Training; “the action of teaching a person a particular skill or type of behaviour”
Selling, just like that of any other profession, can be taught. It is not a gift, a super power or part of your DNA as some people may have you believe. It is a set of skills, knowledge and understanding that can be studied, learned and practiced like any other profession.
I look at sales people in the same way as professional athletes are viewed. The most important aspect of an elite athlete is desire; the drive and determination to be the best. This is the prerequisite of a sales person, if they do not have desire to do the role, then no amount of training or inherited genetics will overcome that issue. Can you imagine forcing yourself to wake up at 5.30am every morning to go running or swimming for 3 hours, then go to the gym, then go skills training and then repeat that 6 days a week, if you really didn’t have the desire ? That would be my definition of torture.
If the desire exists then you need to be taught the skills and you need to practice them. You may already understand where the strengths and weaknesses of your sales person or sales team lay. If you do then I can deliver training to develop the weaknesses and further promote the strengths depending on your requirements. If you do not know where the issues lay then the Sales Process Audit will be able to tell you this. Using an athlete centric model helps to identify where gains can be made, where strengths can be developed and what is required to do this.
Following this, the single most important thing is practice and continued development.
“amateurs practice until they can do it right, professionals practice until they can not do it wrong”
and as for continued development?
Why does Novak Djokovic and Rory McIlroy have coaches, surely they know how to play by now ?
Continued development can be internal, or external. As simple or as comprehensive as you can make it, but the essential element is that you keep coaching, mentoring and encourage your sales people to practice and develop continuously.
Sales management, just like sales, is also a skill and so please feel free to ask for further details if this is an area you feel you need help.