1- 330-413-8552 Mark@NoSmokeAndMirrors.com

sales training

Wholesale Distributor and Manufacturer Sales Training Must Transform Due to Market Perfect Storm

 

By Mark Allen Roberts

I enjoy training and coaching salespeople, it’s a passion mine. I led sales training for a global manufacturer, helped develop online training as well as flipped classroom training. I have often helped train wholesale distribution sales teams and coach sales managers. There is a perfect storm brewing that will capsize most manufacture and whole distributor training programs ROI if learning and development teams do not make some strategic course corrections now and batten down the hatches. This post will share the top 4 forces quickly converging on how train and we onboard manufacture and wholesale distributor salespeople.

 

There was a great movie based on a true story titled: The Perfect Storm. This movie shares the story of courageous men and women who risk their lives on rescue vessels and fishing boats. On Halloween night 1991 a fishing boat faced three raging weather fronts that unexpectantly collide to create the fiercest storm in modern history. If you have not seen the move here is a movie trailer. The experienced crew has weathered storms at sea before but never three storms converging all at once making the Perfect Storm.

 

Having trained manufacturer and whole sales distributor sales and sales managers I see a perfect storm, a sales problem brewing on the horizon and in this post I will share the 4 converging forces that will capsize the ROI of sales training if you do not transform your sales training programs now. The bigger impact of this perfect storm will be felt by manufactures and distributors alike in the next five to seven years and will be seen as:

 

  • Sales growth quotas not achieved
  • Lost sales you should have won
  • Decline in customer experience
  • Decline in customer satisfaction
  • Reduced profit margins
  • Higher sales unplanned turnover
  • Large account defections to new competitors
  • Poor Training ROI
  • Manufactures not happy with their distributors
  • Distributors not happy with manufactures

 

So what are these four converging forces about to rain down on how we train our sales people?

 

  1. New Generation of workers: Millennials and Gen Z
  2. Buyers changing how they buy and what they need to buy
  3. The Amazon affect and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations
  4. Top sales talent leaving the workforce

 

 

I think you will agree any one of these would have an impact on your salespeople and how we need to train them differently. However, all these 4 forces are converging over the next few years to make a sales training perfect storm.

 

Let’s unpack each a little more.

 

New Generation of Workers: Millennials and Gen Z Workers

A new generation of workers are entering manufacturers and distributors. By (2025) they will be the majority of your sales team. Each generation is influenced by their education, experiences, technology and geopolitical environment. That is why each generation has its own unique characteristics.

 

On an article titled: 7 surprising traits that make millennials excellent employees the author shares Millennials are:

 

  • Curious
  • Individualistic
  • Want Financial Stability
  • The digital Generation/ tech savvy
  • Want and need regular feedback
  • Like to Collaborate with others

 

Other things to consider is they plan to stay with employers 24-36 months and move on to new roles that teach them new skills. They expect their employers to invest in training and if employers do not, they move on quicker.

 

Let’s take a look at Gen Z workers.

 

The Warton University article shares this about Gen Z in the workplace:

 

“As a group, they are “sober, industrious and driven by money,” reports the Wall Street Journal, but also “socially awkward and timid about taking the reins.” They are risk-averse and more diverse, says Inc. magazine. Forbes says they “want to work on their own and be judged on their own merits rather than those of their team.”

 

 

 

Another article shared these traits for Gen Z:

 

  • Preference for traditional communication
  • Work individually
  • Mobile first habits
  • Motivated by Stability
  • Naturally Competitive
  • High Priority for healthy work life balance

 

Millennials and Gen Z workers will need new forms of training and managers will need to provide frequent coaching and not micromanagement. Both generations want to know the why of what they are doing and they plan to change jobs often.

 

Buyers Changing How They Buy

 

Due to the Internet Of Things buyers can and do conduct online research like never before.

 

  • 70% of the buying process is over before they speak with a salesperson
  • 44% of buyers have already made their buying decision
  • 20% of buyers are only speaking with sales to finalize the shipping and other transaction information.

 

Buyers today want and need salespeople who are trusted advisors who provide valuable insights they cannot find online. 85% of buyers in one survey shared they expect salespeople to connect the dots from what they are selling to the impact it will have on the buyer’s bottom line and sadly only 15% of salespeople are meeting that expectation today.

