Tweet

Is Your Sales Training Demonstrating 20/80 or 80/20?

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Where are you putting your sales training efforts and what are the positive, measurable results from those actions? Are they 20/80 or 80/20?

Is Your Sales Training Demonstrating 20/80 or 80/20?

The Pareto Principle suggests that 20% of your sales people. will generate 80% of your results. This principle is based upon the work of an Italian economist who researched land ownership in Italy and discovered that 20% of the people in Italy owned 80% of the land.

When examining your sales training, where is the most time invested? The answer for the vast majority is on sales skills such as:

• Finding and following up on leads
• Fact finding
• Turning stalls into objections
• Delivering a winning presentation
• Closing the sales (I prefer earning the sale, but that is for another day.)

These sales skills and others probably consume at least 80% of all curriculums from content to time. However sales research suggests that almost 50% of all sales leads are not followed up. Follow up is an essential sales skill. With this data, it would suggest that the investing 80% of time on sales skills will probably only deliver 20% of the actual sales results.

What would happen if you focused just 20% of your sales curriculum on a proven goal achievement process and redeveloping the necessary attitudes for sales success? Given that many sales training programs invest little to no time on goal setting and attitudes, a 20% focus would seem like a lot of potentially wasted time for those sales skills based trainers. Sales Coaching Tip: Using a proven goal achievement process is the best place to start all communication and then determine what obstacles have to be overcome to achieve the sales goals.

Returning to the fact that almost 50% of all leads are not followed up suggest that performance failure is far more an issue of poor attitudes than a lack of knowledge. Sales professionals know that they need to follow up, but choose not to take that action. That choice is one founded within the core foundational belief systems of that individual. Until those beliefs systems are challenged, the goal to have the sales training deliver a positive return on investment will probably never be realized.

Yes your sales training can deliver incredible results provided you invest some time in integrating a proven goal achievement process and developing positive attitudes. By taking this action, you will not be setting your sales people up to fail and you will realize your goal to increase sales.

Related Articles
  Bench Strength and a Hard Driving Sales Force
  Closing Sales Is Not A Problem, It\'s A Process
  Successful Small Business Owners Know That Education and Training Are Investments Not Costs
  Sales Training Materials that Work!
  Sales Training - short term or long term success?

Article Tags: belief systems, curriculum, curriculums, goal achievement, goal setting, italian economist, lack of knowledge, li li, nbsp, objections, obstacles, pareto principle, performance failure, poor attitudes, sales coaching, sales goals, sales leads, sales professionals, sales skill, sales success



Related Forum Posts
7 words or less for Structogram - Some "7 words or less" (more or less) for Structogram for your comments: Training to get your message across(6) Secrets to get your message across (6) Training so people will listen to you (7) Helping you get your message across (6) Training to learn to get your message across (8) Communications training for yourself and your team (7)
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Budget. - I believe the biggest barrier is related to budget. Training tends to be a normal practice for a big company. But I have to consider it seriously as an entrepreneur.
Hello From Marietta GA! - Hello All! My name is Tim Naylor and I am in Direct Sales! I am glad I have found EC's sites and I hope to learn and share a lot!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why We MUST Reinvent The Wheel

Effective Leadership

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.