Sales Training Doesn't Work
Sales Training Doesn't Work
By Mark Tewart
“If you have a daughter attending school, would you rather her have sex training or sex education?” You may be thinking neither one, but if you had to choose, I’m sure you are going with education. I think that question points out the difference between training and education. Sales training gets a bad name because sales training doesn’t work.
Sales training doesn’t work because it focuses on the wrong things in the wrong way. If you were to research books and training materials on sales for the last one hundred years you would find a vast amount of material on sales techniques, word tracks, objection handling, closing techniques and sales systems. All of those things are good for your sales knowledge and education but they account for only about ten percent of sales success.
What should a salesperson know? - Sales skills, people skills, life skills and marketing skills. Let’s examine sales skills. Most sales skills training information that is in existence is based upon reactive, controlling and manipulative type selling. Society and the business world have changed. Customers smell a salesperson a mile away. No longer will people tolerate sales people using worn out, one hundred year old techniques such as tie-downs and inverted tie-downs. Eager salespeople are being duped by egotistical sales trainers teaching “magic pill” closing techniques.
Do you need to understand word tracks, sales techniques closing techniques? Yes. Is it the key to riches? No. First of all, most sales training focuses on the “what to do” approach. True education deals with what to do, how to do it and most importantly, why to do it. “When the why gets strong the how gets easy.” Sales trainers teaching sales techniques to salespeople in the “what to do method” without communicating a deep understanding why they are to do it, are playing Russian roulette with the salespersons career. Often too much is taken for granted about salespeople understanding what occurs and why in a sales process. Did you really understand why you were being asked to do what you were being told when you first started selling?
When you educate salespeople on selling techniques, try to create understanding about the power of proactive vs. reactive approaches. Instead of spending so much time on objection and problem handling, try to instill what makes these things occur. Delve into the psychological and emotional process a customer goes through and not only how these stumbling blocks occur but how you can proactively eliminate or massage these before they ever come up.
Imagine one of those long winding slides at a pool. You slide a long way down and directly and easily into the pool. A sales process should be the same. Look at any obstacles that potentially and often keep customers from flowing freely down the slide of the sales process and into the pool of buying. Identify, examine and eliminate proactively.
Now let’s look at the people skills aspect of selling. If you become great at this part, you may never need sales techniques again. People buy form people. People buy from people they feel comfortable with and that they like, trust and feel a connection with. Old school sales techniques can actually hinder the relationship with the customer because they cause distrust. People skills are often described as the “soft skills” of selling. In reality, people skills are like a velvet hammer. Examples of people skills are: listening, language, body language and understanding emotional and psychological triggers.
Listening is without a doubt the number one relationship and sales skill. Recently, I spent time with a twenty five year veteran of the automobile business who now consults with dealerships about their sales. After one hour with this person, it was easy to see they tried very hard to talk and impress, but did almost zero listening. Can you imagine being trained to sell by a person who can’t listen? Unfortunately, this is common in training and in sales. Not listening is and probably always will be the number one complaint of customers.
Not only do you have to listen to customers but you have to listen without a predisposed brain. You must TLC - Think Like a Customer. When a salesperson is wrapped up in their own agenda they can’t help the customer with the customer’s agenda.
When you are listening to a customer, try using active listening methods that show that you are listening and trying to understand with empathy. Repeat and respond to what they say and ask. Clarify everything. Stress the importance of helping them get what they want.
Reading and utilizing body language skills will exponentially increase your effectiveness as a communicator. If you want to observe masters of the art of communication and body language, just study Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Putting any politics or feelings about either man aside, just watch how they communicated with people and you find how they could immediately break down barriers with people and create warm feelings. I have often heard the staunchest critics of Bill Clinton that said they loathed the man; explain how he instantly melted them when they were around him. Those people skills used by those two men are learned skills that can be used in a powerful and non-manipulative approach.
All businesses are built upon two businesses: the people business and the marketing business. If you have great sales skills and great life skills but you don’t have customers to use these skills with it won’t matter. Therefore education on marketing becomes an integral part of sales training and sales success. All good salespeople have a “CEO mentality” that they are creating a business within a business. They understand their long term success is built upon becoming non-dependent on the businesses advertising or marketing sources. Individual sales people can often become better grass roots marketers than the business they work for.
