“The fact is every salesperson out there is on some sort of cruise control,” says sales strategist and author Jill Konrath. “If you’re going to institute change, you really need to not just do some training, but somehow tap into the ‘why you really need to change’ mentality.”
Konrath says most salespeople realize that the selling environment has changed, their customers’ needs have changed and they need to do some things differently. But old habits die hard and many of them fail to act.
B2B salespeople fail to realize how distracted their buyers are. Konrath says her presentations are in large part an eye-opener to
that reality, in part through role playing. “I have them call me and then I delete their call as fast as any crazy-busy prospect would. Suddenly, it’s a wakeup call. I don’t think most sales training provides that wakeup call. You need to tap into the emotional need to do something different than what you’re currently doing.”
Are you susceptible to the sales training illusion?
Embedding new sales behaviors requires learning, practice, review and persistence. That’s easy to say, but from an internal company perspective it is often quite difficult to provide adequate post-training support and coaching for each individual.
Too often company leaders are susceptible to the Sales Training Illusion because they:
• Treat sales training like technical training (emphasis on knowledge acquisition, not skill development)
• Have staff that work remotely or independently, or both, which makes supporting the individual even more difficult
• Are focused on the team meeting deadlines (getting the work done)
• Don’t have a specific outcome in mind from the training
• Try to be efficient by minimizing training time (rather than being effective)
• Are relying on the external training provider to implement a quick-fix solution to reduce lost sales opportunities
Source: “The Sales Training Illusion” by Stuart Ayling (MarketingNous.com.au)
