There has been much written lately about why sales training is so often ineffective and how to improve its impact on the sales team. Many of these articles can be found on The Customer Collective.
In a recent blog post Dave Stein discusses his email exchange with Tim Sullivan, a director of Sales Performance International, regarding SPI’s public sales training seminar offerings. Dave’s original question to Tim was how SPI could justify a public training seminar when both Dave and SPI agree that sales training has little impact unless there is an underlying change in the company’s business process.
I’m in agreement with Dave and Tim that in order to maximize the impact and value of sales training it must coincide with a fundamental change in the company itself. That, however, is more wishful thinking than reality for the great majority of companies.
My experience as employee, trainer, and consultant is that few companies-especially small and mid-size companies–provide sales training. Most companies provide-or at least try to provide-substantial and effective product training, but little or no sales training. Many companies in fact believe that their product training is sales training.
Some companies do recognize the need for sales training and try to address it in a variety of ways from having their management team act as trainers to making available to their team a library of sales books, CD’s, and DVD’s to sending their team members to public training seminars. A few-these tend to be the larger companies-try to aggressively address the issue of sales training either through a steady dose of outside training companies or their internal training department. Some do it well, some do it very well, some are just spinning their wheels and spending large sums of money for little return.
Most salespeople are left to fend for themselves; hence the hundreds of thousands of sales books, thousands of sales training sites, personal coaches, and flood of CD’s, DVD’s, sales forums, article sites, and other training products and services targeted to the individual salesperson. Frankly, most of these resources simply parrot one another, although there are a few that challenge conventional thinking and offer new takes on addressing the increasingly difficult tasks of finding, connecting with and selling today’s business and individual consumer.
Worse for the salesperson, the training industry in many ways is more an industry of credibility than effectiveness. Business is often acquired through credibility–that is publishing books, writing articles, giving great presentations, being quoted more than the next person. But having credibility isn’t the same as being an effective trainer. One may be a great thought leader in training without having the ability to effectively train. Likewise, one may be a great trainer capable of taking the thought leader’s insights and turning them into highly effective and behavior changing training, but not be able to make any original contributions of their own. The former has great credibility and little effectiveness; the latter no credibility but great effectiveness.
The problem for salespeople-and ultimately for trainers-is how to create some semblance of a comprehensive, workable, and effective training regimen out of this vast assortment of possible training options. Salespeople tend to pick up a book, watch a CD, or attend a training seminar based on what they feel they need at the moment. Often it is simply desperation that moves them to seek out and engage training, hoping to address a critical gap in their sales business.
In a fragmented industry where each company or individual trainer is free to seek business where they can find it and how they will (sometimes with less than ethical means and fanciful claims), is there a way for an individual salesperson or a very small company to acquire the objective guidance and direction they need in order to create a comprehensive training program for themselves or their small team?
One of the problems as I see it is the individuality of people in general and what works for someone may not work for another. I went on a sales training course some time ago, and can say that I got very little not because of the content but because I did not engage with the trainer… I also did not engage with my 3rd year secondary school history teacher for the same reason. Were they bad at their job.. not really, but I just learned in a different way.
Were I to look for a sales trainer now, I would still have to base any decisions on geographical factors, my own perceptions based on dialogue with the trainer and recommendations from those people that I trust. Does that guarantee the right training program for me? Not really, but as you say changes in behaviour should come from a ‘fundamental’ wish to change. I think there is a distinctive difference between a person who attends something because they have to and one who actively wants to improve. A person who seeks enlightening has already made a journey that makes change that much easier… actually that sounds very zen doesn’t it.
Comment by Nesh Thompson — August 12, 2008 @ 5:43 am |
[...] A Sales Training Question By Paul McCord There has been much written lately about why sales training is so often ineffective and how to improve its impact on the sales team. Many of these articles can be found on The Customer Collective. … Sales and Sales Management Blog – http://salesandmanagementblog.com [...]
Pingback by The Best Sales Management Blogs and Articles for the Week of August 17, 2008 - Ask The Manager — August 16, 2008 @ 11:29 pm |
Sales trainers shall always be challenged to be ahead or in Dutch words must walk in front of the music. That’s a tough challenge. Today it means that it’s not sufficient anymore to combine technical expertise with excellent sales skills. This is due to the fact sales in general shifted more from product selling and solution selling towards Value Add Selling i.e. Consultancy Selling. In fact you have to do it all! During the years I always asked myself, what should be really an added value to sales people. So in the 90’s I developed a program where nevertheless product knowledge play a vital role in order to become a successful solution seller. But in those days you could not be a successful solution seller without a technical background. This is what I learned. So your program must be able to differentiate towards your audience. At the same time we saw in the 90’s that there was a big demand for very specific sales competences. Portfolio management, key account sales etc. and last not least there was a growing interest for very specific behavior kind of stuff. This resulted in the 90’s in the creation of for example: successful selling of automation training courses. Today everything has changed. Selling products or solutions become an obsolete issue particularly for big companies. Today you need to be able to attribute to the business of a customer. TCO selling is an example but it is just a start. BPM plays a vital role today. VOC, six sigma methodology etc are more and more a demand from sales management. Although six sigma exist since the early 80’s ( GE, Motorola ) it has not been implemented for sales forces in general for companies that much. Walking in front of the music? I am afraid not. Six sigma methodologies are a vital necessity. The competences of sales engineers shift from technical towards financial matters. But having said this I already faced circumstances were the lack of a technical background resulted in problems with the customer. So we have to do it all? No today we see sales teams where these competencies are being covered. If a particular company has a competence matrix in place then it is feasible together with HRM to know exactly what the knowledge gap is of a particular sales person. This will result in a custom fit sales training program. This is what happens today in big companies. So yes you need to know about your products and solutions. Yes you need to know where your company is heading for, but it is not enough anymore. The successful sales person of today knows about the business of his customer and thus knows how his company can really help improving the business of his customer. Today Sales training will consist of Mapping Sales workflows, using SIPOC and Cause effect diagrams. The process of selecting the best fit i.e. most valuable customer will play another important role of sales in this decade.
Comment by E. Elfferich — August 20, 2008 @ 4:28 am |
Thanks… I enjoyed your article.
You must give your employees the tools they need to succeed.
I’ll be back to read more of your work.
Nick
Comment by Nick Moreno — September 27, 2008 @ 6:04 pm |
I agree wholeheartedly! Many companies truly do believe that their product training IS THE sales training. However, nothing can be further from the truth. After all, there is no product if there is no seasoned salesman!
Comment by Christina Lever — October 1, 2008 @ 11:38 am |