“Somehow, ‘successful’ sales training has become associated with a thick binder of material the salesperson lugs home from the class, never to open again,” states Steve W. Martin, who teaches sales strategy at the USC Marshall School of Business. “The classroom experience is based mainly upon rote memorization of facts. There is little in the way of interaction, practical exercises or meaningful conversation about the difficult ‘real-world’ obstacles that need to be overcome.”
In a recent blog post on Harvard Business Review (blogs.HBR.org), Martin reviewed four critical elements that are commonly missing from today’s sales training programs.
1. The training is not based upon win-loss customer interviewing.
Based on interviews with more than 1,000 customers as part of the win-loss analysis studies that Martin conducted on behalf of his clients approximately 30 percent of the time, the winner of the sales cycle was determined before the “official” selection process started. Another 45 percent of the time, customers had already made up their minds about whom they were going to buy from about halfway through the process. Only 25 percent of the time did customers make their final decision at the end of the selection process. If you are not clearly in the lead at the midpoint of the sales process, the odds are that you are going to lose.
Takeaway: you can’t train your sales teams on how and why prospective customers make their buying decision if your training isn’t based upon direct interviews with decision makers at won and lost accounts.
2. It provides an incomplete customer decision-making model.
The successful salesperson understands and appeals to the emotional, political and subconscious decision maker. A sales training program should not solely educate salespeople about features, functions and business benefits. It must also explain the psychological reasons customers buy and provide practical real-world examples on how to incorporate the elements of customer behavior into a winning sales strategy.
Takeaway: The training program must take into account the psychological value of your solution and explain how to influence the politics of organizational decision making.
3. It lacks meaningful cultural transmissions.
A “cultural transmission” is the method of learning a behavioral technique by emulating a successful practitioner as a role model.
Takeaway: There are three types of cultural transmissions that should be included in every sales training program. First, there should be success stories about key wins explained using examples that the entire team can understand and learn from. Second, include role play exercises on everything from the elevator pitch and cold calls to the corporate presentation and negotiation. Finally, top salespeople should be interviewed
in a panel-type setting about their sales philosophy, territory strategy and where they win and lose, followed by an extensive audience question and answer session.
4. Sales call execution is not addressed.
Many companies segment their vendors by value and whether or not they are strategic to the organization. Companies also classify their existing customers by the amount of money they spend and the products they buy. Unfortunately, very few companies today perform any type of segmentation of the sales calls their sales force makes. As a result, valuable win-loss-related information isn’t captured and sales force effectiveness is lost. Ideally, salespeople should be provided with a playbook for sales call execution based upon the classification of sales calls.
Since the salesperson has a deeper insight about customer behavior based upon past interactions, he is able to conduct more persuasive sales calls. This strategy also serves as a communication methodology to educate and prepare the colleagues (pre-sales engineers, consultants and sales managers) who will attend the sales call with the salesperson.
