Can you imagine:

• Half of your company’s products break within one day of initial use by a customer?
• 50% of the financial reports your company produces every quarter have mathematical errors?
• Every day, half of the deliveries your company makes wind up at the wrong location?
• IT so badly manages your company’s systems that your computer is down all day, every other day?
• Every other week, your paycheck is wrong?
• Your company is in danger of going out of business because purchasing regularly orders only half the amount of raw material inventory that is required?
• Your most important customers are looking for other suppliers because your billing is incorrect 50% of the time?
• People calling into your company get routed to the wrong person half the time?
• Your company’s website is down literally every other day?

But somehow in sales, 50% effectiveness is acceptable.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  It shouldn’t be that way.

The root causes of sales ineffectiveness are clear.   There is plenty of sound advice about how to fix the problem.   There is a proven path.  The answers are there for everyone to see, learn from, and emulate.

So, why is sales still last on line in your company?  And what are you going to do about it?

Let me know your thoughts, please.

Photo credit: © dragon_fang – Fotolia.com

Those of you who read or participate in these discussions, whether on LinkedIn or some other online social platform, know how frustrating it can be when people who don’t have any idea what they are writing about put forth their recommendations as though it were fact, or the truth, or even as if they were making any sense at all.

Regarding the question about the best sales training company, literally dozens of people spewed names of their favorite (or their own) training company without any regard to what the requirements were for the person asking the question.   It was a very embarrassing version of a popularity contest, and believe me, that’s no way to choose a sales training provider. (Disclosure: More than person was offended by my use of the word “spewed.”  I, on the other hand, was offended by their spewing.)

I’m not condemning everyone.  There are many real experts who take the time and effort to explain what they believe are the right answers.  Any many of those answers, from ESR’s perspective, are right.  Some of those experts post comments to help the person asking the question.  Others do it to promote themselves or someone else.  Some do it for both reasons, as I often do.

The question on why sales training fails was bizarre for different reasons.  Here is one exchange I had with another “contributor” to the discussion. He posted publicly:

“Dave- with great respect – how do you become an independent expert in something that you are not?”

I responded privately:

Hi M____, You wrote, “Dave- with great respect – how do you become an independent expert in something that you are not?”

Although I’ve read it ten times, I’m having difficulty understanding the gist of the question. Do you mean how does a person become an expert in something they are not? Or did you mean, how did Dave Stein become an expert in something Dave Stein is not an expert in? It’s the “you” that is confusing me.

Your writing “with great respect” is appreciated and leads me to believe it was the first interpretation, but I just wanted to check.

Thanks,
Dave

He responded privately:

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the email
Trust you are in great cheer in all things
The answers are in the questions!

The point is that a question can be recieved (sic) and percieved (sic) to mean different things
Thats (sic) the problem with sales training!

the question though did get you to act and think
Cheers
M____

What’s up with that? Am I missing something?

In any case, with all this going on about why sales training fails, ESR decided to formally launch an ebook on the subject, with the right answers.

You can click on the graphic to get your copy of The Top 7 Sales Training Pitfalls and 7 Solutions for Sustained Success. (Name and email address only are required.)

If you download and read the ebook, please let me know your thoughts.

The experts were:

• Brian Dietmeyer, CEO and Co-Founder, Think! Inc.  Brian answered questions about the power of procurement and how companies can begin to regain some of the ground lost as strategic sourcing has surged over the past decade. Previously, Brian and I discussed strategic negotiation on this podcast.
  

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• Braham Shnider, CEO and Founder, Channel Enablers.  Braham is an expert in the area of building and managing sales channels.  Braham said during the call that 70% of  products are sold not through direct sales approaches, but through channels.  I had some questions for Braham in this interview.
  

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• LaVon Koerner, President and Founder, Revenue Storm.  LaVon is an expert in demand creation, among other areas.  His explanation of how salespeople must create, rather than capture, demand was very compelling. A while back, LaVon and I had a great chat on this podcast.
  

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• Rick Page, CEO and Founder, The Complex Sale, Inc.  I asked Rick to join this advanced selling round table because of his thought-leadership in the area of political selling. His comments resonated among the whole panel.  I interviewed Rick a while back on this podcast.
  

