Who Should Train Your Sales Team on Salesforce?

Hey everybody, it’s Mark over at The Salesforce Trainers.

You know, something that’s been bugging me today. I had a call a little while ago from a potential customer, and they asked, “Hey, do you guys do Train the Trainer?” I said, “Well, explain to me what you mean by Train the Trainer.”

They said, “We have an admin here, and we want them to train our sales team on Salesforce.” I asked them to tell me more. Why would they want to go that route?

They explained that they had implemented Salesforce about a year ago. The implementation firm sent someone in who was really good at building Salesforce, but they knew almost immediately that he wasn’t much of a trainer. The team didn’t really take to him, and now they’re suffering because adoption isn’t where it should be. So they thought they’d try a different approach.

I said, “Well, I understand that you made a mistake the first time, but I think bringing your admin in to train the sales team might just compound the issue.”

So I started asking some questions. Has your admin ever done any formal training before? Have they ever stood in front of a group and actually trained people? They said, “Well, they certainly show people how to use the system.” And I said, “Yeah, but that’s not necessarily training.”

I asked, “Has your admin ever worked in sales? Have they been a salesperson or a sales leader?” “No, no. They’ve purely been on the IT side.” And I said, “I’m assuming they know Salesforce?” “Oh, yeah, they know Salesforce.”

And that’s the point. **Knowing Salesforce is only one piece of the equation.**

If you’re going to train a team of salespeople on how to use Salesforce, I strongly encourage you to have someone who understands sales—preferably someone with sales and sales management experience—and someone who has actually been a trainer and has done it consistently for a number of years.

There are a lot of great Train the Trainer courses out there. Our firm doesn’t offer that service because that’s not what we do, but there are plenty of good programs available. The important thing is that you then apply what you’ve learned and build real experience as a trainer over time.

When you’re implementing Salesforce, remember: **process first, platform second, and people throughout.**

You’re asking salespeople—some of whom may or may not be comfortable with technology and who may already be somewhat wary of change—to start using a system of record every single day. That’s not something you solve by simply putting someone in front of them for a four-hour training session.

You need to understand the learning objectives. You need to make sure the processes align with how they're actually going to use Salesforce. You need a communication plan to support effective change management. And you need a follow-up plan so managers can reinforce Salesforce adoption long after the training session is over.

So it’s not really about putting someone who knows Salesforce in front of the room.

**When your Salesforce adoption is failing, don’t blame your users. Fix the system.**