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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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So what is the rope test? Take a three to five foot piece of rope and give it to someone near you. Then you hold the other end. Walk away from each other until the rope is right. Next push on your end of the rope.

What happened? Probably nothing other than a couple of smiles! Sales Coaching Tip: The other person can be your potential new customer, strategic partner or center of influence.

The goal of sales training is to improve the sales skills of sales professionals so that the goal to increase sales is achieved. Using the rope test, when you push on the rope, no matter how hard you push, nothing changes, nothing improves.

Failing the rope test suggests that the current sales training is far closer aligned to product based or sales based marketing. The focus using this marketing approach is all on the sales professionals as illustrated by the rope test.

To pass the rope test requires the qualified potential customer or client (a.k.a. prospect) to literally pull the sales professional closer and closer to her or him. For this action to happen requires a different marketing approach that being education based marketing. When this approach is adopted, everything focuses on the potential qualified customer. Hence the sales skills within the sales training need to extend beyond the traditional learning objectives of overcoming stalls and objections, negotiations and presenting the case to active listening and understanding emotional intelligence.

If you want your sales training dollars to deliver a positive return on investment, then make sure your program passes the rope test because your focus is on those sales skills that encourage the rope being pulled and discourage being pushed.

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