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• Steve Andersen, Founder and Managing Partner, Performance Methods, Inc. Steve’s company, PMI, is a leader in the area of strategic account management.  Steve shared a few startling trends going on within his clients’ organizations around this critical sales-related function. Steve and I got to discuss PMI and his view of strategic account management on this podcast.
  

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Among the subjects our experts discussed were talent management challenges, future advanced selling trends, collaboration with clients and customers, and how important business acumen is in a complex selling environment.

So here’s the good news

If you missed the round table, here is the MP3 recording, courtesy of Focus.com.  Great working with those folks.

Photo credit: Fotolia.com

I’ve been very concerned for a while about two things going on in the sales blogging/social networking community.  One is wrong information.  The other is endorsements of products provided to bloggers for review—without disclosure by those bloggers.

I realize that this move by the FTC wasn’t aimed at sales bloggers, but since that’s where I spend some time most days, I feel compelled to express my opinion.

Wrong information

Over the past year I’ve turned down invitations by sales “experts” to be on panels, contribute to books (such as compilations of sales-related articles), swap links, and lend endorsements to books on selling.  I’ve happily agreed to some and vigorously rejected others.  The main reason for the latter is those experts are not really experts at all.  It’s worse than that.  Some of the advice that is being provided is just plain wrong.  That’s not my opinion.  It’s based upon widely-available research.  Plus, in my role as sales training industry researcher and analyst, a lot of these people pitch to my firm, so we get to test their assertions.

In my recent post, Why Isn’t There A Dominant Sales Training Company? I discuss the non-existent barrier to entry for sales trainers/experts.   As a result, we have blogs that are dispensing trash masqueraded as sales tips and other worthless advice.  This practice is bad for so many reasons, not the least of which is providing the sales person or manager with the false hope that the next tip they read will improve their sales performance once and for all.  It becomes a never-ending quest for the rep—sometimes even an addiction.  These tips divert their attention and effort from what they should be doing—the hard work that will really improve their selling effectiveness.  It’s a bad situation.

It’s not just the new, inexperienced entrants into the market that are guilty of dispensing wrong information.  Some of the better known sales gurus are guilty of it as well. You’d recognize their names.  They’ve got best-selling books, are interviewed in magazines, and speak at conferences.

Why don’t I call them out by name?  It’s just not my style to do it here on my blog, although our clients sometimes ask our opinion about individual experts.  I’d rather educate you and let you decide what advice is valuable and what isn’t.

By the way, LinkedIn groups and the question/answer facility are full of bad advice.  Be careful.  It’s very dangerous ground.

Another observation/opinion:  The amount of self-promotion done by any sales expert is often (not by any means always) inversely proportional to the value they provide.  I’m not referring to writing a blog, or having a presence on Twitter, or having a rich, compelling “about me” page or LinkedIn profile. I’m talking about all the references to what those experts are doing and have done—me, me, I, I, me, me, me.  What I like to read about is an expert’s clients and the value those clients have derived from that expert.  That perks my interest.  That makes me look deeper into what the expert has to say.

Not disclosing freebies

From the article referenced above:

The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

I know this freebie situation is going on in the sales expert blogging/Twitter community.  I’ve been offered free stuff myself.  Giving a sales expert/blogger some neat software for “review” (read free) with an implicit expectation that the blogger will rave about that product in return has always been wrong.  Now it’s official.

Where am I headed with all this?

Sales as a function is generally in a pretty bad way.  Lots of great people (like Brian Lambert of ASTD’s Sales Training Drivers, Howard Stevens of HR Chally and the University Sales Education Foundation, Gary Summy of SMT and SAMA, to name just three) are working very hard to permanently change the situation.  But in the meantime, sales reps and sales leaders are thirsty for information, guidance, and advice.  Self-serving, hype-filled, and insincere blogs laden with misinformation isn’t the place to find the answers.

Photo credit: © James Steidl – Fotolia.com

There is a lot going on in the sales training industry, but a lot of it isn’t sales training.  As they continue to see the demand for traditional classroom-based training falling off the cliff, some training firms are scrambling to get their content online.  Some are taking shortcuts.  Others  are going about it the right way. Even during these challenging times.

