Comments on: A Sales Training Question

By: Christina Lever

Christina Lever — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:38:06 +0000

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!

By: Nick Moreno

Nick Moreno — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:04:10 +0000

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

By: E. Elfferich

E. Elfferich — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:28:48 +0000

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.

By: The Best Sales Management Blogs and Articles for the Week of August 17, 2008 - Ask The Manager

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:29:55 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Nesh Thompson

Nesh Thompson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:43:29 +0000

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.