 

In the past buyers made decisions based on regional proximity. Today with two clicks buyers can buy from all over the world opening up many new competitors you never faced in regional markets.

 

“The Amazon Effect” and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations

 

Entreprenuer.com article shared the Amazon Effect as:

 

“it generally refers to the difficulty many stores — particularly brick-and-mortar outlets — face when they compete with Amazon. The online retailer’s vast selection, fast shipping, free returns, low prices and “Prime” subscription service all serve to create high customer expectations for any retailer hoping to compete.”

 

More and more of Amazon revenues are from B2B sales each year impacting both manufacturers and wholesale distributors alike.

 

When buyers leave work and they go home to their families they are consumers. Each month 197 million consumers get on their devices and visit Amazon. They are experiencing what frictionless purchasing feels like and they can’t help but let it shape the type of experience they expect from their vendors at work.

 

Is buying from you as easy as two clicks?

 

How much friction do your buyers experience when buying from you?

 

Top Sales Talent Leaving the Workforce

 

Each day 10,000 boomers are leaving the workforce. This generation (my generation) often are in leadership positions in manufacturing and whole distributors. We did not grow up with technology but most of us adapted but many did not.

 

I just met with a sales branch manager at a distributor that has a 3-ring notebook with all his key account business cards, vendor sell sheets and a handwritten targeted account list. By the way he consistently is in the top 3 producers in his company. The challenge becomes he has so much what I would refer to as tribal knowledge. Because technology entered into his world at a later time the majority of what he knows is in his head. If you ask him how he consistently delivers the results he produces each year he often cannot tell you. If you complete a top producer analysis assessment you will discover the knowledge and sales competencies that he has.

 

In distribution in particular there are so many vendors, and SKU’s and nuances you just learn to know that are often not captured and it should not surprise us some distributors find it takes a new salesperson as much as six years to truly become effective generating incremental revenue. The manufactures I have served typically see a new salesperson deliver incremental revenue in 12-18 months on the job.

 

What are common characteristics of top performers today?

 

The business owners play book shares how to identify top performers and future leaders:

 

  • Quality – if you are going to do something do it right
  • Skills Development– continuous learning
  • Fearless decision making – they leverage data and make decisions
  • Desire input from others
  • Self-Directed – they have a plan and work the plan
  • Emotionally intelligent-cool under pressure
  • Strong people skills– interpersonal communication and listening skills

 

Boomers who often lead departments and are top performers will be leaving over the next five to seven years. One distributor shared with me they estimate over 50% of their workforce will be retiring over the next eight years.

 

I hear some of you saying: “This is all interesting and I knew most of this, so what about this perfect storm again Mark?”

 

Glad you asked.

 

Your sales training and onboarding must change to support the audience you are now training.

 

You must immediately start capturing that tribal knowledge digitally today.

 

Some key characteristics of modern learning?

 

Asynchronous

Online and flipped classroom application

Trainee is in charge

Fast paced

Just enough

Relevant to the sales role and customers

Just in time with workflow

Mobile friendly

Peer to peer learning critical component

Interactive

Gamification will appeal to the new generations

Virtual Reality and Augmented reality will become the norm

On the job tool and learning aids will be critical

 

If you would like to learn more about modern sales learning programs I wrote a whitepaper titled: 17 training innovations for the future and you can download a copy here.

 

Other consideration before we close?

 

You don’t have the time (6 months) to train new salespeople like the past.

 

Death by PowerPoint instructor led training alone does not work with new workers.

 

Instructor led one and done training without reinforcement or application exercises does not stick.

 

You don’t have 6 months to train salespeople who plan leave in 24 months.

 

On the job training is great if managers do it (50% of the time they do not)

 

The new generation wants coaches not managers.

 

Your sales managers will need strong coaching skills.

 

With every new challenge an innovator will design and deliver new solutions to meet the challenges.

 

What will sales training look like in the next 5 years for manufacturers?

 

What will distributor onboarding and sales training look like?

 

How will these converging four forces impact your sales?

 

What will sales training need to look like if employees only stay 24 months?

 

So there you have it. All the above forces are quickly converging and will create a perfect storm for training manufacturer and wholesale distribution salespeople.

 

What do you think?

 

Is my argument that sales training must change all wet?

