Choosing a Sales Training Program

Why proposal training is one of your best sales training options!

by Dave Seibert

Sales training is sales training is sales training, right?  Not quite, and here's why.

If you study accounting, law, engineering, architecture, healthcare, or most other professions--there is a standard curriculum that you have to learn and understand.  In many cases, you even have to take a test and get licensed before you can practice your trade.  The sales profession is different.  In sales, there is no standard curriculum or generally accepted course of study.  There is no test.  In many cases, sales trainers can't even agree on what skills salespeople should master.

The reason for this is that sales is not inherently a technical profession.  You don't have to study debits and credits and tax law like accountants and CPAs do.  You don't have to study Constitutional law or civil law or corporate law like lawyers do.  You don't have to study metallurgy and mathematics like engineers and architects do.  If you're going in to sales, you don't have to study anything.  You should understand your subject, of course.  And it helps if you know how to communicate effectively.  But the fact remains that there is no significant barrier to entering the profession.   

The lack of a standard sales training curriculum has had an important and far-reaching implication; few colleges and universities have formed degree programs for the selling profession.  Why would they?  After all, there isn't a standard curriculum so what would they even teach?  As a result, while most colleges and universities offer a selling class or two, only a handful offer majors.

So where does this leave us?  With a whole industry of people who have never received formal training in their profession.  Put bluntly, it leaves us with an educational vacuum.  

The good news is that the free market, like nature, abhors a vacuum.  So in response, sales training firms filled the void.  The bad news is that the lack of a standard curriculum has resulted in vastly different opinions about what students need to study and learn to be effective salespeople.  As a result, the sales training market is overflowing with a wide variety of competing alternatives.  

So which sales training program is right for you and your company?  Answering this question requires that you make a couple decisions.  

Embrace a Selling Philosophy
The first decision is to determine your own selling philosophy.  For example, do you embrace a hard sell or a soft sell approach.  If you embrace a hard sell approach, you may want to consider programs that emphasize objection handling skills and closing skills.  If you embrace a soft sell approach, then you may want to consider programs that emphasize knowledge training for your reps, and that teach your reps how to focus on the needs of the customer.

Choose the Correct Sales Training Approach
The second decision you have to make is to determine the type of sales training that you need.  Most sales training programs fall into one of four broad categories:

• Methodology sales training
• Product and industry sales training
• Motivational presentations
• Skills-based sales training

Methodology Sales Training

The first and perhaps most common type of sales training is called methodology training.  A sales methodology is a process-based approach to selling.  It is focused at implementing a particular sales process at the organizational level.  As a result, methodology training is typically focused on teaching salespeople how to use the methodology.  Methodology training is typically the most expensive and challenging because it involves implementing new methods and processes, extensive training and consulting, etc.

There are many different kinds of methodologies, both soft sell and hard sell.  But it's important to figure out which type a particular program is.  Many hard sell methods claim to be soft sell, but when you focus on the details of the program, it is rooted in hard sell techniques.

Product and Industry Sales Training

The second sales training category is called product and industry training.  To be persuasive, salespeople must be able to develop credibility with their customers.  To do this, they must have expertise in their fields.  This includes more than just knowledge of their products or services.  It means understanding the industry and the market, how their products are used, what the alternatives include, etc.  It means being an expert in their field.  Product and industry sales training is focused on helping salespeople to be experts in their fields.

Most sales reps receive extensive product-focused sales training, but not all reps receive additional industry or subject training.  Here's an example of why it is important.  When you go to a nursery to buy plants,  who do you want to speak with?  Someone who has learned about the plants that are there on the lot or someone who understands horticulture?   The plant salesperson can answer basic questions, but the horticulturist can offer much more.  He or she can help you find the right plants for your soil and sun conditions, teach you how to prune and care for your plants, and help you if you have a problem.  

Now apply this to a business-to-business selling situation.  When your customer comes to you, it's because they a problem that they think you can help them solve.  If your salespeople can only talk about their products, they may be helpful.  But if they are experts in your field, they'll be more useful and valuable to your clients.  And that increases the likelihood that you are going to make a sale.

Motivational Presentations

Some sales training programs are as much motivational as they are educational.  That's fine if that's what you want.  

The trouble with motivational sales training programs, though, is that they typically motivate by appealing to emotion.  Said another way, they only motivate as long as emotions are running high.  As emotions wain, so does the effectiveness of the motivational program.  So while motivational sales training programs can result in productivity gains, the gains are typically short-lived.

Skills-based Sales Training

The forth type of sales training is called skills-based sales training.  There are a number of skills that salespeople must master in order to be effective on a day to day basis.  Everyday, we prospect for new customers, engage in dialogue to uncover needs, present our products or solutions, negotiate terms, solve problems, manage projects, write proposals, and more.  All of these things are skills that we need to develop in order to be effective.

Skills-based sales training are one of the least used types of sales training programs behind methodology-based programs, but they offer some of the greatest potential.  Because few salespeople have received formal training in sales, few salespeople have been taught all the different skills that they need when they sell.  This necessarily means that they've picked up these skills on their own.  Though this sort of on-the-job-training can be very effective, it can also result in bad habits.  

By providing formal sales skills training, you can undo bad habits, and reinforce the correct way to manage particular tasks.

Which Type of Training Program is Best?

In general, none of these approaches is best because they are all four different.  Within the context of your organization, the program that is best is the one that best meets the needs of your organization today.  Some sales groups may need a new selling process, while others may need industry and product training.  Still others may need sales skills training in a particular area--such as proposal writing.

The Advantages of Proposal Skills Training for Salespeople

At The Seibert Group, we advocate that proposal skills training is one of the best sales training investments that an organization can make.  Here's why.  The ability to write effective sales proposals necessarily requires that people learn how to write persuasively.  After all, a sales proposal is, fundamentally, a persuasive document.  But learning how to write a sales proposal teaches more than just learning how to write.  

A salesperson has to be able to communicate persuasively all the time, not just when they are writing sales proposals.  That problem is that relatively few salespeople have ever studied persuasion or the persuasive process.  By learning how to write persuasively, they are also learning--at a more fundamental level--how to communicate persuasively.  As a result, sales proposal training pays dividends, not just in how well they produce sales proposals, but in how effectively they can communicate persuasively during the rest of the sales process.  

Learning how to communicate persuasively--especially within the context of a risk based transaction (such as a sale)--is an important skill that every salesperson should study and master.