Why Monday Morning Is the Enemy of Sales Training

In sales, the greatest challenge for sales improvement is Monday mornings. As a sales manager, you train, coach, model, and message to your reps on the behaviors that you would prefer they demonstrate. Behaviors that you know will bring them, and you, more wins, and more success. However, Monday morning is an almost insurmountable obstacle to behavior change.

What’s So Great About Monday Morning 

Many times, as a sales manager you invest in sales training for your team, and that training can be a great experience for you and the team. The new ideas and processes they are exposed to would be very effective when applied in the customer engagement. However, you observe that many, maybe most, of your sales reps will not apply the knowledge, even in the very next week after the training. Why?  Monday morning!

Human beings are creatures of habit…meaning we tend to do the same thing we always do…like, we get up and brush our teeth the same way, we pull on our socks the same way, we back out of the drive the same way, and we make the first call on that customer…yep, the same way.  We want to get back into that routine so badly, we ignore the great training and knowledge we learned the week before, knowing then that the knowledge would help us win more business. We are just more comfortable crossing our arms the same old way.

It feels good, comfortable…

Reach In and Change Monday Morning Effect 

The key to breaking up the MM effect, is to have the sales rep “contract” with you, their sales manager, to commit to specific behavioral changes on their next Monday morning. If possible, have your trainer complete an exercise with your team near the end of the training program, where the sales rep individually describes the (training related) behavior change they will institute Monday morning.

To insure the sales reps are reinforced on this key action, arrange for your Monday morning call-in to happen early…around 8-9am. This gives you the high-payback opportunity to reinforce the contract the rep made with you to institute the behavior change. Then check and measure the behavior change. Your personal attention on each sales rep, to actuate on their commitment to you to adopt the new behavior, will reinforce the actions that improve their sales production. If you can hold the team to this action for Monday mornings, you will see the faster, more effective adoption of the new, targeted behaviors, and higher sales productivity.

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