 

Is there something I forgot to consider?

 

How does your team plan to weather this storm like we have never seen before?

 

I see this as an urgent and pervasive problem that is growing each month and must be solved.

If you have some ideas how to solve this perfect storm of a sales training problem I would enjoy chatting.

Add Stardust To Your Sales Training

 

 

How effective is your sales training today? Does your sales training prepare your salespeople to have commercial conversations with customers and prospects in today’s market? How long does it take after completing your sales training do you see trainees create new revenue? The sad reality is most sales training does not produce the results senior sales leaders want and expect. Most “sales” training is actually “product “ training from my observations. Very few sales training programs are leveraging learning science in their training program and course designs and therefore they are destined to fail and not add value. In this post we will share how to fix this common sales problem by adding a little Stardust to your training program.

 

Labor day weekend my wife and I went to New York City to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary. We stayed at a wonderful hotel near Broadway the Citizen M and we enjoyed the play Wicked. We visited a fun dueling piano bar as well as the fun Chelsea market.

 

What was most memorable was having breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner on Broadway. As we walked around New York City we determined where we would eat by the length of the lines waiting to be served. The Stardust had a line no matter what time of day you walked by.

 

Once seated we quickly understood this will not be a quiet breakfast. All the waiters and waitresses are graduates of theater programs from all over the world. One after another they performed famous songs from Broadway performances. The music was playing the MC was announcing the next act and at one point confetti was falling.

 

At one point in this entertaining breakfast the MC shared that he was going to pass a bucket around for tips. Each day the tips are divided among the performers and they had to use them to improve their skills with acting lessons, voice lessons and so on.

 

Each day, everyday, all day, the waiters and waitresses practice their skills while serving customers and possibly producers and agents looking for the next star.

 

The results of this program you might ask?

 

The Stardust is the 3rd busiest restaurant in North America. The waiters and waitresses consistently win roles in Broadway plays. The young lady in the photo above will be staring in the next production of Evita.

 

As a sales trainer most of my career, I sat there amazed at how well designed the Stardust is to recruit and train our next stars. The Stardust strategically designed skills development into their program and the waiters and waitresses also own their continuous improvement with additional courses personalized to their specific needs and future roles.

How do we add Stardust to your sales training program?

 

  1. Practice, Practice, Practice
  2. On the Job training and reinforcement
  3. Trainees own continuously improving their skills
  4. Trainees are doing their craft not just learning about it
  5. Producers frequent the Café and recruit the best demonstrated talent
  6. Skills are determined before the role is offered
  7. Everyone must audition, be assessed if you will to enter the program
  8. The experience is fun
  9. The experience was designed to produce stars
  10. The experience consistently produces stars

 

Let’s go back to the questions I asked earlier…

 

Is your sales training working?

 

Sadly 50% of salespeople receive no sales skills training whatsoever. Some receive product training. If you have a sales training program congratulations for winning senior leader support. From my observations over the last 36 years training and coaching salespeople, most sales training programs would score a 6 out of 10 in effectiveness. Most sales training programs I have observed will fail by design.

 

Not spaced learning over time

No peer-to-peer engagement

Instructor led lectures from subject matter experts not trainers

Little if any interaction

No on the job application exercises

No negotiations training

Little if any practice and role-playing

No human-to-human communications skills development

Little if any market training

Little if any business acumen training

Content is not designed to be stacked

No sales manager training for skills like coaching trainees once deployed

 

Very quickly 90% of what your trainees receive is forgotten by design.

 

Does your sales training prepare trainees for commercial conversations with customers and prospects?

 

From my observations most do not. Most sales training programs are heavily weighted in product and how to apply the product technical training. Most sales training programs do a poor job of preparing salespeople for human to human conversations in skills like qualifying opportunities, uncovering buyer goals and problems and more importantly teaching your sellers how to connect the dots to what they are selling to the financial gain it provides the customer. Most trainee’s leave training with a lack of understanding how their future customers make money and what are the key levers to pull to help their clients.

 

How long does it take for a trainee to start adding measurable value?

 

From my observations most trainees leave the drinking from the fire hose sales training experience and start adding measurable value in 18-24 months. Most trainees learn on the job practicing on customers and failing often. It should not surprise us when we see up to 50% of trainees leaving in their first 4 years. Couple this with the fact they report to sales managers who likely were never trained in skills like coaching and mentoring.

