Sales Training At The ASTD Conference

Posted on June 2nd, 2009 by Dave Stein

I’ve been at the ASTD International Conference and Exposition since Sunday.  This is my first one.  A few observations:

  • In many companies, corporate training has a long way to go to be seen as valuable by their sales organizations.  On the other hand, when left to their own devices, many sales organizations continue to get very little long-term benefit from their tactical approach to sales training.  There is a big gap that needs to be closed.
  • Brian Lambert’s Sales Training Drivers unit of ASTD is making great strides.  I sit on a committee with some very dedicated and knowledgeable sales training professionals.  Sales Training Drivers is an organization to watch.
  • Brian, Tim Ohai and Eric Kerkhoff’s new book World Class Selling has been published.  It’s a groundbreaking foundation for building an effective sales function within any company.
  • There are overn 5,000 attendees at this conference.  The amount of Twittering from the conference is minimal.  I tweeted: 

 davestei With thousands of attendees at #ASTD, how come so few tweets? What does this say about trainers?

One reply I received:

TrDev @davestei Re: trainers and tweeting. Maybe too busy doing live things. Learning, talking, enjoying people. Where’s the joy of tweeting?

  • There was an interesting panel this morning including Howard Stevens (CEO of HR Chally), Neil Rackham, Dave Roberts (formerly of OnTarget, now on the faculty of UNC), and Brian Lambert.  The main subject was raising the level of professionalism of selling.
  • Sandi Edwards from the American Management Association said, “Generic sales training doesn’t work. It must be relevant to their jobs.”
  • Dave Roberts, “We need salespeople who can sell business value.”
  • Howard Stevens, “There are no (zero) people in the world with a Ph.D in sales.”
  • Neil Rackham, “IBM Global Services spends $480k to pursue an opportunity whether they win or lose.”
  • Howard Stevens, “Sales hasn’t professionalized.” There are no minimum standards for sales people.”
  • Howard Stevens, “50% of graduating BA’s will become salespeople.”

Filed under: Professionalism

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2 Responses to “Sales Training At The ASTD Conference”

  1. chuck luffer, on June 3rd, 2009 at 4:52 am Said:

    Very curious to know why so many sales organizations continue to get very little long-term benefit from their tactical approach to sales training.

    Is it the fault of the training or the quality of the sales person to retain the information and put it in practice?

    and if the many firms are getting little long term benefit is this attributed training not being relevant?

    As for tweeter…their popularity (32 million subscribers) is dwindling by 1.2 million a month….they need a business model and an enticement.

  2. Andrea Derler, on June 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 am Said:

    This does not surprise me. From my own experience, the main argument I keep on hearing against the necessity for sales training/coaching is: “my product/service/situation/challenge” is different. I don’t really do sales”. Although they certainly do, but don’t know about it. Strange, isn’t it?

    Interesting blog.
    Andrea

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