Aug 21 2010
The Bullocks Behind Sales Training
The JF Guest Author Post
Dan Waldschmidt
Sales training is broken.
It’s dead. Washed-up.
And we might be all the better if we helped give it a final push into the coffin.
Take a quick jump over to Google and look at the sales training landscape.
It took me a full 7 seconds to type in my search for “sales trainers” and only 0.23 seconds to get back a list of 6 million results (6,090,000 to not slight the proper performance of the Google search platform).
Another 0.19 seconds later I learned that there were more than 150 million results for the topic of “sales training”.
Which didn’t surprise me one bit. 150 million tips-and-tricks and yet we are ever only so narrowly avoiding the worst economic marketplace in 8 decades.
My theory — Sales training is a bunch of bullocks.
And it’s not just me being extra intolerant today as I sit at my computer drinking coffee by the mugful, scratching out my angst on my trusty Dell Inspiron. Somehow that’s a gut instinct that I have been feeling for the past few decades. (And at 31, I just might have figured out that “just threw up in my mouth feeling”.)
From my first days on the streets growing a lawn-mowing empire at 12-years old to my first company “turn around” at 20, it has always felt odd to listen to sales training.
Not because I was prepared to any better job at training. I was just a dude with a Jewish mom and no TV anywhere in the house, who inherited a massive inferiority complex. “Being better” was served up like warm butter on a morning bagel. I got the concept.
I just never got this brand of “better”. A million different mantras (150 million to be exact) and very little that I could actually use.
We’ve all hired coaches, mentors, therapists, or consultants. Narcissism (a.k.a. being a selfish human being) doesn’t work. To be the best, you need the best help.
And like a lot things in life, the “best” may not be overly clear, but what’s not sure is clear.
Here’s a few warning signs that your training might be 150 million degrees of broken.
1. It’s too short.
We spend less time teaching proper sales behaviors than we do teaching our poodles not to puddle on the carpet.
You’re smiling because it just might be true.
We decide that a weekly sales meeting is the level of commitment that best suits our needs. And then when we do roll out a plan to “grow revenue 800% over the next quarter”, we set aside a day to get the sales dudes up to speed.
It’s just not enough.
It’s not even a start. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.
Look around at your top sales execs. There is a reason that they are on their iPhones. That sigh and sideways glance – let me help you decode. You are wasting their time.
You want this off your plate and expect that an all-day training session will be the answer.
Guess what? Next time you call for an all-hands training session, we might take a sick day. Save you the trouble of telling us to pay attention.
How about you feed me a little bit each day? How about you set aside dedicated time each week, each month, each quarter to mentor me in new directions?
You want commitment? Commit to my success. Training based on the “one night stand” process are the reason we have 150 million options we don’t want.
2. It’s too boring.
We have (at best) a 20 minute attention span. Please remember that 47 minutes into your monotone dialogue.
Oh, and another thing.
Just because it has Powerpoint in the file name doesn’t mean it’s a presentation.
And why is that I have to think through my sales pitch, but you show up and “wing it” with my training? (and if you’re not, we can’t tell the difference…)
Your slides are 17 sessions old. And the examples are completely out-of-touch. It’s like you don’t even care. Is it because I am forced to listen to you?
I am sure you have something amazing to say. I just stopped listening a long time ago. I just want to be inspired. Can you help me with that?
3. It’s too detached.
We try to program sales behaviors rather than sales attitudes.
Ever sit in a sales training session where the entire focus of the training is a series of mind-numbing steps? (Like, every one, right?)
Makes you wonder. Is there a special island where sales trainers all live where everyone’s personal life is completely perfect?
Why aren’t trainers teaching me how to stay mentally strong? Why not talk candidly to me about my fears, and failures, and how I can’t stand rejection?
I get skeptical and a little irritated at you when you try to teach me nonsense that doesn’t include the mental preparation to repeat the process once you leave through the front door.
Why do I get the sense that all your “landed the whale” stories are a little too rosy? It just doesn’t connect.
In reality there’s really only one thing that sales training should be all about. There’s really only one thing that really matters. And your mother probably already taught it to you.
Empathy.
That’s right. It’s not a three step program or a seven paragraph calling script. It’s a deep sense of genuine concern for yourself and those around you.