We know of several very large corporations that have announced internally that they will offer no more classroom sales training.  Numbers of other large and mid-size buyers of sales training are moving in this direction. I don’t have to spell out what that means for training company owners that have been drawing tons of cash out of their companies during the past number of years instead of investing in new content and new delivery media.  Can they make up for lost time?  Some will and some won’t.  We’re predicting the acquisition or demise of several of the 23 training companies we cover.   In fact, numbers of training companies, large and small, are in a bad situation right now.  Names you’d recognize.  For many of them, it’s going to get worse before it gets better—if it gets better.

On the subject of shortcuts, it’s disappointing to see that “free” sales tips, tricks, and silver bullets continue to appear in dozens of blogs and websites every day.  The very salesreps and managers that seek out these tips are the ones that are hurt most by them.  They need structure and a strategic approach for selling their products and services to their customers.  When you think about it, these sales tips aren’t really free at all.  They cost money.  A lot of it, in the form of lost business opportunity—deals those reps will never win because they are seeking shortcuts and shortcuts don’t work in sales.

In addition to the free sales tips promising to help your reps win, there are other distractions as well.  Social media is one.  ESR published some research on that last quarter.  We know that for some companies, social media, integrated within an overall internal and external communications approach can be very powerful.  It can build awareness, drive business, and improve customer and employee satisfaction.  As with sales tips though, a tactical, seat-of-the-pants approach takes salespeople and their managers’ eyes off the ball.  For many, the promise of social media is an little more than mirage.  When you finally get there, you’re thirstier than when you started.

Sales 2.0 is another area of potential risk for sales leaders seeking quick solutions and shortcuts to their selling challenges.  Sales 2.0-like, vendor- and press-driven “new, more efficient and more effective ways of doing business” have a way of attracting those seeking shortcuts.  In fact, some of the marketing messages I’ve seen specifically target the ever-hopeful, quick-solution-seeking sales leader.  Again, I’ve got no complaints with companies that are marketing legitimate Sales 2.0 tools and approaches and are sharing with their customers the truth about what those applications will and will not do and the proven path to get results.  I’m offended by the tidal wave of hype advanced by some who would drive a sales-challenged company in the wrong direction just to make a sale.   SiriusDecisions’ Joe Galvin shared a piece he did on the subject of Sales 2.0.  If you can get a copy, it’s well worth the read.  With his background at Gartner, and a deep understanding of sales leadership, Joe’s got a terrific perspective on the subject.

I want to hear about more companies that are making forward progress doing the right things.  There are a lot of others out there who can use some additional encouragement.

Now that I’m thinking back in time as I write this post, I remember the television show Who Do You Trust? Perhaps the show should have been entitled Who Is Lying and Who Is Not? That’s what I was left with each time I watched it. I never was entertained.  I always felt uncomfortable.  It was my own lack of confidence in being able to identify someone telling the truth from someone who lied.  I’ve gotten much better at that over the years.

I was a Boy Scout: “Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrift, brave, clean, and reverent.”  At the time that Boy Scout Law gave us plenty of food for thought, discussion and learning—especially with respect to trust.  Things are different now with a lot of young people.

And, of course, there is a lifetime of personal relationships.  In some there was trust.  In others not.  On both sides.   Trust equaled comfort and security.  The lack thereof, hurt.   That hasn’t changed over the years for me.

I became an instrument-rated pilot 15 years ago.  I learned that the imperative “Always Trust Your Instruments” could save your life.  I think about that every time I fly, especially in foul weather when I can’t see anything out the window of the airplane.

So here I am hosting Carnival of Trust, and honored at being asked.  Thanks Charlie.

I met Charles Green a while back when we were both speaking at a conference.  From him and his writings, I learned what trust really means in business.  And since I’m on the sales side of things—where there is more often than not a trust vacuum—I’ve been especially attentive. It certainly has paid off for me.

With that quick history on the word trust as a backdrop, here are ten pieces on that subject for your consideration:

I think she has nailed the basics, hasn’t she?

From the official website/blog of the UK Prime Minister’s Office, a five-minute video, PM focused on recession and restoring trust.  Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Brown said he had appointed a Cabinet of “character, strength, experience and resilience” that is committed to serving the nation.  Politicians have got a long way to go in the U.K.  As they do here in the U.S.

In my experience, rebuilding trust is so much harder than building it in the first place.

The blogger includes a no-BS,  eight-step approach to creating a culture of candor created by James O’Toole and Warren Bennis.

Can you accept that challenge in your company?  Take a look.

