Sales Training Consultants

Performance Through People

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    • No clear objectives
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    • No executive sponsorship
    • An isolated course
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SALES TRAINING MISTAKES

An Isolated Course

Sales training initiatives often start with grand ideals but crash and burn after the first course. We need to move the sales force from selling products in a transactional environment to selling managed services into the heart of our customers' businesses. The training program will consist of three phases:

• Phase I - will be a basic sales skills refresher to get everyone to a common level of understanding.
• Phase II - will look at the market and business drivers in our customers' businesses creating the need for managed services.
• Phase III - will focus on our managed service deployment, how we meet a customer's needs, the competitive landscape, and role plays to re-enforce the learning.

How many phases of the program do you think get rolled out? Well normally it ends up being just phase I, and the sales team are yet again put through Sales 101, with the promise of more advanced courses to come. This is one of the main gripes of sales with regard to training, we just keep doing the basics time after time.

To change this situation, there is a need for long-term executive sponsorship (see No Executive Sponsorship) and a business that is prepared to continue a training program even if the figures are bad. Now in reality, with quarterly reporting and OPEX freezes, maybe a business can never make such a commitment. We consider the implications of this in The Way Forward (see the link below).

Please see The way forward for a better approach to sales training.