There are five ways to increase your bottom line – Increase sales, Increase gross profits, Increase repeat customers, Increase the buying cycle of repeat customers, Create continuity programs that keep customers coming back to buy and service in between the major purchase. A salesperson can create low to no cost marketing programs to do all of these and insure long term and massive success.
Proper sales education must contain specific information on emotional based direct response marketing methods. Lead generation = Dollar Creation. Salespeople must be taught how to create leads from affiliations and database mining.
Demonstrate to your salespeople how to put a fence around their herd of customers through email, email newsletters, postcards, letters, phone calls etc. Too often, salespeople think that it’s the dealerships sole responsibility and the dealership thinks the salesperson is not capable of doing these things and won’t do them if they are taught. The reality is very few business owners and managers know how to do these things so they can’t share with the salespeople and don’t seek educators to teach them because they are not willing to create the expectations to do the things they would be taught. “Speed of the boss, speed of the crew. As the leaders think and act the salespeople shall too.”
The last item of essential education is life skills. More people fail or under-perform their potential because of a lack of essential life skills execution than from any other area of education. Life skills include areas such as, goal setting, attitude and thought mastery, action management, understanding persistence etc.
Salespeople with great sales skills and weak life skills will be short term shooting stars at best. Continual company and individual development is essential to long term growth. I am amazed at how many businesses have an army of people hanging out on the corner in the front of the building “smoking and joking.” Have these salespeople not been educated on life skills or are they simply being “tolerated.” Weak expectations lead to weak results.
Have your salespeople received proper attitude education? Having a good attitude is not just a trite saying. It’s a successful way of life that can be learned. There are tremendous resources of books, CD’s, DVD’s and seminars on nothing but gaining and maintaining an attitude of success. There are specific learned skills for success.
Sales training is like a sun burn – It wears off and then it hurts, leaving you worse off. Education is spaced daily repetition. Education is never-ending and life changing. Sales training does not work, education does. For more information on how to create successful education, email info@tewart.com with the word education in the subject line.
Sales Training Doesnt Work - To learn more about this author, visit Mark Tewart's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
Sales Training Doesn’t Work
By Mark Tewart
“If you have a daughter attending school, would you rather her have sex training or sex education?” You may be thinking neither one, but if you had to choose, I’m sure you are going with education. I think that question points out the difference between training and education. Sales training gets a bad name because sales training doesn’t work.
Sales training doesn’t work because it focuses on the wrong things in the wrong way. If you were to research books and training materials on sales for the last one hundred years you would find a vast amount of material on sales techniques, word tracks, objection handling, closing techniques and sales systems. All of those things are good for your sales knowledge and education but they account for only about ten percent of sales success.
What should a salesperson know? - Sales skills, people skills, life skills and marketing skills. Let’s examine sales skills. Most sales skills training information that is in existence is based upon reactive, controlling and manipulative type selling. Society and the business world have changed. Customers smell a salesperson a mile away. No longer will people tolerate sales people using worn out, one hundred year old techniques such as tie-downs and inverted tie-downs. Eager salespeople are being duped by egotistical sales trainers teaching “magic pill” closing techniques.
Do you need to understand word tracks, sales techniques closing techniques? Yes. Is it the key to riches? No. First of all, most sales training focuses on the “what to do” approach. True education deals with what to do, how to do it and most importantly, why to do it. “When the why gets strong the how gets easy.” Sales trainers teaching sales techniques to salespeople in the “what to do method” without communicating a deep understanding why they are to do it, are playing Russian roulette with the salespersons career. Often too much is taken for granted about salespeople understanding what occurs and why in a sales process. Did you really understand why you were being asked to do what you were being told when you first started selling?
When you educate salespeople on selling techniques, try to create understanding about the power of proactive vs. reactive approaches. Instead of spending so much time on objection and problem handling, try to instill what makes these things occur. Delve into the psychological and emotional process a customer goes through and not only how these stumbling blocks occur but how you can proactively eliminate or massage these before they ever come up.
Imagine one of those long winding slides at a pool. You slide a long way down and directly and easily into the pool. A sales process should be the same. Look at any obstacles that potentially and often keep customers from flowing freely down the slide of the sales process and into the pool of buying. Identify, examine and eliminate proactively.