Steven Andersen, blogging for Insight Counsel, wrote in Foul Play: After Ted Stevens Debacle, DOJ Sends Prosecutors a Sharp Message, “A certain segment of society turns a jaundiced eye toward government to begin with, so news about prosecutors willing to compromise rules and ethics to get a conviction merely confirms their darkest suspicions.  ‘When you can show that the government forgot the rules because it was so intent on winning, that’s a powerful defense before a jury,’ Collins [Patrick Collins, a partner at Perkins Coie and a former U.S. attorney in Chicago] says. ‘One of the easiest hats for me to wear is that of a righteously indignant lawyer who sees government misconduct.’”

Again, to me this flavor or breach of trust is nasty abuse of power.  There are no shortage of historical examples of where that can lead.

Personally, all ESR’s phone lines are on the appropriate Do Not Call Lists and we still get barraged with calls (with phony caller IDs) from “Shareholder Services” and fear-mongering car warranty companies.

Numbers of elderly people where I live were recently scammed as well.  I got the calls mentioned in the article.  Trust?  At your own peril!

Will we always have to look in our spam folders for the occasional real message rather than in our inbox for the occasional spam?

I wonder where sales ranks in this study.  I know that I work very hard in earning my clients’ trust.  I also know that many salespeople don’t.

I’m lucky.  I’m healthy, I have a doctor, and I trust her.  I’m not sure of what I would do if I were not in this position.

When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, greed is not good.

Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.

Chris had some good questions to ask, including, “Why have so few Harvard MBA students signed on?”  My question is what can we do to remedy the deeper problem for which we need a pledge in the first place?

Chris is a straight-up, honorable guy.  I really like this post, because it serves to alert all of us on the differences between bloggers and journalists with respect to earning our trust.

Is the difference between bloggers and journalists important to you?

I presented today on a webinar sponsored by Genius.com. The TAS Group hosted the event. I shared the results of ESR’s survey on the use of social media in B2B sales. Few of the 400 B2B salesreps surveyed say Twitter has directly contributed to them winning business.

An interesting question was posed by an audience member about pushback with the new social media, such as we had with faxes and email. So that prompted this post, with a few observations. Understand, I’m no Twitter guru. I don’t have a million followers, or even a thousand. I’m still figuring out how best to use it, gaining and providing value.

Some observations:

• People find me and follow me. I get an email. I click on their profile. More make strange bedfellows than not. I don’t understand why they’d want to follow me. It takes time to do that. A minute? Often, from a selfish perspective, it’s wasted time. Is this spam?
• @writingroads who is a writer who lives here on Martha’s Vineyard taught me that it’s not all about just tweeting about your business. Julie found me and got hired for an ESR project because of other interests that we shared. Her tweets cover a wide variety of subjects. She tells me that that’s how to use Twitter. Tweet about what interests you. You will find people with similar interests and others will find you. Doing business with those comes naturally, if there is business to be done. That works great for someone like Julie. It wouldn’t work for a salesrep of a large company for many reasons. At least I don’t think so.
• Tom Pick wrote a post today on How to Use Twitter For Business. He cites Whole Foods, Comcast, Starbucks and Ford as companies who leverage Twitter. I looked at their recent tweets. Good article. Thanks, Tom.
• I don’t get people who block their updates. Why do that? It defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Maybe I don’t get it.
• I un-follow hardcore self-promoters. I did that twice yesterday. People I know pretty well. I found one sales trainer in the Middle East. Began to follow. What came next were dozens of tweets each day just promoting courses he was giving. Ugh. Bye. If I do that, someone let me know.
• I love people who provide real value. @DavidABrock is one. @LouisColumbus is another. @SteveKayser and @CharlesHGreen, too. Then there is John Caddell (@jmcaddell). There are many more. I try to use them as a model, but I have a long way to go.
• It’s nice to have someone RT (retweet) one of your tweets. Again, I do that when it’s appropriate. I need to more of that. Some of the people I follow are really smart.
• When I’m really busy with work, I don’t have the time or inclination to use Twitter. Am I not fully committed to Twitter as a medium? Or is that reasonable behavior?
• Those of you who read this blog know I’m concerned about B2B salespeople who spend too much time on Twitter rather than what has been proven to work in selling. Some salespeople will look for any shortcut or trick to avoid the ongoing learning and hard work required for sales success.

What do you think?

Photo credit: © Alex Staroseltsev – Fotolia.com