 

It’s time our sales training programs leveraged what training science has taught us. If you would like to learn what the future of sales training may look like feel free to download my recent EBook: 17 Training Innovations For Relentless Sales Improvement.

 

 

How do you measure the success of your sales training program?

 

Does your sales training program need fixed?

 

How long should it take for trainees to add value?

 

Does your sales training use spaced and stacked learning designs?

 

Does your organization have a continuous learning culture?

 

Do you offer personalized learning for your current sales team?

 

Does your program assess the skills motivations and beliefs of your trainees?

 

It’s time we leveraged what learning science is telling us and apply it to our sales training programs. Companies who do have sales training need to start seeing an ROI for sales training and much sooner.

What Karate Taught Me About Making Sales Training Stick

 

 

 

In my last post I shared how doing customer voice research can help identify needed sales training for your team. Training salespeople is over a $ 3 billion business. However studies show 80%-90% of training does not stick and will be lost within 24 hours. How do we train adults and make it stick? In this post I will share a training process that is proven to make training stick.

 

Somewhere, right now as you are reading this someone is in sales training. Training occurs for many reasons. One of the most common reasons teams conduct sales training is to change behaviors and beliefs. I have been hired to train sales teams for a number of reasons. The most common is: “we want to improve our overall sales efficiency, effectiveness and increase sales profitably. We want our sales team to be more proactive,…. more hunters than farmers” Sales training is about modifying behavior so the new behavior now becomes the norm. Why does some training create a positive impact and some does not? In this post I will share a training method I use that I learned as a Karate student.

 

While in college at Kent State University I took a Karate class as one of my non-business electives. I enjoyed it so much I joined the local karate club and over the years became club president and helped teach Karate classes.

 

I started out as a white belt. A big part of that training was getting our bodies in shape for the training that would come next. We were taught basic movements that we would build on as we progresses through the other belt colors.

 

If you have never taken a Karate class the design methodology of how they teach is brilliant.!

 

Organized

 

Everyone first lines up from the highest-ranking students in the front with the instructor to the lowest ranking new students in the back of the room. How the students participate and interact is designed into the training for the maximum expereince of the student.

 

Make us want to learn

 

Our Instructor first tells us what we will be doing and discusses the important parts of the technique and when we might use it. Next they show us what we will be doing.

 

Team Alignment and consistency

 

As we begin the entire class is moving in unison. If you are new you can always watch people in front of you to follow along.

 

                                                                  

Practice

 

We practiced techniques over and over. While we practiced our instructor would walk around the room and observe our form.

 

 

Coaching/ demonstration

 

If we were not moving correctly they would give us adjustments to make and once again show us how the movement is supposed to look.

 

 

Break into small groups

 

About half way though the practice our instructor would break us up into groups based on skill level. The white and yellow belts would work on basic techniques and would often be led by a green belt.

 

 

Teach based skill level ( fill in gaps)

 

The groups were broken out by our skill level and  belt rank. Our belt rank was something we were tested on to demonstrate our understanding and ability to execute a very well designed series of movements.

 

                                                    

Show me you get it

 

Once a student had practiced the basic movements for a specific period of time, usually months and we felt the basics created the foundation we could build on we introduced application. What is the movement you are doing designed to do? This instruction was instructor led and involved working with a partner. We practiced our blocks, punches, and kicks very slowly with a partner. Some times we were on the offensive and other times we were on the defensive side of each technique.

 

                                    

After foundation established build upon it

 

While the new students were learning the basics and how to apply them, the other ranks were learning more advanced techniques and series of movements called Kata’s . The more advanced your belt rank the more advanced your training. All training however was built on a common foundation of basic movements practiced over and over again.

 

 

Assessment to understood standards of performance

 

When your instructor felt you have consistently demonstrated your understanding of techniques for your belt rank you would be tested. The entire club would watch you perform what you have learned and hear the instructor’s comments and suggestions.

 

 

Importance of skill level badges

 

If you passed the test, and some did not, you would be awarded your new belt and the process would start all over again with new techniques demonstrated, explained, you execute them, practice, and the instructors would continuously coach you until you performed behaviors correctly without thinking to the agreed level of performance.

