10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 9 of 10

9. Sales Managers Aren’t Engaged in the Training

When sales managers don’t attend training it sends powerful signals to the sales team:

• This isn’t that important…don’t pay attention!
• The manager doesn’t believe in this training enough to want to learn the strategies and techniques and be able to help the team.
• The manager is beyond learning…but the team is still stupid and needs help.
• The manager would rather sit back at headquarters instead of being out on the front line with the troops.

We’re not suggesting that managers need to sit in the training class 100% of the time, but a regular presence where sellers can observe their participation is important.

Here are a few ways managers can make an impact by participating in any training programme:

• Talk with the trainer prior to the course and find out how you might participate in a productive way.
• Help the trainer observe role-plays and offer feedback.
• Jump in and role-play yourself (willing to do what you’re asking your team to do).
• Follow-up the program by forming small groups to begin implementing the strategies and techniques into real-life action steps.

A major part of our training programme is the making actual cold calls and it makes a great impact when a sales manager sits down and bangs out some calls right along with the sales crew!

If/when you are ready for some sales training that incorporates the sales manager, call me on 0412 921 292.

Incidentally, many sales managers choose training and trainers that allow them to avoid involvement.  Is that you?  Is that your sales manager?  Maybe the CEO needs to insist on involvement of the sales manager(s).

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 8 of 10

8. Companies Don’t Understand ‘Call Reluctance’ As the Silent Saboteur of their Sales Training Plans

Call Reluctance is a silent killer of sales careers and sales organisations. It will also sabotage your sales training efforts – leaving you scratching your head as to why sales results aren’t improving after all the training you’ve provided for your people.

One of the most common problems we hear from managers regarding their training is, “We still aren’t improving our results!” Chances are good that this sales team may have recently completed a two or three-day seminar on something like the “Art of Selling” where they learned tons of new strategies and ideas. Maybe they role-played several scenarios and watched well-produced video tapes. The results however, haven’t changed – pipelines are dry and sales are barely trickling in.

The problem is call reluctance. Salespeople are very susceptible to catching it, and the chilling part is, no one may even know this person is sick!

At these seminars, salespeople learn great strategy – all about how to qualify, question, present, answer objections, close and negotiate – but if they’re not making enough calls and filling the pipeline, all of that training is useless!

Managers buy training to help equip their people, but without addressing call reluctance, it’s like covering someone in band-aids who has a deadly blood disease.

The answer is not to stay away from strategy training, it’s to elevate call reluctance prevention training and activities to go along with it!

If/when you are ready for some sales training that is designed to overcome call reluctance, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 7 of 10

7. Companies Don’t Insist on a Solid Return on Investmen (ROI) From Their Sales Training

For many managers, sales training is just another line item expense – “What’s it going to cost us?” Rarely will they approach it from the return standpoint with the question, “How much is this program going to create for us?” This is the question to ask when it comes to training, for if the return is always two or three times greater than the expense, who cares how much it costs?

The problem is, most sales trainers really don’t want to have this accountability conversation. Thy may talk in general terms about how training is “an investment in success”, and how you should “see some good results”, but that’s about as far as most trainers are willing to go down the accountability track.

We feel very differently about this issue. We feel that a client not only has the right, but they have an obligation to demand a solid, trackable return on their investment when it comes to a sales training programme.

Some of this return should be very tangible and trackable – watching indices like the number of new appointments booked, or closing percentages, or size of the average order. Such areas will have an immediate and very real impact on overall profitability.

Other return items are less tangible – pleasant side effects that happen with good training – like an overall more positive atmosphere, reduced labour turn-over, better relationships with management, etc.

The answer is to DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY from whichever training programme you’re considering. Together with the trainer, come up with four or five trackable, tangible metrics that you will follow to determine the success of a programme.

You may even suggest that the trainer tie a portion of their fee to the success of the programme!

This involves a bit of risk for the trainer, so the opportunity for reward should be there as well. Perhaps you can work an arrangement where you agree to pay 50% of the program as an upfront fee, and the remaining fee is tied to performance, plus a 25% bonus should you hit even higher numbers.

We feel that any training programme or trainer that can’t provide a solid ROI tracking process and be willing to tie compensation to results, doesn’t have real confidence in achieving success.  And if they wouldn’t hire themselves, should you?

If/when you are ready for some sales training with fees linked to performance, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 6 of 10

6. Companies Buy “Sugar Pills” vs Real Solutions to their Sales Problems 

Many sales seminars are nothing but “sugar pills” – great for a quick burst of energy, but the effects wear off quickly.

We’ve all seen studies that show how much information is actually retained in a typical seminar – only about 20% that day…and only 10% by the next day! Then over time, almost everything drifts away, except maybe one or two basic thoughts.

(And admittedly, sometimes all we need are one or two good ideas.  But that’s not sales training!)

So basically, one-day seminars aren’t good for much beyond waking people up temporarily and maybe implanting a few new ideas.

In order to change behaviour on a long-term basis, management must be dedicated to a training program that is consistent, on-going, progressive and engaging.

If/when you are ready for some sales training that is more than just a temporary buzz, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 5 of 10

5. Companies Mistake Product Training for Sales Training

Technically speaking, product training is a part of sales training…it just shouldn’t be the core of sales training.