Now let’s look at the people skills aspect of selling. If you become great at this part, you may never need sales techniques again. People buy form people. People buy from people they feel comfortable with and that they like, trust and feel a connection with. Old school sales techniques can actually hinder the relationship with the customer because they cause distrust. People skills are often described as the “soft skills” of selling. In reality, people skills are like a velvet hammer. Examples of people skills are: listening, language, body language and understanding emotional and psychological triggers.
Listening is without a doubt the number one relationship and sales skill. Recently, I spent time with a twenty five year veteran of the automobile business who now consults with dealerships about their sales. After one hour with this person, it was easy to see they tried very hard to talk and impress, but did almost zero listening. Can you imagine being trained to sell by a person who can’t listen? Unfortunately, this is common in training and in sales. Not listening is and probably always will be the number one complaint of customers.
Not only do you have to listen to customers but you have to listen without a predisposed brain. You must TLC - Think Like a Customer. When a salesperson is wrapped up in their own agenda they can’t help the customer with the customer’s agenda.
When you are listening to a customer, try using active listening methods that show that you are listening and trying to understand with empathy. Repeat and respond to what they say and ask. Clarify everything. Stress the importance of helping them get what they want.
Reading and utilizing body language skills will exponentially increase your effectiveness as a communicator. If you want to observe masters of the art of communication and body language, just study Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Putting any politics or feelings about either man aside, just watch how they communicated with people and you find how they could immediately break down barriers with people and create warm feelings. I have often heard the staunchest critics of Bill Clinton that said they loathed the man; explain how he instantly melted them when they were around him. Those people skills used by those two men are learned skills that can be used in a powerful and non-manipulative approach.
All businesses are built upon two businesses: the people business and the marketing business. If you have great sales skills and great life skills but you don’t have customers to use these skills with it won’t matter. Therefore education on marketing becomes an integral part of sales training and sales success. All good salespeople have a “CEO mentality” that they are creating a business within a business. They understand their long term success is built upon becoming non-dependent on the businesses advertising or marketing sources. Individual sales people can often become better grass roots marketers than the business they work for.
There are five ways to increase your bottom line – Increase sales, Increase gross profits, Increase repeat customers, Increase the buying cycle of repeat customers, Create continuity programs that keep customers coming back to buy and service in between the major purchase. A salesperson can create low to no cost marketing programs to do all of these and insure long term and massive success.
Proper sales education must contain specific information on emotional based direct response marketing methods. Lead generation = Dollar Creation. Salespeople must be taught how to create leads from affiliations and database mining.
Demonstrate to your salespeople how to put a fence around their herd of customers through email, email newsletters, postcards, letters, phone calls etc. Too often, salespeople think that it’s the dealerships sole responsibility and the dealership thinks the salesperson is not capable of doing these things and won’t do them if they are taught. The reality is very few business owners and managers know how to do these things so they can’t share with the salespeople and don’t seek educators to teach them because they are not willing to create the expectations to do the things they would be taught. “Speed of the boss, speed of the crew. As the leaders think and act the salespeople shall too.”
The last item of essential education is life skills. More people fail or under-perform their potential because of a lack of essential life skills execution than from any other area of education. Life skills include areas such as, goal setting, attitude and thought mastery, action management, understanding persistence etc.
Salespeople with great sales skills and weak life skills will be short term shooting stars at best. Continual company and individual development is essential to long term growth. I am amazed at how many businesses have an army of people hanging out on the corner in the front of the building “smoking and joking.” Have these salespeople not been educated on life skills or are they simply being “tolerated.” Weak expectations lead to weak results.
Have your salespeople received proper attitude education? Having a good attitude is not just a trite saying. It’s a successful way of life that can be learned. There are tremendous resources of books, CD’s, DVD’s and seminars on nothing but gaining and maintaining an attitude of success. There are specific learned skills for success.
Sales training is like a sun burn – It wears off and then it hurts, leaving you worse off. Education is spaced daily repetition. Education is never-ending and life changing. Sales training does not work, education does. For more information on how to create successful education, email info@tewart.com with the word education in the subject line.
Sales Training Doesnt Work - To learn more about this author, visit Mark Tewart's Website.
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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