It’s about “Fewer tips for closing and more tears of concern…”
You can sell anything when you care enough about the person on the other end of the deal. It just happens.
And yet we don’t teach it.
• We don’t teach caring (questioning so that the client gets everything that they need)
• We don’t teach compassion (positioning so that the client wins)
• We don’t teach candor (leading so that the client doesn’t feel misled)
We choose transaction over transformation.
And that’s the bullocks behind sales training.
Dan Waldschmidt is a former technology CEO, one of the founders of IntroMojo, a popular inspirational speaker, and a sought-after strategist on creating edgy conversations in the marketplace. He blogs regularly on his popular motivational selling blog Edge of Explosion and is the husband to a cute gal named Sara and the father to two energetic boys. He’s just an ordinary dude who happens to have an outrageous vision. And he wants to help you change the world…
[...] the original here: Jonathan Farrington's Blog » The Bullocks Behind Sales Training Comments [...]
Dan, your premise is entirely true. You forgot to mention that companies spend $10Bn each year on sales training, and most of that investment is wasted. Now, it might seem strange that I’m agreeing with you given that I’m CEO of The TAS Group. But when I got into this business just a few years ago I was appalled by the level of negative ROI. Industry reports would suggest that after just 30 days sales training results in only 13% retention of what was taught. Yep, that’s 87c in every dollar wasted.
We are now achieving 93% retention after 12 months.
I got into this business to fix the fundamental problem of negative ROI; to fundamentally change the approach and to deliver long-term customer value. We thought a lot about why it was so broken, why the latest 7-step methodology, color-coded sheet, or sales-tips library, was no longer lasting than the Heimlich maneouvre, and a lot less effective.
We looked at why sales people – in contrast to their peers in other professions – did not apply consistent proven best practice. I’m an engineer, and I know that there are engineering principles that always need to be applied – otherwise the bridge will fall or the software application won’t work. When I practiced as an engineer (a long-time ago) I used the engineering methodology because I could see how it helped me and it was not difficult to use. That reward/effort equation is not solved by the traditional sales training approach.
The problem with traditional sales training is two-fold. It is as you say about a mindset change. To extend my engineering analogy – I should care if the bridge will fail because people will die, but I also need my theodolite and my CAD system to keep me within the guardrails of effective practice. These tools have embedded best practice and supporting knowledge and intelligence that I as an engineer could not survive without.
As we sought to address the problem you so eloquently articulate, we built tools that help sales people to collaborate with their customers to help ensure that the customer gets what they need – not just what they want. We understand that the impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is always greater than the impact on a sales person of a lost deal, and that if the sales person’s ‘solution’ is not a good fit for the customer’s needs then the sales person should graciously withdraw. It’s better for everyone in the long-run. Our software platform (Dealmaker) supports that ideal and as a consequence our customers are more successful. We look at our customers through the eyes of their customers and help them to make their customers successful. That’s why we have customer retention rates of 93%.
The conversation you surface here is an important one, and one I enthusiastically welcome. Innovation has been lacking in this industry for 25 years and the consequence has been a cartel of mediocrity that serves no party well.
Our customers are excited about the intelligence we’ve built into our sales effectiveness software platform. They relish the automated deal coaching, they drool over the ease-of-use and how we solve the reward/effort equation. They embrace the embodied discipline and the consequence increase in their sales forecast accuracy. Most of all they value the results.
Some of my heretofore competitors have partnered with us to leverage our innovation investment to better serve their customers, because they too want to deliver sustained value and recognize that the old way just doesn’t work. They now compete with me at the high-end of the value chain and I welcome that, and would welcome others. Together we can raise the standard for all.
CRM vendors are also complicit in this morass of methodology mediocrity. Look into any CRM system today are see how many sales deals are forecasted to close in the past. As I write this, it’s August 21 2010, and I will guarantee you that nearly every
CRM system (where Dealmaker has not been integrated) will have deals with forecast close dates in July and June. Good methodology integration can solve that problem, and not doing so is lazy and irresponsible. That’s what sales people waste 2 hours each week on average doing sales forecasts that are as real as a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale.
Buyers of sales training too have a part to play in raising the bar. If they measure success by the number of hours people sit in a classroom then they will find plenty of providers will to service them. If they pay for mediocrity – that’s what they will get. If they consider instead the sustained transformative results they should demand, and then demand them from their providers, they will help solve the problem.
