Dave Stein's Blog for Sales Leaders

For those of you who read Part 1 of this series and asked for more, thanks for your feedback, and here it is.

Sales trainers and sales training firms have a big challenge over the next year:  many customer training budgets have shrunk or been eliminated entirely; the trainers’ own revenues are significantly down—there has been plenty of downsizing; there are big changes in customer buying patterns; and sales training itself, due to advances in technology, is going through some of the biggest changes since the first commercially available recordings of sales trainers were produced.

Through our work with both the buy- and sell-sides of sales performance improvement and training solutions, these vendor-centric, short-term obstacles must be overcome for the industry to regain its foothold and start delivering real business value to a much more skeptical and savvy buyer.

1. More often than not, sales training is reactive on the part of buyers.  How can a sales training firm convince their customer that a funded, strategic approach is the way to go, not a two-day, check-the-box event at a Newark Airport Holiday Inn conference room?  Hint:  If the trainer doesn’t, they’ll put some cash in their pocket now, but contribute to the further demise of the sales training industry going forward.
   

   ---

2. Some large percentage of salesreps (one in four) just aren’t suited for the job of selling.  Unfortunately, if you spend a lot of money training C players, they’ll still be C players.  With that in mind, are sales trainers willing to put a stake in the ground telling their customers that training C players is a waste of time and money?
   

   ---

3. Many training companies really don’t understand their customers’ training requirements.  Any discovery they do is perfunctory.  They don’t take the time or have the experience to understand the deeper issues—some that their customers’ sales leaders may not even be aware of.   (An example would be the degree of business and financial knowledge necessary to sell certain products and services.  If the trainer doesn’t understand how important that may be to the client, how will that become part of the curriculum?)   As a result of insufficient discovery, too many trainers “customize” only by making a few changes in their course materials—Powerpoint for many—and next year wonder why the client has engaged with someone else.
   

   ---

4. The customer doesn’t believe in process, asserting that any process is too restrictive.  (Any process can be too restrictive.  The best trainers build flexibility into their process models for individual and team creativity—the art of selling. )  The most effective sales training is the result of salesreps learning to, and practicing employing, a process.  If there is no process to train to, training is close to useless because the skills taught are disconnected from other skills and serve to provide only a tactical boost to performance in one small area.
   

   ---

5. No measurement systems have been put in place.  If a pragmatic measurement system is installed, metrics will provide critical, relevant and timely information to sales management (before it’s too late).  Measuring only with lagging indicators (performance last month, quarter, year) doesn’t help a sales leader determine whether his people are doing the right things now to win business.  Few sales trainers really understand sales performance measurement and therefore don’t work on convincing their clients to adopt measurement as a required business process.  When companies do have a performance improvement measurement system in place, and the vendor has created value, new proposals for further improvement are welcomed by the customer.
   

   ---

6. Dependence by both buyers and sellers only on traditional, live, instructor-led training.  The degree of heterogeneity within sales teams require sales leaders and trainers alike to move away from the old one-size-fits-all approach.  There should always be some live component of most training for outside sales reps.  Getting in front of customers is what they do for a living.  But stuffing 25 people in a room who come from different generations, have vast differences in experience, learn differently, and may come from different cultures is like dumping a smorgasbord table of delicious and varied food into a Cuisinart.  If you’re a sales trainer and you aren’t, at a minimum, already somewhat down the road re-engineering your content for an on-demand, self-paced, individualized delivery platform, you’re late.
   

   ---

7. Learning reinforcement and coaching is often sacrificed.  Research proves that coaching is often the number one success factor in sustainable behavioral change, but sales trainers are often quick to give up the fight when customers balk at reinforcement costs in their proposals.
   

   ---

8. The customers’ belief and hope that tips and tricks alone will get the job done.  They don’t and they won’t.
   

   ---

If you’re a sales trainer and you’re thinking about waiting until the situation gets better—until it returns to normal, guess what?  This IS the new normal.

If you’re a buyer of sales training, understand that your favorite trainer may be out of business next month or be acquired by someone you may not like at all.  Or maybe you’ve made the right decision and they’re going to be driving unprecedented levels of customer value.  Speak with your trainer about these issues.  Make sure you’re comfortable with what they are doing about them.  The need the right answers and they need a plan.

Photo Credit: Igor Karon – Fotolia.com

Filed under: Buyers, Economy, Hiring, Measurement, Methodology, Sales Training Companies, Technology, coaching, sales process