 

                              

Introduce stress to see use of new behavior

 

Once you have demonstrated your ability with basic techniques and applied them successfully you will begin sparing. Sparing is a controlled fight to use the techniques you have learned in a live situation. What we are looking for at this phase is does the student apply or try to apply what we have taught? Does the student freeze, and this often happen the first time they step into the ring? Does the student continue to demonstrate control or does their emotions take over in this stressful situation?

 

 

Create safe environment for coaching

 

When I taught it was not unusual the first time a student would move into a live sparing they would spar with me.

 

 

Training success is determined by student’s ability to demonstrate

 

This is not about winning but helping the student feel what it is like to apply what they have learned in a safe and coaching environment.

 

 

Ask students to teach other students

 

                                                                  

Coach

 

                                                              

Practice

 

                                                                

Repeat

 

Why all this talk about Karate and making sales training stick?

 

I believe all sales trainers would value taking Karate and learning how to make training stick.

 

The model traditional martial arts have used for centuries is brilliant.

 

This is the same model I have used for years when training, coaching and leading salespeople. The only thing I would add today is record your employees being trained and record your coaching in a digital format so they can take with them. As new training skills are introduced and practiced, the student can review the recordings and see their progress over time.

 

Using this training model helps your sales team own what you are teaching and make the behavior modifications you desire.

 

Teach me

 

Show me

 

Ask me to do it

 

Have me practice

 

Coach me

 

Teach me how to apply new behavior

 

Test me in a live situation, assess and coach

 

Follow up training with coaching

 

Add new skill sets once basics are consistently demonstrated

 

Break us up into small groups

 

Have clear training levels, in this case belts and everyone knows what is expected at each level

 

Today our sales teams need short bursts of teaching followed by how to apply and practice.

 

If you would like your salespeople to adapt to how buyers want and need to buy today I recommend you implement or hire a sales training company that follows the above methodology.

 

Does your team need sales training?

 

What new behaviors would you like to see your team demonstrate?

 

Does your sales on boarding training build on a foundation of basic skills?

 

How does your team assess the ongoing future sales training needs of your team members?

 

How do you currently identify gaps in new sales employee training?

 

Our markets and buyers are changing how they buy. Our teams must adapt and to help them adapt we must lead training programs that result in new behaviors that meet what our markets and buyers want and need. Implement your own or hire a sales training company that follows the above methodology and your training will stick and you will realize the ROI you desire.

 

For more information on training adults and trends in training methods please visit some of the following web sites.

 

Latest training methodology 

 

Most effective training

 

Effective training methodology

 

Creative training techniques 

 

Sales training do’s and don’t report 

 

Sales effectiveness training 

The End Of The Greatest Show On Earth and What We Can Learn About Training

 

 

 

Understanding the voice of your customer and voice of your markets is critical to hitting your sales and profit objectives today. With all the changes and shifts occurring at a much faster pace than ever before market leading organizations are capturing the voice of your customer to insure they improve sales productivity and achieve profitable sales growth. In this post I will share how customer voice research helps identify needed shifts in how we train our sales organizations.

 

I can remember, growing up in Cleveland Ohio when the Circus came to town. There was such an excitement. Streets would be closed for parades and as children we would line the streets to see the clowns, tigers, and elephants. Our families would buy our tickets and we filled the big top. If we were really lucky, our parents would buy a ticket so we could sit on an elephant. Even as a child I felt sorry for the elephants, they seemed to have a sad, almost surrendered look in their eyes. They looked more like their spirits have been broken than trained.

 

2017 is the end of the greatest show on earth. Why? I was not alone all these years feeling sorry for these magnificent elephants and other animals. Animal rights groups investigated how elephants were treated and trained. Elephants are first given a large tight chain around one of their ankles and the other end of the chain is staked into the ground a specific distance away. The elephant quickly learns the length of its chain. If the elephant tries to wander beyond its training limits it experiences pain. Over time the elephant surrenders and the chain is removed and a much smaller rope is used. However the elephants, now “ trained “ do not try to explore. They are set in their ways. Even with the chain removed they do not step outside of their understood paradigm. Consumers learned about training conditions and ticket sales decreased . The Circus announced it would no longer have elephants in its show by 2018. However they adjusted too late. The greatest show on earth is over.

