The document discusses Adidas' holistic sales training program developed by DOOR Consulting to address issues like low employee passion, skills and retention. The multi-pronged program included training store managers through a "Train the Trainer" program to then coach employees. It aimed to instill passion for Adidas and its products in employees. Modules covered developing customer engagement skills, understanding different customer types, active listening, criticism and open-ended questioning. Follow-up "52 Training Pitches" by managers reinforced the knowledge and embedded the learnings long-term to improve sales. The comprehensive approach addressed both employee development and instilling a bond with Adidas to boost performance.

1. Importance of Sales Training
For building a
Better Brand
For making Sales
force more
responsible for
Company’s Goals
Generating Good
Revenue
For Ensuring
Business Values
and Ethics
For better Work-
Life Balance
For Motivating
Sales Teams

2. For building a Better Brand
Salespeople are the face of every company. Customers buy from the salespeople not
from the company. In today’s world, a brand name is very important as customers relate
to it and attach an intrinsic value to it. So, being the face of your company, what you say,
how you say and do certain things create an impression in the mind of the prospect/
customer.
Generating Good Revenue – Revenue is the reason why Sales is the most crucial
and significant department of every organization. A well trained team of strong
salespeople can help an organization generate more leads and convert them into huge
returns.
For making Sales force more responsible for Company’s Goals
Every Company has its objectives and goals to achieve. Being a salesperson, you have
to work in line with these goals and objectives to achieve the desired results. Sales is not
just about hitting the target and achieving the numbers but about deriving the desired
results by keeping the missions of the company in mind. Sales training helps you
learn how to go about it without scrambling for number every quarter.

3. For Ensuring Business Values and Ethics: With increasing sales targets, there is a risk
of employees compromising on organizational business values and ethics. For an
organization to succeed in the long run, it has to ensure that its employees follow the
business values it stands for and training is an appropriate platform to drive home
this message to the sales force.
For better Work-Life Balance – Discipline is the key to maintain a better work-life
balance. Sales is a grueling job with no fixed working hours. The field of sales ask for
24X7 commitment and keep you on toes most of time. If not taken care of, your sales
job can eat up your personal life and leave you distressed and frustrated. So, in
order to give your best both the professional and personal front, understanding of
work-life balance is utmost important. Sales Training can be of great help for you to
chalk out a plan and organize your schedule to work efficiently without compromising
on your personal life.
For Motivating Sales Teams: Sales is a high pressure job that leads to frustrations
among the sales team very easily. Sales training also provides an opportunity for
managers to keep their sales team motivated. With team-building activities and morale
boosting workshops, managers ensure that the sales team does not lose focus of the
sales targets and organizational goals. It reduces employee turnover and increases
productivity

4. Selecting the Training Methods
1. Demonstrations (attention-grabbers)
They are an excellent way to teach employees to
use new equipment or to teach the steps in a
new process which includes the selling
techniques. They are also effective in teaching
safety skills. Combined with the opportunity for
questions and answers, this is a powerful,
engaging form of training.

5. Lecture
Trainees usually watch and listen, although some versions of
lecturing permits questions (effective, especially if you invite
trainees to write on the board or ask for feedback that you
write on the board).
• Video portion. Lectures can be broken up with video
portions that explain sections of the training topic or that
present case studies for discussion.
• PowerPoint presentation. Presentation software is used to
create customized group training sessions that are led by an
instructor. Training materials are provided with projectors
and the content is displayed on a large screen for any
number of trainees. Employees can also use the programs
individually, which allows for easy make-up sessions for
employees who miss the group session.

6. Personal Conference
An informal & unstructured method which focuses on the personalities
of trainer and the trainee, where they jointly analyze problems, such as
effective use of selling time, route planning and call scheduling and
handling unusual selling problems.
These conferences has a no specified location to be held at and is
usually after the trainee has called upon a client or a prospect.
Case Discussion
Write ups of selling and other problems encountered on the job
provide the bases for group discussions. They aim to develop a
situation sufficiently to stimulate involvement of the trainers where
they can identify the issues, the relevant facts and the diverse
alternatives and choose the appropriate one.

7. Role Play
“Act out or perform the part of a person or character, for example as a technique in
training”
Trainer describing the situation and the different personalities involved. Trainer
provides all the required items and designates each trainee to play a particular
character.
Benefits of Role play-
1. Learn to accept the criticism form others, & the groups recognizes that sound
suggestion for everyone benefit
2. Trainee criticizes anthers performance, that individual has an incentive no to repeat
the same mistake later again
3. Role players practice introspection through participating in the appraisal of their
own performances.
4. Helps in generating new ideas and approaches
5. Helps the trainee to learn valuable tricks and experienced personnel are kept alert
as a matter of personal pride.
6. Role players gain experience, which help later in handling difficult selling
situation.