Thanks for calling out the bullocks.
Donal Daly
CEO, The TAS Group
Donal,
Thanks for the well thought out response.
On a less serious note, I was halfway expecting that JF or another of my friends “acorss the pond” would kindly point out to me that the real bullocks to this piece is that I didn’t call it “bollocks”….
As for your serious issues. I think you stated them quite well. When mediocrity is enough, it is all that we will fight for.
Dan
p.s. Thanks for stopping by…
[...] today I read a blog post from the ever-thought-provoking Dan Waldschmidt. If you care about your sales team, or maybe if [...]
Dan – yes I did consider replacing the ‘u’ in bullocks
I enjoy your meanderings.
Donal
Dan,
The spelling is not important – we knew the intention
Donal,
What a great advert!
We all agree then – http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk/2010/08/13/some-home-truths-about-sales-training/
Look out for a Masterclass on this very subject, coming to a PC near you very soon, presented by Lindy Richardson and me.
Best
JF
[...] The Bullocks Behind Sales Training [...]
[...] topic was sales training. The premise was that it is largely junk. Here’s the post that started it all. Here’s the reply that got me thinking even [...]
Wow! What a great discussion on a very relevant and important topic.
Dan, I think you’re mostly right. Sales training is broken. I founded ES Research Group in 2005 specifically to help buyers and providers of sales training overcome this ongoing, deplorable situation. In fact, ESR’s research shows that 85% of sales training yields no impact after 90 days. Sales training is, in fact, broken.
There are many reasons for this, including way too many ineffective trainers, sales training buyers who don’t know what they really need or how to find someone who can help them, lack of appropriate funding and executive support for effective learning and development, lack of understanding of how process, reinforcement, technology, measurement, curriculum design, delivery mechanisms, and certification programs should contribute to an training strategy, and the general short-term, give-me-a-bunch-of-quick-tips-and-tricks-so-my-salespeople-can-deliver-for-me-this-quarter attitude of too many sales “leaders.” This isn’t a situation that is quickly remedied.
Dan, you’re right about empathy. That is a critical trait that winning salespeople possess. But there are two other things for you to consider:
First, empathy isn’t a skill, it’s a trait. It’s either in your DNA or it isn’t. You can train people to BEHAVE as though they are empathetic, caring and compassionate, but can you realistically, in a commercial environment, train them to be that way? Probably not. It’s therefore important to hire people with that trait and train them on how to best leverage it for the customer’s (and therefore their) benefit. Good sales training programs (delivered by skillful trainers) will do that.
Second, there are other very critical capabilities for salespeople to be successful in today’s B2B environment. Some are skills (which you can learn) and others are traits — who you are. I won’t list them here, but I can assure you that empathy is not the only thing that sales training should be about.
That leads to one last comment about your point, “Why aren’t trainers teaching me how to stay mentally strong? Why not talk candidly to me about my fears, and failures, and how I can’t stand rejection?”
The answer to that is this: that isn’t the job of a sales trainer. The sales trainer’s job is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, concepts, insights, examples, and guidance on how salespeople can utilize their company’s proven methods and processes for effective selling. That building the platform for behavioral change can be done live, virtually (as done in a spectacular way by Donal’s organization), or, ideally, some combination of both, depending on the characteristics of the team being trained. In my unique position as an analyst that covers the sales training industry, I can tell you that there are fine companies delivering very effective sales training to their customers as well as other companies that excel with in-house sales training programs. With that said, they are in the significant minority.
Where does a salesperson go to be taught how to stay mentally strong, face their fears, and learn to stand rejection? I’m sure some will say I lack empathy for writing this, but they don’t belong in the high-pressure, high-stakes world of B2B sales, just as a person with 20/200 vision isn’t going to be a fighter pilot and a person who is tone-deaf won’t be an opera singer.
With all that being said, great post. What you said needed to be said. Thanks.
When we were kids we could pursuade adults to do anything we wanted them to do. We were all born sales people.
Since then we learned inhibition and self conscious behaviour – we learned how not to sell. To be successful we need to get deprogrmmed and refind the child within oureslves.
I can just here you saying – I can’t do that!! Perhaps you are right!