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Sales Training is Not an Event; It is a Process.

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WHY SALES TRAINING FAILS

When trying to understanding "Why Sales Training Fails?", the question could be asked as to what is the objective of sales training and who could benefit? Today sales training requires changing human behaviors that enable people to take more control of the selling process and be able to communicate to buyers in a manner that mutually satisfies both parties. Most people think sales training only applies to those who consistently sell products and services on a full time basis. These occupations include the professional salespeople selling anything from automobiles to insurance. However, many people have careers involving sales, but they don't consider themselves sales people. For example architects, engineers, accountants, lawyers, consultants, chiropractors, audiologists, managers, entrepreneurs, owners, etc. all have to sell their services to clients. Therefore, who could utilize sales training? Anyone who has to deal with the public.

PURPOSE OF SALES TRAINING

Sales training has been around probably from the beginning of time. Typically, any operations hope sales training would do the following:

• Close more presentations (3 out of 4 !!! instead of 1 out of 5)
• Show Professionals how to be proactive in the sales area by using skills that don't make them look like a typical sales person.
• Introduce new sales strategies & tactics to beat competition.
• Develop underachievers into top performers.
• Get past the "Gate Keepers" that isolate people who you want to business with.
• Eliminate prospects stalls in the decision making process such as "Think-It-Overs"
• Deal with money without waiting for it to become an objection.
• Halt unpaid consulting.

LEARNING PROFESSIONAL SELLING SKILLS

If the objectives are clear as to what sales training can do for a company or individual, then why does sales training fail more often than it succeeds? Most of us do not understand that learning professional selling skills is like learning any other endeavor. If you analyze the learning process, there are three learning fundamental areas. Take a look at your courses in elementary, high school, college, trade school, etc. Teachers required you to read a text book. There may be some but for most of us, reading just the text book wasn't enough. We also attended classroom lectures or sessions on a regular basis. If we couldn't get an answer to a specific problem between the text book and the classroom sessions, we eventually found the instructor or a mentor who could coach us to solve the problem. Naturally if we continued to major in a specific discipline, the process was repeated and reinforced with additional materials and successive training. With this in mind, why would anyone think that learning professional selling skills would be any different? This means that stand alone sales training such as one day sales courses, training tapes and books, and advice is only temporary solutions, not lasting behavior modification. Most people who enter the professional career of selling do not view this task as learned behavior. "Very successful sales people are born not made." There may be some truth to that old axiom, but it is only that the very successful sales people have instinctively found the secrets of successful selling. Most successful sales people don't know how to transfer their selling skills to others because they own a system that comes naturally to them. Most of us who get into the selling profession learned selling skills by the seat of our pants. We obtained some measure of success or we quit. Many seasoned salespeople have 20 years of selling experience or one year's selling experience 20 times over. These are the people who get to certain thresholds but never reach the higher goals and the rewards that professional selling can offer them. Why?

SALES TECHNIQUES / PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE

The main problem with sales training is that it only works on one element of training: product knowledge and sales techniques. In fact, 90% of all sales training is spent on product knowledge. Not to be offensive, but ever walk into a computer store to be bombarded by a salesperson about bits, bytes, ram, rom, megahertz, memory. Many first time computer consumers only want to know how to turn the computer on and what it can do for them. Product knowledge is good, but used at the wrong time, it kills most sales. For years, many in the field of sales training were taught to look sharp, show their expertise, pass out fancy business cards and literature, give great presentations and make million dollar proposals. Unfortunately, what is the competition doing? The same thing! That's why selling in 2000 is difficult; you don't look any different than your competition. Isn't sales training supposed to make us look a little different than our competition? But what does most sales training teach us? Features and benefits. Unfortunately, feature/benefit selling is purely intellectual. The truly successful salesperson learns that people buy emotionally and make decisions intellectually.

PEOPLE BUY EMOTIONALLY

The three emotions that people buy from are; pleasure, fear, and to avoid pain. It is natural for all of us to gravitate toward the pleasure emotion but our strongest emotion is to avoid pain. When you go to the doctor in extreme pain. Do you ask the doctor what are his fees are and what is he going to do because you are going to get three more estimates? No, you just want him to relieve your pain. Think about it, you don't buy any product or service because of features or benefits. You buy because the product or service will provide pleasure, eliminate fear, or avoid pain. Because pain is the strongest emotion, you will discover that if you find enough pain with your prospect, price will never be the issue. Successful sales people have found the secrets of selling emotionally, not intellectually. Traditional sales training spends more time on teaching feature/benefits. It ignores selling to the prospects emotions. Besides sales techniques and product knowledge, successful salespeople have strong behavior skills.

BEHAVIORS

If the individual doesn't develop the sales behaviors, then all his product knowledge and sales techniques learned won't help. Selling is a tough business. Many behaviors make us feel uncomfortable such as cold calling, telemarketing, networking, prospecting, etc. The unsuccessful sales person finds activities that provide busy work, but not the selling behaviors that produce prosperous results. Selling is a numbers game. If you do enough of the proper selling behaviors each day, the sales will be there. If you base the selling activity on sales dollars, the pressure to achieve these targets is dramatic. Not only does the salesperson feel the pressure, but the prospect will see the stress of the salesperson to sell and they won't buy. Most sales training courses never deal with the behaviors that individuals have to do to become successful. If the sales goals are not being achieved, then the attitude of a salesperson becomes another factor of why success is not obtained.

ATTITUDE

Attitude in sales is everything. Without a winning attitude, you can't be successful in sales. Those who would like to achieve higher rewards in sales but don't usually, feel that it isn't their fault. Many people excuse themselves for their lack of sales by blaming the company, market, pricing, territory, etc. Granted the product and market do influence our attitude if we are selling 19 century buggy whips. However, the majority of people in sales have a needed product or service. Most sales people have a difficult time dealing with their attitude because they don't realize that that their success or failure is truly in their hands. Most sales training is motivational training that tries to develop the spirit of the little locomotive engine climbing the hill saying "yes I can, yes I can, yes I can." That inspiration is momentary. It lasts from the time you go from your home to your first appointment. Its not real world. Sales people get depressed and that is okay. Most sales training never teaches us how to move forward and maintain the winning attitude.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In summary, sales training fails because it doesn't address how people truly learn the selling discipline. Selling techniques and product knowledge can only take you so far. Selling behaviors and attitude play a very important part to successful sales. To have success, sales training has to be ongoing and reinforced until one eventually develops and owns a selling system. Many sales training programs only achieve temporary results. Find a sales training program that will help you achieve long lasting results. Isn't that what sales training supposed to do?