We get calls from companies across the country, asking us whether or not we can provide them with sales training. Upon further discussion and examination of the problems that they describe, we realize that in fact they don't need sales training at all! What they need is something completely different. I am amazed to see how often Sales Training is diagnosed as the root cause of underperformance.
As we question the CEO, we end up discovering a multitude of other issues: they need to revamp their go to market strategy, they need to reposition their company, they need to realign their sales team and channels with changing market realities, etc. There are a whole host of different reasons why a company needs to make changes in its sales department in order to improve its success. Often times, management calls us to say that they have a training issue, when it's not about training at all.
If your company needs to improve the prospecting, qualifying, developing and closing techniques of your sales representatives and if they need to be trained on how to do an improved job of probing and solution selling, sales training could very well be the right answer for your company. If your sales people aren't delivering enough prospects into the pipeline or closing a high enough percentage of deals, it may not be a training issue at all. It may very well be that you're trying to sell the wrong product into the wrong market or that you're positioned poorly against your competitors.
So don't jump to conclusions and just automatically pick up the phone and start looking for training when you're experiencing a shortfall in your sales numbers. Go deeper to diagnose the root cause of the reason why your team is not selling enough. Often times you'll find the problems are very different from the ones you initially thought.
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