8. Case Study
Adidas, Holistic Sales Training Programme
Business Issue: Seeking a Coach
Although there are instances when the customer knows what they want in a
product, and will stop at nothing to purchase it, there are many instances
where external factors influence their decision. A poorly trained employee can
quickly influence a customer’s decision negatively. In a large number of stores
within their emerging market territory, adidas discovered that this was
happening at undesirable levels. It became clear that there was no passion for
the customer.
The inspiration for change is a result of adidas’ mission to create employees
that are knowledgeable regarding their latest technological developments and,
more importantly, proud to be selling their products. By employing mystery
shopping, the qualitative assessment tool, adidas systematically took note of
specific flaws which they knew had to be eliminated in order to raise employee
awareness and, in turn, create more sales.

9. High employee turnover was another reason for seeking help from DOOR. It was clear that a self-defeating cycle was perpetuating itself at
adidas stores: low-skilled employees were not making many sales nor being promoted and thus, were leaving the stores to look for
employment elsewhere. For DOOR, the solution was obvious. By empowering employees with the necessary skills to raise sales, and
instilling them with a bond to adidas, both problems could be solved through one comprehensive training programme.
Adidas’ Path Towards Passion
By identifying and understanding their flaws, adidas was able to find a suitable partner that would aid them in training and coaching their
store managers which would internally serve as a means to train their employees. DOOR would lay the foundation for adidas, helping them
achieve their desired goals and vision. At the core of this partnership is the development of improvement points which would be tailored to
each store. DOOR’s belief in global presence and local excellence ensured that only a perfect fit for each store would be acceptable.
• The first task was creating a passion for adidas within the employees. For this, DOOR created “Knowing adidas,” the overall objective of
which is evident through its title. This programme was created to ensure that within a years time, all new employees and managers
would be on the same wavelength concerning adidas’ vision, mission, strategy, and future. Upon completion of the programme, all
adidas retail employees would convey the same message regarding adidas’ organisation, products and technologies, sales skills and
visual merchandising. A goal of this task was for employees to be able to give an informative, yet interesting description of adidas in a
1-minute presentation.
• After designing a curriculum, the first step was to train their store managers with DOOR’s specifically tailored courseware to the point
that they would be able to coach their employees for an extended period of time. The process began with a Train the Trainer (TTT)
programme, delivered by a DOOR Master Trainer to adidas store managers. The TTT contains an overview of the training programme,
guidelines on how to deliver the training as well as coaching support. This programme emphasises both effective leadership attitudes
and the maximisation of learning results. It describes the “You-approach,” where employees are instructed to focus their comments
and insights on the customer, and champion the tailoring of language where appropriate. This programme heavily emphasises the
coaching aspect of teaching and tries to cultivate a friendly competitive sales atmosphere.
Implementing Change
• Change never comes without some form of resistance. Therefore, DOOR dedicated a large portion of the training programme to gaining
authority and respect from our customers’ team because we believe this is the best method to minimise difficulties resulting from
change-reluctant employees. DOOR also recognises the importance of active listening, constructive criticism, and asking open-ended
questions; thus, a module is dedicated to each of these topics respectively. Each module is couched within the 6 facets of “passion for
performance,” the slogan of our adidas programme. The 6 areas of selling targeted were:
smile—eye contact (how to successfully engage customers),consumer—modes (different ways to respond to consumer types), listen—
understand (determining and fulfilling consumer needs), product—presentation (learning about products and how to present this
knowledge), fitting room—experience (understanding the influence of the fitting room), consumer—passion (developing a desire to create
enthusiastic consumers)

10. • Solidifying Change
Thus, while the passion for performance is a sales programme, the “52 Training
pitches” was used for anchoring the recently acquired knowledge. These pitches were
given from a DOOR Master Trainer to the store managers, which they delivered to
their employees. On an allocated day of the week, the store manager must dedicate
30 minutes to his employees and expand upon 1 of the 52 “pitches.” Each pitch is a
short saying which conveys a specific message targeted at improving crucial aspects of
selling, which were separated into 5 different categories:
• customer enthusiasm
• sales
• products
• visual merchandising
• complaints
As this is a continuous project, after the training has been completed there are
supporting materials and embedding tools which reinforce the teachings. It is through
the process of embedding this programme’s teachings that the employees truly
became better salespeople for an extended period of time.