 

At a recent Toastmasters meeting I heard this story about elephant training and it reminded me of how some sales teams have been trained over the years. Before the “Internet of things” we often chained our sales teams to features and benefits. Our training was 90%-75% technical and maybe 10%-25% communications and relational. I was trained in this time and it made sense back then. Buyers did not have easy access to your product specifications. If a buyer wanted and needed technical information about a product or service sales was the keeper of the information keys so to speak. There was no Google searches, Smart phones, …heck we did not have laptops or cell phones when I was trained to sell. Back then we were trained in 2-3 day long death by power point presentations and given 3” thick three ring binders with copies of all the slides and more product data sheets than we could ever want or need. We were taught to sell using features and benefits, and “overcome objections”.

 

In a post some time agoI shared the leading reason why sales stall or decline is a shift, a change occurred and the team failed to recognize it and failed to adapt and pivot. I see customer voice research work helping us to adapt how we train our sales teams for markets of today. What buyers want and need has changed. In most industries buyers have instant access to technical data now.

 

I want to emphasize salespeople who are our serving their customers and meeting with potential new customers must still understand the technical information and be able to accesses it quickly to give their buyers amazing service and win more business. I believe buyers are telling us through voice of the customer work their needs have changed and sales training must adapt to those changes. Your type of product and industry requirements will dictate how much your training will need to adapt to your buyers of today.

 

How should sales training evolve today?

 

In an excellent article by Bob Apollo the author shares …

 

 

 

“It’s a sad fact that today’s average B2B sales person is still far more comfortable talking about their products than they are discussing business issues. However the average B2B buyer regards a sales person’s relevant business knowledge as being far more valuable than their ability to regurgitate product features, functions and benefits”

Even more telling the author explains ….

“87% of the revenues in complex B2B sales environments are being generated by just 13% of the sales population. Needless to say, the gap between the best and the rest is far narrower in best-in-class sales organizations. What sets these top performing organizations apart?

There’s abundant evidence to suggest that one of the most significant differences lies in their ability to systematically create unique value to their customers through the disciplined application of value-based selling techniques”

Buyers today no longer want (not that they ever really did) salespeople trained in overcoming objections. Buyer’s today value a salesperson that understands their industry and possible challenges the buyers company may be facing and offers value based solutions to those problems.

Why are many teams adapting Value based selling?

Jim Heffernan shares in his article: Why Value Based Selling Is So Successful ……

“Good value-based sales techniques are tailored to the needs of the customer, making them understand why they are buying a quality product for the asking price. Value selling resolves potential customer issues with pricing and prevents the stalling of important deals and the wasting of precious employee man-hours.”

Market leading organizations listen to their buyers and are adapting. I see companies allocating 50% of training to technical product training and 50% to value based selling, understanding buyer personas, commutation skills. presentation skills and other sales methods like the challenger model. Studies show companies who have a complex sales environment experience 4.5 times greater performance when applying the challenger model. Teams are adapting based on their type of product, market and what their buyers are requiring in terms of much needed criteria to help them make buying decisions today. Market leading sales teams are no longer chained to training methods that fail to serve how buyers buy and what buyers need to buy today. They have a balance of technical, relational and strategic sales and communication training. As markets change, and they will, salespeople are encouraged to venture beyond their current skill levels and explore and learn new skills and adpat to better serve their customers.

Just as markets shift how our buyers shift. Therefore how we train our sales teams must also adapt to give our buyers the best overall buying experience and equip our teams with a strategic advantage to help them win more business. For example Richard Branson shares just how important communication is and how story telling is a powerful communication strategy. Warren Buffet recently shared how if we want to double our value we need to improve our communication skills. John Millen shared in an article ….

“Buffett believes so strongly in the importance of leaders being effective communicators that he offered his own return-on-investment estimate for effective communication.”

There are many benefits of listening to your customers and capturing and leveraging customer voice. One big benefit this current understanding provides is how we train and equip our sales teams to serve their customers.

We must also capture the voice of our internal salespeople and leverage that information into new sales training and tools. We need to ask and understand what our salespeople are facing and develop tools and training to serve them.

 

What do your buyers value today?

 

How do your buyers want to be served today?

 

What % of your sales training today is technical verse value based sales techniques?

 

Does your sales training today include communication training?

