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Sales Values Training at CHG Healthcare Services
January 04, 2010
By Sarah Boehle
For CHG Healthcare Services, it's not enough to train recruiters to sell the features and benefits of CHG's staffing services. In fact, features and benefits are the last things they learn during more than a week-and-a-half of new-hire sales training that begins at corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City and continues in any one of a half-dozen field offices across the U.S.
"Our foundational sales training for new hires centers on what we call the CHG way of selling," says Scott Jeppsen, manager of sales training for the company. "This is a value-focused philosophy that places special emphasis on learning everything we can about prospects before ever pitching our services and capabilities to them."
Rachel Gober, sales training specialist for CHG, agrees. "Our onboarding is all about developing the key skill sets our sales personnel need in order to build deep professional relationships with clients," she says. "In this way, our recruiters are able to move clients away from a one-off, transactional model of selling to one that is much more consistent with a trusted-partner approach to sales."
CHG's four-day sales training consists of a variety of interactive exercises. "We begin with an overview of how to sell in the staffing arena," Gober says. New hires then are taken through a question-based approach to sales with several exercises offered in varying formats, including role-plays, simulations, and group discussions. "You can't be a wallflower and expect to get through our training," notes Gober. "Learners are active participants every step of the way."
Interested in implementing a similar program? Jeppsen and Gober offer the following tips:
• Secure senior leadership's buy-in. To accomplish this, Jeppsen created a Sales Training Steering Committee whose members include the company's senior executive leadership. "This is much better than buy-in," says Jeppsen. "The steering committee ensures senior leadership's ongoing participation in continuing efforts to create new learning opportunities for CHG's sales team."
• Make it interactive. A value-focused approach to winning new sales isn't something one can learn sitting passively in the back of a classroom taking notes," says Gober. That's why she and Jeppsen developed a highly interactive training curriculum—complete with role-playing and group discussions—to support CHG's onboarding of sales personnel.
• Expose new hires to top sales performers. Jeppsen and Gober both agree this is one of the most compelling features of the sales onboarding process at CHG. "We introduce several of our best performers to new hires during training to impress upon them that all types of people can succeed with the CHG way of selling," says Jeppsen. "The message is that as long as you have a positive attitude, learn your line of business, and work hard, you can be successful here." New hires also attend a dinner with members of CHG's executive leadership team to get to know the company's leaders and ask them questions about CHG's industry, the company, or their experience.
• Follow up. After the program, all participants are evaluated, and the feedback is provided to their managers for development purposes. Evaluations are updated daily and made available via an internal evaluation Website that was designed specifically for this purpose.
CHG Healthcare Services provides temporary and permanent staffing of physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals to clients across the U.S. In 2009, the company placed 116th on Training magazine's Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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