Challenge 2: Some Salespeople Have Ten Years Selling Experience; Most Have One Year’s Experience Ten Times

It used to be common for large corporations  to put their new sales recruits ththrough a twelve to eighteen-month training program.

Today, salespeople consider themselves “lucky” if they get an initial two weeks of training.

Have companies discovered that training doesn’t really pay off? On the contrary! Training appears to be even more important today than years ago and it is getting more important all the time.

This extract from ‘All Together Now’ by Sir John Harvey-Jones articulates the last point perfectly. “There is practically no area of business where the difference between rhetoric and actuality is greater than in the handling of people. Every businessman will always claim that it is the people in his organisation who are the key to its success. Indeed it is difficult to argue anything else. A company consists of money (which can ebb and flow almost with the speed of light), of fixed investments (which by definition are obsolescent from the very moment that they have been made), and a range of products – and hopefully a market position – which are under continual attack from competitors who are trying to produce better and more desirable products for less costs. What a company does have, and handled rightly can maintain, is the commitment, skills and abilities of its people. This is constantly attested to by the statements in company annual reports – I cannot remember the last time I failed to see the chairman’s last sentence paying tribute to his people. Yet despite all these facts our skills at enabling our people to give their best, and continuously beat the best that come against them, are remarkably tenuous. Moreover, this area of activity is seldom subject to the sort of analysis, debate and experimentation so readily devoted to fields such as production or marketing. Even though we are all welded to the concept of continuous improvement, when did you last see an improvement plan for the management of your people? If you have seen one, I would bet long money that the plan referred to reduction of administration costs or overheads, rather than being a plan consciously adopted to enable more of our people to contribute more”.

Less Training With Higher Expectations

So, what’s going on here? How should a Sales Director reconcile the fact that many corporations today provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past, yet attach increasing importance to staff development?

This is hardly a surprise, because the current stock market ethos creates a powerful disincentive for firms to invest in their people. A firm’s investment of human capital, in the form of training and other forms of education of staff, is not separable from the general expenditure of a corporation. It therefore appears as a cost on the corporate balance sheet.

Difficult Times

Alas, many Sales Directors, having concluded that their best strategy is to cut back on training, look instead to hire people who already possess all the talent and skills needed to do the job and send them out into the field armed with what they know. But many Sales Directors know how difficult it is to find skilled salespeople. And anyway it is not possible to equate experience or seniority with success.

Huge Demands On Salespeople

The fact is that selling in today’s climate is both an art and a science. Selling is a profession that demands a far wider range of skills than ever before – skills that require continual fine-tuning and constant practice.

Lack Of Ongoing Reinforcement And Development

The operative word here is “ongoing”. Even if salespeople have undergone progressive sales training, there’s no guarantee that they will be successful. It is common knowledge that skills grow rusty over time and salespeople are prone to pick-up bad habits along the way or to simply skip steps and take shortcuts that can lead to long-term trouble. Perhaps even more important these days, is the fact that markets, competition, technologies, and customer preferences are all in a constant and accelerating state of change. This fact requires that sales people are able and willing to rethink their sales strategy and approach frequently and receive a regular top-up of skills and motivational coaching.

Latest News: Today's TSE Masterclass is going to be, to quote Monty Python "something completely different"

Edgy Conversations: An Explosion of Opportunity
Thursday November 19th 2009 1:00 PM EASTERN

Ever wonder how some sales executives land big deals with big players and you feel stuck chatting up the small guys about opportunities that will probably never happen.  Do you want to get the attention of the right people?  Do you want to see the number of opportunities you are working on explode?  Learn how to have "Edgy Conversations".  Learn how to have conversations that matter.... Presented by Daniel Waldschmidt    

I can assure you, it is going to be very, very, interesting - and you can grab your place, with my compliments HERE