The core of sales training should focus on the fundamentals of what makes salespeople successful – namely prospecting and closing, or as we put it –Filling and Flushing the pipeline.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with product training, too much of it, without a balance of fundamentals training, can create salespeople who are talking way too much and not listening.

Sellers get so full of product training all they do is run around and spew their new-found knowledge. While they’re doing that, they forget all about questioning, listening and uncovering needs.

The answer is not to forget about product training altogether, but to make it part of an overall training mix – with the fundamentals at the core.

If/when you are ready for some sales training that complements your product training, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 4 of 10

4. Companies Give Salespeople the Training They WANT vs the Training They NEED ie they don’t treat them like a REAL professional

If we truly treated salespeople like professionals, we’d never allow them to pick the training they want vs giving them the training they NEED.

You might be asking yourself, “Wait a minute, what do you mean? If my people are professionals, why can’t they figure out what they need?”

The easiest analogy to understand in this case is that of a professional athlete.

Take the US Super Bowl Champions for example. Every year, since the NFL was created, the Super Bowl Champs (along with every other team) gather all their belongings and they trudge out to some empty college campus where they put on a training camp.

And what do they do in this annual summer ritual? They return to the fundamentals of the game – blocking, tackling, throwing, catching, kicking, etc. Things they’ve been doing every single year since they were eight years old.

These are athletes who make millions. Who are the best of the very best. And there they are every year…sweating in the summer sun, returning to the core elements of what makes them successful football players and a successful football team.

Ask these athletes about what it is they WANT to do, and their answer may be – “anything BUT training camp!”

We talk with managers who tell us, “I polled the sales staff about what they felt they needed to learn, and none of them felt they needed to work on call reluctance.”

Of course not. Who wants to go to training camp? But who NEEDS to go to training camp? EVERYONE!!!

Every person, in every profession, should return to the fundamentals of success every year, and reinforce this every week.  Especially sales professionals.

We’re not saying that a management team shouldn’t listen to their sales team about skill-sets they feel they need. However, management must keep in mind that sales fundamentals, particularly new business generation, involve things many salespeople aren’t comfortable doing (like picking up the phone and making cold calls) – thus they may never say, “We want to work on making more cold calls.”

If/when you are ready for some sales training that gets back to the fundamentals, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 3 of 10

3. Companies Don’t Focus On The Fundamentals of Sales Success

We define the fundamentals of sales success as basically the process of FILLING AND FLUSHING.

• Filling the pipeline through PROSPECTING
• Flushing the pipeline through CLOSING

These are the “blocking and tackling” of sales. If a salesperson focuses on these two areas consistently…they will be successful.

Unfortunately, many organisations like to feel that their people are “beyond” these fundamentals. We will hear them say, “Look, we hire experienced, professional people…they should know this stuff by now. We’re interested in more advanced ideas and concepts.”

Thus, they will avoid focusing regularly on these fundamentals of sales success…until there’s a problem.

It’s funny how when there is a serious problem with the results a sales staff is creating, we rarely hear a manager say, “I think our problem is that our people aren’t using enough advanced ideas and concepts!”

Instead, what do we hear? It’s almost always, “I think we need to return to the fundamentals.” Or, “We just aren’t making enough calls.” Or, “These guys just aren’t asking for the order.”

Inadequate filling and flushing of the sales pipeline is at the core of 99% of all sales problems.

The answer here is simple – don’t be seduced into thinking that your people need to hear a more sophisticated message than the fundamentals of success.

If/when you are ready for some sales training that delivers those fundamentals, call me on 0412 921 292.

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10 biggest sales training mistakes and how to avoid 2 of 10

2. Companies Teach Too Much Strategy and Not Enough Execution

Look on the shelves in a typical sales office and you’ll find scores of sales books, sales tapes, sales videos, program workbooks, manuals, guides, etc. – all filled with the latest sales techniques or the trendiest strategy-of-the-day. No doubt these techniques and strategies all had value when they were taught. They probably delivered one or two good ideas that one or two people implemented to some degree. But now they’re just old ideas, stored on the shelf and in the deep recesses of a salesperson’s mind.

Let’s face it, there is no shortage of new sales strategies in the world. There are tons of programmes and ideas and sales concepts that trainers will gladly come in and teach to your sales team. And this, unfortunately, passes as a “sales training program” for many people. They simply bring in one or two new trainers each year to teach their strategy.

While learning all this strategy is fine…there is a glaring problem – no one is focusing on execution!

By execution we mean the simple act of performing the fundamentals of what makes salespeople successful (which we’ll cover in later points).

It’s like a farmer who brings in consultant after consultant, trainer after trainer – all arriving with their strategies and ideas on how to run a successful farm — meanwhile he never plants a seed…tends to the weeds…or harvests a single plant. But he does know HOW he SHOULD do it!

The answer is to shift the focus away from JUST learning new strategy and on to the execution of the fundamentals.

We’re not suggesting that the farmer shouldn’t learn new ideas, we’re simply saying that the new ideas will go much further if he’s paying attention to the fundamentals of good farming!

If/when you are ready for some sales training that focuses on execution, call me on 0412 921 292.

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