Stop Wasting Money on Sales Training
‘I’ve just discovered that I’ve got a sales problem!’
The speaker was Christine, a very thoughtful L&D person who had hired us for two contracts with her company. We had invited Christine to take part in our sales training program, and she had been an intelligent and enthusiastic participant.
It was two weeks later, and we were having one of the coaching conversations that follow our training sessions.
‘I’ve had three vice-presidents call me this morning. All three want ‘more sales training’ for their teams. This is the sort of request I’ve been living with for two years, and now I see what’s wrong with it. They have no idea of the problems they are trying to solve!. They just want to throw ‘training’ at their sales teams and hope everything works out. When it doesn’t, we just do it all over again!
If your company has a thoughtful, integrated sales and sales management training program that has been designed for your business, is executed with discipline, measured for results, and continually embedded month after month by sales managers, consider yourself fortunate indeed. You’re in good shape.
Many companies, however, just can’t seem to figure out how to get from where they are to where they want to be in sales. They either waste a lot of money trying one thing after another, or they waste a lot of money trying to hire the right salespeople, letting go of those that don’t produce, and then starting all over again.
It is these companies that are searching for a way forward. If you’re with one of these companies, you have a role to play in helping them find their way. You’re on the front lines, you see salespeople struggling, and you’ve probably got some good ideas about what is needed.
If you’re going to help your company find the right kind of sales training for the people you manage, and for yourself, it helps to address head on some of the falsehoods that prevent executives from investing wisely in the training of their sales force. Here are some of the key misconceptions that are in the way of transforming a sales force:
Salespeople are born, not bred. Sales is a science as well as an art. The problem is that our academic institutions haven’t fully appreciated that yet. There are many courses on finance, strategy, marketing, supply chain, product production, and business strategy but virtually none in sales and sales management.
When companies don’t know that sales is a profession that can be taught, they spend enormous amounts of money searching for ‘proven’ salespeople. Sometimes it works out, often it doesn’t. And, companies wind up with no common understanding of how they sell and, often, with prima donnas who don’t play well together.
The truth is that anyone who wants to sell can learn to sell. It's a profession just like any other – and a lucrative one at that. Great selling leads company growth. Isn’t it time to learn to do it right?
‘We can’t train anyone until we weed out the people who aren’t going to make it.’ This is a variation on the ‘born, not bred’ theme. Companies spend money on testing programs to identify those who ‘just don’t have the profile to succeed in sales.’
It would be difficult to express just how offensive we find that approach. Suffice it to say that it wastes further time and money, enrages your sales force who feel unfairly judged, and – again- misses the point that anyone can learn to sell and sell well.
‘Sales training is like every other training – you attend a class and then you go make it work.’ This belief leads companies to hire one training supplier after another. The latest ‘flavor of the month’ shows up, provides a few days of training, hands out a happy sheet at the end of the training which reports satisfied customers, then leaves town glibly saying, ‘You now have everything you need to succeed.’
Sales is not like other professions. It requires people who can maintain an attitude of possibility under enormous pressures, stick to a discipline of leading a customer – often against their will – through a series of steps for the customer's own good, and have the discipline and backbone to only do those things which lead to a sale. I
Furthermore, it's a science that must be learned in the field, applying in real time what was learned in the classroom. Any training supplier that doesn’t provide this follow-up isn’t worth hiring in the first place.
Sales training takes place over time, sales managers have to learn how to be responsible for this development – and this takes consistent, dedicated, skilled facilitation. If companies don’t want to do this, they will be wise not to spend money in the first place.
What can you do to ensure that your company provides training that will actually change things for good?
First, just stop settling for half-measures: ‘sheep dip’ approaches with off-the-shelf- training that treats all salespeople the same, and ‘hit and run’ training programs that promise nirvana in a short period of time. You know better.
Then, start with the following steps and see where your natural smarts take you.
Recruit people for your team who want to be great at selling and who exude a sense of possibility and who love to learn new things. In short, hire for attitude. Competence and execution can be taught.
Find a training supplier who will:
Help you develop a methodology for selling that is customer-centric, works for your business, and provides a methodology that everyone in your company can understand and follow.
Train your people to execute this methodology, help them embed classroom training in the field, and do so in a way that your people are intrigued, enthusiastic, and grateful for what they’re learning.
Train you and all sales managers to shift their leadership style so that they can develop their people to sustain what they learned in their training. This is how you create change over time.
Ensure that senior management is completely invested – that they want to be trained as well about how to lead so that they can do their part to sustain change in the sales force. If they won’t do this, don’t say yes to the training. It will end in tears – lots of money spent, lots of frustration generated, little real improvement.
Commit yourself wholeheartedly to the full development of your people. Use sales training to change lives – first yours, and then theirs – sales success will follow.