 

Could how your salespeople are trained to communicate with buyers become your value proposition?

 

Conduct internal and external customer voice research and adapt your sales training to how your buyers want and need to buy today and enjoy profitable sales growth. Sales today are no longer about being the greatest “show” on earth and have evolved into the greatest “value” on earth. Sales today is about serving your customers and helping them buy. Our training must help our salespeople build trust early and often in the sales process.

We must adjust how we train our teams.

 

What if the Circus was listening to their buyers voice sooner and learned new ways to train their elephants?

 

Would they be going out of business today?

 

My guess is no.

 

What new sales training is your team adding today?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Product Training” is not “Sales Training“

 

 

It’s that time of year again…

Salespeople are scrabbling to achieve their year end objectives while their accounts have slipped into a post thanksgiving day comma. Next year territory goals are distributed and some organizations recognize this time of year as ideal for training their sales teams. But most sales training seems to miss it’s mark…why?

Here’s the problem:

“Product Training is not Sales training”

I just received a call from a friend who asked if I had the time to sit in on their sales training and give them some feedback. (What they wanted was actually praise) They were very excited about 2012 and the number of new products and product improvements they were launching. So they asked their field sales team to attend training.

Sales training is a challenge as research shows as high as 90% of sales training adds no value within 120 days, and yet corporations will spend over $5 billion per year in Sales Training. Before I share what I have experienced I thought I would share some links that I thought were very interesting…

7 Reasons Sales Training Fails

5 Reasons why Sales Training Fails

Why Does Sales Training Fail?

Report: Why Sales Training Fails

Top Reasons Why Most Corporate Sales Training Fails

Why Training us Useless

All of the above and many more posts have great content and if your team is looking at making the investment in sales training I recommend you review the above.

Now back to my friend’s company…

So I attended the meeting and in terms of time allocation it went something like this;

Words from senior management – 10%

 

VP of Sales sharing his vision – 20%

 

Engineering sharing technical specifications -30%

 

Marketing sharing tools they developed (sell sheets and new web pages) – 20%

 

Other: goals, questions and answers (and kind of a bitch session)-20%

The shame was this training could have helped prepare the team to sell new products and change behaviors in the field based on a clear understanding of the market, its buyers, their buying process and criteria. Instead, it prepared the sales team to continue to play “feature and benefit bingo” with their accounts just hoping some of them can translate the list of benefits into solutions to problems they may be experiencing.

So I’m going to say it again; “Product Training is not Sales Training.”

 

Product Training is obviously necessary, however the most value you can provide your sales team and ultimately your bottom line is answering the following questions….

What problem does this product solve?

 

Who has this problem?

 

What do buyers who have that problem buy now? Why?

 

How do buyers search for solutions to this problem?

 

How do buyers state the problem in their own words?

 

What process do buyers use to solve their problems today?

 

What criteria do buyers use when evaluating products that solve their problems?

 

What is the sales process for this solution?

 

Based on how buyers are buying, what new tools do we have and when should I use them?

 

What are the various Buyer Personas and how do we approach each?

 

Are their “influencers” in the buying process? If so who and what do they require?

 

What is my market’s opportunity?

 

What is our value proposition and distinctive  advantage?

 

How do these new products fit in our overall mix of solutions?

 

Do some salespeople have unique needs, areas that need improved?

 

My friend’s training, like a number of sales training I have attended over the years did not answer any of the above but did clearly share each salesperson’s goals in the next year. What I shared was how he is relying his sales team to “make it happen” and figure it out in the field. His need to feel sales was more of a science and less of an art will not be met. So he will continue to be frustrated by sales forecasts because they are actually educated guesses. What I observed, that sounded like a bitch session was actually the sales team sharing how they needed to get in shape for the market they faced today.

So how about your company?

 

How much will your organization spend in sales training this year?

 

Can your team afford not to have a return on that investment?

 

Does your sales training answer the above questions?

 

Or are you counting on your sales people to “just make it happen?”

 

Based on what I described, if you were one of this team’s salespeople, would you feel your future goals were based on market opportunity or corporate necessity?

Sales training is more than product training alone. In addition to equipping your team to win, it can also demonstrate you do have an understanding of the market and help your team see the training as something to help them make more money and not something they have to “go through” each year.

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