Due to what Long calls “challenging business conditions,” his department was asked by upper management to identify opportunities to take both time and cost out of the new-hire program—and to do so quickly. The time between identification of the situation and actual launch of the new training program, in fact, was only about three months, Long says.
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::/br::To create the new program, Long’s team first decided to combine the two new-hire training programs already in place. Then, it initiated a “rapid analysis” to identify portions of each program that it could reduce or eliminate. As part of that process, JCI sales directors and managers were interviewed regarding their expectations for new hires—both immediately after training and one year later—in order to refine performance expectations. In addition, salespeople who had gone through the existing program for less experienced reps—but who fit the new hiring profile—were interviewed to identify where content in the program overlapped with their existing knowledge and skill sets.
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::/br::As a result of these analyses, Long says, “We concluded that the program should focus on Johnson Controls-specific skills and knowledge—and more specifically, on how to put a solution together for clients—and we decided eliminate or de-emphasize training on business basics. In short, we revised the training to focus only on those skill areas that new hires wouldn’t necessarily have been exposed to as part of their MBA programs.”
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::/br::In addition, notes Pagliaro Herman, a variety of Web-based sessions, on-the-job activities and self-paced instructional materials were included in the new program—“all of which were designed not only to bolster opportunities for skill practice but also to reduce the need for classroom time and travel.”
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Results
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According to Long and Pagliaro Herman, the redesigned program is not only better focused and more in tune with new-hire needs, it also enables solution sales reps to begin productive work calling on customers almost three months earlier than was possible under the old program. In addition, by reducing classroom time from 13 weeks to only four weeks, the company now is able to save approximately $4,000 per student in classroom-related materials, travel and living costs.
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::/br::Less, more focused training also has had a “significant positive impact” on new-hire skill levels, they say, and trainees graduating from the program do so “with more knowledge of the industry and of JCI products under their belts” than they received under the previous program, Long says.
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::/br::Finally, thanks to the streamlined, modularized nature of the new program, JCI has managed to better meet the needs of its entire sales force by increasing the frequency with which new-hire sales training is offered: from once a year to once a quarter.